About the OBC

The Ottawa Book Collectors was founded in 1980. The OBC is a forum in which book lovers come together to share their enthusiasm for book-related matters. The club's activities principally take the form of monthly meetings, held between September ande June, which feature presentations by members and invited guests. Tours to exhibitions, special collections and biblio-related purlieus occasionally leaven the schedule.

Meeting presentations tend to focus on the physical book--with speakers addressing such topics as publication, binding, illustration, distribution, storage and restoration--ocasionally extending to related ephemera such as maps, pamphlets and postcards. Presentations also frequently deal with book content, with speakers talking about their collections on a particular author, subject or topic or on books intended for a particular audience.

OBC is not a literary society or a reading club, so the emphasis is always on book collecting--methods and procedures, the joys and the sorrows--and on the books themselves.

For all presentations, speakers are encouraged to bring books and/or related ephemera to illustrate their talks, and to circulate them among the audience. Invariably members are ready to jump in with questions and observations. A perennially favourite is the annual post-holiday roundtable in which members discuss their latest finds!

OBC members have a wide range of collecting interests, including (but by no means limited to): bibliograpny, bindings & design, books on books, Canadiana, children's books, limited editions & signed/association copies, local interest, single titles in various editions, "small" books, specific authors, and books on such specialized topics as agriculture, the Adirondacks, biography, Elizabethan England, the Iroquois, poetry, travel, and US presidents.