Announcing the Election Slate for 2025
At the upcoming BSA Annual Meeting on 24 January 2025 the Society will announce the election of a new slate of members to the Council. Active members will be invited to vote electronically starting 13 January 2025, with voting closing on 23 January 2025 at 11:45pm ET. BSA members will receive information by email with instructions for electronic voting.
In accordance with the Society’s by-laws and following published guidance for diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Nominating Committee assembles and presents a full slate of nominees to the membership for an electronic vote. Assembling a full slate for a vote – rather than presenting individual candidates in a competitive election, as some other organizations do – affords us the opportunity to assemble a group that will carry out the mission and reflect the values of BSA, as well as work toward the goals set by the Council in the Equity Action Plan. The Nominating Committee recognizes that other models may better serve the BSA in meeting its EAP goals in the future, and in the coming years the Council has committed to a full by-laws review and revision to ensure that the Society’s governance model aligns with its values.
This year the Nominating Committee was chaired by Caroline Duroselle-Melish. Heather Cole, Adam Hooks, Leslie A. Morris, and Nick Wilding served with her. Erin McGuirl, Kinohi Nishikawa, Megan Peiser, and Patrick Olson also served ex officio in an advisory capacity. Candidates were carefully considered after the placement of an open call for nominees in September of this year.
In August, Kinohi Nishikawa appointed Karin Wulf as Chair of the Publications Committee. The appointment was made in accordance with BSA’s bylaws after Derrick Spires had resigned from this position in June. Karin Wulf appears on the slate as a nominee for a duly elected full term as Chair of the Publication Committee.
The Nominating Committee and Kinohi Nishikawa are proud to present the Slate of Officers and members of the Council Class of 2028.
Douglas Nelson, Nelson Rare Books, Council Class of 2028 ↑
Douglas Nelson is a rare bookseller at Nelson Rare Books, Haddonfield, New Jersey, where he specializes in 18th and 19th century British literature, Gothic Revival, street literature, chapbooks, and private press books, focusing on the unpopular, the obscure, and the forgotten. He is also a partner at a boutique business and technology law firm. Among other bookish organizations, he is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) and the Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA). Douglas is a former President of IOBA and currently serves on the BSA Liaison Committee, acting as the liaison between IOBA and the BSA. He has been a BSA member since 2019 and hopes to use his service on the Council to help build awareness and increase membership in the BSA among rare booksellers.
Heather O’Donnell, Honey & Wax Booksellers, Council Class of 2028 ↑
Heather O’Donnell has worked in the rare book trade for over twenty years. In 2011, she founded Honey & Wax Booksellers in Brooklyn, specializing in literature, design, and print history. A former member of the ABAA Board of Governors, O’Donnell is committed to building connections across the antiquarian book world through her ongoing work with the ABAA Mentorship Program, CABS-Minnesota, Rare Book School, the Yale Library Trustees, and the BSA. For the past eight years, she and BSA council member Rebecca Romney have awarded the annual Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize for young women book collectors. She is eager to advance BSA efforts to promote a more expansive, dynamic, and inclusive understanding of bibliography across fields.
Rebecca Romney, Type Punch Matrix, Council Class of 2028 ↑
Rebecca Romney co-founded the rare book company Type Punch Matrix in 2019 after over a decade in the trade. She is the author of Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History (HarperCollins; with JP Romney) and The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in Rare Books, 1769-1999. Her current book (forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in 2025) is Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, chronicling her efforts to build a book collection of Austen’s favorite women writers. Since 2011 she has appeared as the rare book specialist on the History Channel’s show Pawn Stars; she was also featured in the documentary The Booksellers. Rebecca is the co-founder of the Honey & Wax Prize, on the board of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), and on the board and faculty of the Antiquarian Book Seminars. She is a member of the Grolier Club, the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie (AIB), and the American Antiquarian Society (AAS).
Karin Wulf, John Carter Brown Library, Council Class of 2028 ↑
Karin Wulf is the Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian at the John Carter Brown Library and Professor of History at Brown University. A historian of “Vast Early America,” from 2013 to 2021 she was the Executive Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture and Professor of History at William & Mary. Wulf earned her PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University. She writes for public and academic audiences about early American history, the worlds of scholarship and scholarly publishing, archives and special collections. The author or editor of prize-winning scholarship on gender, family, and politics, her latest book is Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America (Oxford University Press, 2025). She has served on a variety of boards, including ORCID and Jamestown-Yorktown, and, by appointment of Governor Ralph Northam, the Virginia 250 commission; she was the academic co-director for the Georgian Papers Programme and is a co-founder of Women Also Know History.