Lorne Bair Named as New President of the Board of Antiquarian Book School Foundation

Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar and the Antiquarian Book School Foundation have announced that Lorne Bair has been elected as the new President of the Board of ABSF.

ABSF funds and offers direction to CABS-Minnesota which hosts an annual week-long international seminar that teaches new booksellers how to  organize and operate their business and become successful members of the antiquarian book trade.

Having previously served as Director of the CABS-Minnesota Seminar, Bair will be taking on the  responsibilities previously held by Rob Rulon-Miller, who has been associated with the CABS-Minnesota program and ABSF for more than 22 years. The proprietor of Rulon-Miller Books, established in 1982, Rulon-Miller is a past president of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America as well as a member of the Grolier Club, the American Antiquarian Society, and L’Association Internationale de Bibliophile. 

“Rob Rulon-Miller has been the heart and soul of CABS and the Antiquarian Book School Foundation since well before I became involved,” said Bair of his predecessor. “He’s been a truly visionary leader, steering the Foundation through some 
very hard times to a position of real stability and strength today. It’s hard for me to imagine how I’ll fill those shoes.”

During his tenure, Rulon-Miller was able to secure, with the help of his fellow officers and colleagues on the board, a $1 million endowment for ABSF, the largest single donation ever made to the foundation. With Bair and other key members of the board and CABS-Minnesota team, he initiated the CABS-Minnesota Diverse Voices Fellowship–the first opportunity of its kind for antiquarian booksellers. Reflecting on his past service to the CABS-Minnesota program and its foundation.

“I'm most proud of those friends and colleagues who have made CABS what it is," said Rulon-Miller. "This has been a unified effort from the get-go and we'd never be where we are without the collective vision and hard work of the faculty and board. I remember maybe 10 or 12 years ago being at a New York Book Fair and noticing CABS alums who were seemingly everywhere. I remember doing a count of them and I came up with something like 40 or 50 CABS students who were either working for ABAA dealers, were ABAA dealers themselves, or were just shopping the fair. In that moment I knew we were making a difference.”

“Lorne has already brought big changes to the program. He is a big spirit who exudes professionalism and competency, and he will continue to bring stability and vision in the future.”

Bair, a former board member of the ABAA, has been a bookseller since the mid-1990s and has been a mainstay of CABS-Minnesota since 2010. “I’m proud and very fortunate to be working with a Board that’s packed with talent, energy, and smarts,” he said. “These are folks who not only have an intimate association with the antiquarian book trade, they’re also deeply committed to the seminar’s core missions of education, outreach, and community-building. They’re such great 
spokespeople for what we do. I feel like we’re really well situated to expand the universe of antiquarian bookselling, to take the message of how cool and important what we do as booksellers is, to a younger, more diverse audience.”

Bair says that he has plans for CABS and the Foundation going forward, including expanded programming to include a live on-line component, as well as hosting shorter and more affordable events in various locations throughout the US. 

“But our most urgent task in the near-term is to grow the Foundation’s endowment,” he said, “to ensure the continuing health not only of the Seminar, but also of our hugely important Diverse Voices Fellowship, which is the only program of its kind focused specifically on the antiquarian book trade.”