Erin McGuirl

Who I am, What I do

bibliographer, n.

A person who writes about books, describing their authorship, printing, publication, etc.

 

My work and scholarship have evolved out of the institutional and private collections I have worked with (including my own modest library) and taken a variety of forms, including publications for popular audiences.

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Today my research focuses on two distinct, yet technologically overlapping subjects: The Whole Earth Catalog and what I call its "offspring" – books put together following instructions printed in the last catalog – and the printerly labor of the secretaries and typists who produced screenplays in 20th century Hollywood movie studios.

Since 2018 I have worked as the Executive Director of the Bibliographical Society of America, the oldest scholarly society in North America dedicated to the study of books and manuscripts as physical objects. I collaborate with BSA leadership to expand and diversify membership and programs, enhance programing, create a more robust communications profile, and forge new partnerships with other scholarly organizations and societies. I also work with BSA leadership on major issues of planning, finance, fundraising and development, and the general business of the Society. If we met before October of 2020 you knew me as Erin Schreiner; I took my husband's last name when we married and am now Erin McGuirl.

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I graduated from Middlebury College with a BA in the History of Art and Architecture, and hold an MLIS from the Palmer School of Information Science with a concentration in rare book librarianship. After a decade of special collections library work, I started my own business as an independent consultant to institutional and private collections in 2016. I am no longer taking new clients, but continue to work exclusively with Robert M. Rubin's collection of screenplays and other cinematic "exformation".

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I have been awarded fellowships by the Bibliographical Society (UK), Rare Book School, and the Harry Ransom Center. I have also taught at Rare Book School and guest lectured at the Pratt Institute's Information School.

 

Please see my LinkedIn profile for more information about my professional experience.

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Publications & Presentations

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• "The Women Who Made Selznick's Screenplays" in the Ransom Center Magazine, first published online 5 February 2021.
   

• "Professionalization in the Field of Bibliography, Book History, & Textual Editing: Entering the Field Without Formal Training"
  Panelist, MLA 2021 Bibliography & Textual Editing Roundtable
   

• The Screenplay as Material Text, webinar for the Bibliographical Society of America. Now available as a video recording on YouTube.
   

• "Modern Sales Catalogs" and "Office Practices" in Information: A Historical Companion, eds. Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton. Princeton University Press (2021)
   

• (Postponed) City Readers: Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library, with Barbara Bieck
  Library Circulation Histories Workshop, Ball State University, 2020
   

• The Celluloid Paper Trail: Seminar for ABAA Southern California Chapter Members at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library
  Featured Panelist, October 26, 2019
   

• "Materiality, Portability, and the Making of the Whole Earth Catalogue"
  SHARP 2019: Indigeneity, Nationhood, and Migrations of the Book
   

• Letter to the Editor re: Sam Knight's "Hidden Traces"
  The New Yorker, December 17, 2018
   

• "Printing the Screenplay in Hollywood & Beyond" in Printing History (New Series no. 24, Summer 2018)
   

• "A Peek at Famous Readers' Borrowing Records at a Private Library in New York"
  Atlas Obscura, February 5, 2018
   

• [Review] The Whole Earth Field Guide (MIT Press, 2016)
  SHARP News, 1 January 2018
   

• "The Small Script Copying Service that Powered NYC Entertainment for Decades"
  Atlas Obscura, October 11, 2017
   

• "The New York Antiquarian Book Fair Enters the 21st Century At Last"
  LitHub, March 11,  2017
   

• City Readers at the New York Society Library
  Workshop at Rare Book School, 27 July 2017
   

• Digital Approaches to Library History: The City Readers Project at the New York Society Library
  The Community Libraries Network Conference, 2014
   

• Contributions to JHI Blog as Contributing or Managing Editor, 2015-2017. These are the best of them:

  • ​Artists and Craftswomen: Printing Women at the New York Public Library

  • Breadcrumbs in the Library (on Mai-Mai Sze and NYC bookshops)

  • Mai-Mai Sze and the I Ching

  • Mai-Mai Sze and Irene Sharaff in Public and in Private

  • Personal Reasons: On Mai-Mai Sze’s Motivations for Reading and Annotating​

  • Hippie Bibliography

  • The Revival of Harper's Weekly, 1974-1976
     

• Contributions to the New York Society Library's Blog & Newsletter as Special Collections Librarian. These are the best of them:

  • Riots and Readers in Melville's New York Society Library​

  • New York Needs a History of Reading (announcing the launch of the City Readers digital humanities research portal)
     

• “Illustration, Ornament, and Printing Processes in Joseph Boillot’s Nouveaux Pourtraitz et Figures des Termes pour user en l’Architecture (1592)”
  The Columbia Book History Colloquium, March 22, 2011