The eighth annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) will take place 3-8 July 2000 at a modern and attractive conference centre in the heart of Mainz and in the shade of its impressive one thousand-year-old Romanesque cathedral. SHARP 2000 is being held under the auspices of the Gutenberg Institute for the History of the Book at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.

In honour of Johannes Gutenberg, whose 600th birthday will be celebrated by his hometown in both popular and academic activities throughout the year, we hope to organize an interesting and rich programme of panels. This programme will reflect the full scope of the history of the book as it has developed between Gutenberg`s starting of the first media revolution in the 15th century and the arrival of the second media revolution at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century.

We invite the submission of proposals for papers on all subjects within the area of Book History. It is a tradition of SHARP that its conferences are broad in subject and theme and good papers will be accepted on any aspect of the discipline. In addition, we hope to feature the following three themes:

* Cultural heritage of early movable metal-type printing in Asia
* Development, spread, and impact of letterpress printing in early modern Europe
* New media today, e.g. electronic publishing, the impact of IT on libraries and library systems

Proposals for 20 minute talks, submitted by mail, fax or e-mail, should not exceed half a page per paper. If you can submit an electronic version of your proposal we would be particularly grateful as this will help us to get a full list of accepted proposals onto the Web as soon as possible. We would particularly like to encourage research students to participate in our programme. We also welcome suggestions for organized sessions. Session submissions should include the session title, paper titles, and abstracts for consideration by the programme committee. The conference will be mainly in English but papers in German will be acceptable.

Postgraduate students wishing to apply for a SHARP travel grant should make that clear on their submissions. Similarly, independent scholars (that is, scholars without an institution who might fund their travel) wishing to apply for a SHARP Independent Scholar Travel Grant should also make this clear on their submissions and make a case (no more than half a page) for an award. In 2000 the Independent Travel Grants will be available only to those living in continents other than Europe.

Papers to be considered for presentation should be submitted by 31 October 1999 for the attention of:

Prof. Dr. Stephan Fussel, Director
Gutenberg Institute for the History of the Book
Johannes Gutenberg-Universitdt Mainz
D-55099 Mainz
Germany
FAX 00 39 (61 31) 39 54 87
E-mail sharp@uni-mainz.de