BIBLIOPHILIC BEAT Last week, the Grolier Club, the Bibliographical Society of America, and the American Print History Association all held their annual meetings. Over the years, more and more collectors, antiquarian book dealers, bibliographers, and bookbinders have descended upon the city for a round of lectures, receptions, and exhibitions. The combination of events has come be known as “Bibliography Week.”

The Astor Curator of Printed Books at the Morgan Library, John Bidwell, who is an expert on the history of American papermaking, presided at the annual meeting of the Bibliographic Society. The organization is the oldest scholarly society in North America devoted to the study of books and manuscripts as physical objects. It was founded in St. Louis in 1904 when librarians gathered at an exhibition marking the centennial of Lewis and Clark’s expedition.

Mr. Bidwell read from a letter that American Council of Learned Societies President Pauline Yu sent last year from another Lewis and Clark anniversary celebration in St. Louis. “Just as Lewis and Clark sought the headwaters of the Missouri River, bibliographers mark the route to sources of Humanities scholarship.”

The BSA’s meeting concluded with the annual address by an astronomy and history of science professor from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Owen Gingerich, who spoke on “Researching The Book Nobody Read: Copernicus’ De revolutionibus.” Mr. Gingerich was introduced that afternoon as perhaps “the only bibliographer to have an asteroid named in his honor.”

Earlier in the day, scholars presented their work. Katherine D. Harris of the CUNY Graduate Center spoke on women and literary annuals in 19th century Britain and Earle Havens of the Boston Public Library spoke about the literary underground and manuscript culture in Elizabethan England.

On Saturday, the American Print History Association held its meeting in the Trustees Room at the New York Public Library. Among those present were the director of the Grolier Club, Eric Holzenberg; an APHA trustee, Martin Hutner; and the director of the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library, Christian Dupont, who had copies of the first issue of their library’s biannual publication “The Courant.”

A historian from Princeton University, Robert Darnton, accepted APHA’s individual award for his many influential books and articles on the history of the book in Europe.

He gave a talk that included correspondence from an 18th-century book dealer contemplating the prospect of a sure-fire best seller: the last great work by the French philosopher Voltaire. The dealer expressed less enthusiasm for other titles such as “A Treatise on Wool-Bearing Animals” and “A Description of Swiss Glaciers.”

Mr. Darnton said if he had to come up with a short answer to the complicated question of whether early modern publishing was motivated by the promise of profits, he “would issue all sorts of disclaimers and qualifiers, insist on exceptions, disavow anything that smacks of reductionism, and answer with a single syllable: yes.”

Capitalism was already driving the publishing industry in Gutenberg’s time, Mr. Darnton said. Gutenberg expanded the number of lines in his first Bible from 40 to 41 to 42 by page 11 in volume one, in order to cut down on the cost of paper and parchment.

G. Thomas Tanselle accepted the institutional award on behalf of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia which APHA praised for realizing its stated goal of being “a forum for the best textual and bibliographical work being done anywhere in the world.”

Mr. Tanselle said that the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia was particularly gratified that a printing history association had chosen to recognize the activities of a bibliographical society. He said the fact that bibliographical scholarship is necessarily historical scholarship is not always recognized. “To me, this situation is epitomized by the fact that listings of scholarship in book history rarely include work in bibliographical analysis, even though such analysis has repeatedly uncovered facts of printing history – facts that are just as much a part of the full story of each book’s life as are publisher’s marketing decisions and readers’ responses.”

He praised the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia’s publishing program, whose journal “Studies in Bibliography” offers scholarship ranging from 15th-century European books to 20th-century American ones. In the audience was the journal’s editor, David L. Vander Meulen.Mr. Tanselle quoted Robin Meyer’s comment on the occasion of the society’s 50th anniversary that this “very special publication” causes “a yearly frisson of pleasure as it thuds down on bibliographical doormats everywhere.”

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BIRTHDAY BELLS? The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center hosted “Ultimate Beethoven: A Journey Through Genius” on Sunday at Alice Tully Hall. When a quartet called Takacs played Beethoven’s Quartet For Strings in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1, discerning audience members heard a faint bell accompaniment in the last movement of the piece. After the intermission, first violinist Edward Dusinberre told the audience it was the birthday of second violinist Karoly Schranz. The bell, however, was not meant as part of a celebration. Mr. Dusineberre explained that the bell was due to a brief malfunction of the fire detection system in the building.

The audience spontaneously burst into a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday.”

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BOOK DEBUT The band Asefa – Sam Thomas on soprano sax, Shanir Blumenkranz on oud, and Mauricio Molina on frame drums – performed as Anne and Martin Peretz celebrated with Oren Harman the publication of his book “The Man Who Invented the Chromosome” (Harvard University Press) at Le Pain Quotidien in SoHo. The book focuses on the life and work of the genetics pioneer Cyril Darlington. Mr. Harman is a fellow at Hebrew University and a lecturer at Bar Ilan University. Other at the party included a historian of science from Bar Ilan University, Noah Efron, who is currently doing research at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and author and Kennedy School lecturer Samantha Power.

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POLITICAL HUMOR At a memorial at New School University for economic historian Robert Heilbroner, his son Peter Heilbroner recalled his father’s response upon hearing about the opening of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. “Yes, both books.”… Manchester Metropolitan University professor Ian Parker in his book on Hegelian and Lacanian theorist Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian, tells some of Mr. Zizek’s jokes about life under communist rule. One joke describes a German worker who finds a job in Siberia. Because of mail censorship, he tells his friends “Let’s establish a code. If a letter is written in ordinary blue ink it is true. If it is written in red ink it is false.” After a month, his friends get the first letter from Siberia, written in blue ink. “Everything is wonderful here in Siberia. Stores are full. Food is abundant. Apartments are large, properly heated. Movie theatres show Western movies. There are many beautiful girls ready for an affair. The only thing unavailable in stores is red ink.”

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ROSS REPORT New Yorker magazine editor David Remnick is scheduled to speak at the Small Press Center in Midtown February 8 on “The New Yorker Eighty Years On.”