Dear IOBA,
I am writing to thank you and the board members of IOBA once more for granting me a scholarship award to this year’s Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar. What an incredible experience! We covered an enormous amount of material in such a short time. I feel like my brain has been expanded a hundred-fold. Equally energizing and beneficial was the opportunity for meeting other booksellers from across the country (including our group of IOBA members). The faculty and participants had such a variety of experience levels, interests and specialties, and stories of their own journeys along the many roads of dealing in books. Having this new network of colleagues is wonderful!
Serena and I have been pouring over my seminar notes and handouts and discussing ideas to shape and improve ourselves as booksellers. We are making plans to attend book fairs and create our first catalog. (Our first perhaps will be of a lesser-known female sci-fi/western author’s collection, including books, manuscripts, fanzines and ephemera, which we acquired over a year ago.) We are acquiring new reference materials, communicating with some of the seminarians I met, and working on ways to find better books and improve our catalog descriptions. The list goes on.
Thank you again for your generous support. The IOBA scholarship award was a tremendous help to us. And not only financially, but also in terms of collegial support—introducing us to and welcoming us into a fabulous network of colleagues that we hope to get to know more and work with over many years to come. Thank you!
Best Regards,
Cathy Graham Co-Owner, Copperfish Books, LLC
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