Elizabeth and J. Ben Lieberman in their home with the famed Kelmscott/Goudy Press, which they acquired in the late 1960s. Now at the Cary Graphic Arts Collection.

Issue 33 of the APHA Letter has a short bio of Ben Lieberman from the time when he won the APHA award.

“Dr Lieberman considers freedom of the press perhaps the single most important element in what he went on to describe as APHA’s transcendent purpose. […] [quoting JBL:] ‘What I am saying is that there are many other parts of printing history — the political, social, and educational and cultural effects of printing—that need exploration and organization comparable to the technological and economic.'”

And this: “Also it is necessary to keep printing itself human by keeping printing equipment freely available for all kinds of human expression…. ‘I think this may summarize the point,’ he said. ‘To be a great printer in a controlled society is a mockery, because his skill is used to embroider the controls that make human beings, including himself, into slaves.'” (4-5)