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Highlights from the ILAB Symposium 2026

7th October, 2026

The Book Collector team had a very enlightening time at the ILAB Symposium, which was filled with lots of interesting talks and great networking opportunities. The first half of the symposium was held at the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, a fascinating building on Unter den Linden, right in the middle of Berlin and surrounded by museums, libraries and historic buildings.

The symposium highlights included a talk on the discovery of Alexander von Humboldt’s long lost personal Catalog der Bücher, which was donated to the Berlin State Library in 2025 and was on view in the room. As a large proportion of Humboldt’s library was destroyed in a fire at Sotheby’s in 1865, the catalogue has special significance. All the way from Washington DC, Dr Stephanie Stillo, Chief of the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, shared her thoughts on how the role of libraries is evolving and how collaboration between institutions, collectors and the rare book trade can help safeguard our shared documentary heritage.

The first day of the symposium ended with the presentation of the 19th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography. Our particular congratulations go to Alain Riffaud from France for winning the first prize for his Catalogue Molière: 1660–1673. Sadly, he couldn’t attend and sent a poem of thanks instead, which was recited beautifully in both French and English. Second prize winner Manuel Suárez Rivera was able to attend from Mexico to receive his award for La alhaja más preciosa: Historia de la Biblioteca de la Real Universidad de México (1761–1815). It’s worth noting that this year’s ceremony also included special regional awards covering Asian, African and Central & South American authors, and a further prize went to Oleksandr Okhrimenko for the facsimile edition of Apostolus Christinopolitanus 12th Century and his work on the medieval codices of Rus-Ukraine.

The inaugural Berlin Book Fair was also welcomed by locals, and due to it coinciding with the ILAB conference, the ‘who’s who’ of international booksellers were in town to exhibit or visit and therefore a wide range of books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera were on offer. The exhibition of part of Marlene Dietrich’s library was a fantastic addition and gave a very impressive insight into one of the most iconic film stars of the 20th Century’s reading preferences and the writers she counted as personal friends.