Research talk by David Pearson (KIDS): Book Owners Online

Book Owners Online (bookowners.onl...) is a freely available online database hosted at UCL, developed by David Pearson, providing a reference point for book historians, collectors, dealers and anyone interested in historic book ownership. It offers an opportunity to consider the rationale, challenges and prospects for digital humanities resources like this, and David will explore these themes in his talk. Bio: David Pearson retired in 2017 as Director of Culture, Heritage & Libraries for the City of London Corporation, after a long career managing libraries and collections, mostly in London. He now focuses on his academic work as a book historian, with particular interests in the ways that books have been owned, used and bound, and his books include Provenance Research in Book History (new edn 2019), English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 (2005), Speaking Volumes: Books with Histories (2022) and Cambridge Bookbinding 1450-1770 (2023). He is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, was Lyell Reader in Bibliography at Oxford in 2018, and Sandars Reader at Cambridge in 2023. He is a Past President of the Bibliographical Society and teaches regularly at the Rare Book Schools in London and Virginia.