There has been a changing of the guard at the Antiquarian Book School Foundation (ABSF). Lorne Bair has been elected the new President. Bair has been a bookseller since the 1990s, specializing in American radical movements and social movements. He takes over from Rob Rulon-Miller, who had served in that position since 2007.
The ABSF, founded in 2007, is a non-profit devoted to promoting education in the antiquarian and rare book field. Its major activity is promoting the Colorado Antiquarian Book School (CABS). CABS has been operating seminars for booksellers, librarians, and others for almost 50 years. Around 3,000 students have been educated in their seminars over the years. The reaction to these seminars has been overwhelmingly positive in comments I have heard. They also promote scholarships for those who need the knowledge their instructors offer but do not have the means to attend.
CABS started at the University of Denver, moved to other locations in Colorado, and since 2021, has been located in Minnesota at St. Olaf College in Northfield. Minnesota is the home of the ABSF, which explains the oddity of the Colorado Antiquarian Book School being located in Minnesota. The school had been known by the CABS name so long that it had to be retained. The school is now called CABS-Minnesota.
The details of new happenings at the Antiquariann Book School Foundation are best described by the ABSF itself, so the following is their complete news release concerning the foundation and the CABS seminars:
CABS-Minnesota (Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, established 1978) and ABSF
(Antiquarian Book School Foundation, established 2007) jointly announce 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 (ABAA), 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 CABSMinnesota
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, Rulon-Miller commented:
“I'm most proud of those friends and colleagues who have made CABS what it is. 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 ten or twelve 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.”
Rulon-Miller commended Bair on his new appointment: “Lorne has already brought big
changes to the program. . . . Lorne 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.”
So what’s next for the foundation? Bair says that he has “a number of aspirations for CABS
and the Foundation going forward.” In the works is a plan to expand programming to
include “a live, on-line component.” Bair remarked that the foundation is also exploring the
possibility of hosting shorter, more affordable one- or two-day events in various locations
throughout the US. “But our most urgent task in the near-term is to grow the Foundation’s
endowment,” he emphasized, “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.”
For more information about the CABS-Minnesota program and ABSF, visit
