Pre-CODEX Seminar
Friday, February 6, 2026
Collecting with Integrity and Intention: A Seminar for Library Professionals
Full-day Seminar with Ruth Rogers at The Bancroft Library.
Facilitated by David Faulds, Curator of Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts.
UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library
Friday, February 6, 2026
9:00 am to 5:00 pm with a 1-hour lunch break
Librarians and Institutional Professionals will be given priority.
$300 Seminar Only
$425 Seminar plus Multi-Day pass to the Book Art Fair & Symposium ($300 value)
To Apply:
Please fill out the form on this page. We will review your information and get back to you shortly with payment and other information.
Applications will be reviewed and accepted attendees will be notified by October 15, 2025. Class size is limited to 14.
Ruth R. Rogers is the Laura Daignault Gates class of ‘72 Curator of Special Collections at Wellesley College, where her work focuses on the evolution of the book as material culture, visual communication, and artistic form. As lecturer in the Art Department, she teaches a hands-on seminar on the History of the Book, and hosts courses throughout the curriculum in the interdisciplinary area of book studies. In her writing and teaching, most recently at California Rare Book School, she advocates for developing standards and approaches for building institutional collections with artists’ books.
Collecting with Integrity and Intention: A Seminar for Library Professionals
Ruth R. Rogers
How does a librarian develop the critical insights needed to build a collection of contemporary artists’ books? What kind of collaborations between students and faculty can be explored through engagement with them, and how do we refine our choices? This one-day intensive seminar will cover creative approaches to harness the visual and communicative power of artists’ books, by integrating them into an insitution’s broader curricular objectives.
The seminar will be divided into morning and afternoon sessions. Morning will be devoted to sharing strategies for identifying artists’ books that fit into a cross-disciplinary educational mission and how they connect to existing historical collections. Sample lecture topics and lists of suggested books will be provided.
The afternoon session will be devoted to guided hands-on analysis of pre-selected books based on the morning’s themes, beginning with work in small groups, and concluding with lively discussion and debate.
The goal of the seminar is to provide attendees with the tools and framework needed for acquiring artists’ books that will have a lasting impact in their collections. By emphasizing content, production values, communicative power, and course collaborations, attendees will be better equipped with strategies for expanding their own institutional collections.