The Many Hands of Book History, 2026 Conference of the Bibliographical Society of Canada

The Bibliographical Society of Canada’s annual conference, The Many Hands of Book History, brings together scholars, practitioners, librarians, and students to rethink the book as a fundamentally collaborative creation. Moving beyond paper, ink, and binding, this year’s conference foregrounds the many forms of labour, creativity, ownership, mediation, and interpretation that shape books across time and place.

Held both in-person at Trinity College, University of Toronto, and online, the conference features sixteen panels and more than fifty speakers. Across the programme, participants will explore how books are made, circulated, read, altered, and reimagined—from manuscripts and early print to digital media, game editions, scrapbooks, bindings, albums, and artist books. Sessions highlight the often-unseen hands behind books, including women’s work in the trades, Indigenous and transnational collaborations, community publishing, illustrators, binders, restorers, librarians, educators, and digital practitioners. Papers engage with material processes, decolonial and feminist approaches, pedagogical practice, and the social lives of texts within local, regional, and global print ecologies.

The conference concludes with an evening reception at St. Michael’s College, featuring a book launch and conversation celebrating Carole Gerson’s Literary Life After Death: Commemorations of Writers in English-Speaking Canada, the first publication in the BSC-sponsored series Authors, Publishers, Readers, Texts, published by Concordia University Press. Optional additional programming on 10 June includes a bookbinding workshop and guided tours of special collections at the Toronto Public Library.

Participants from all disciplines and at all career stages are invited to attend either in-person or online.