Guild of Book Workers awards

Some time ago I received an email asking me to vote for somone for an achievement award. For a minute I thought the world itself had turned into the People's Choice Awards.  Not a pretty sight.

It made me appreciate how the Guild of Bookworkers decides on their two awards: The Laura Young Award, for service to the Guild, and the Lifetime Achievement Award for service to the field.

The Guild appoints three members who are established in their fields.  A book artist, a binder and a conservator ideally, though often the fields overlap a bit.  Then they put out the call for nominations, gather them and decide amongst the three of them.

No campaigning, no organizing, nothing.  The decision is made without any influence, the comittee is left alone to decide.

If you look at who has received the awards you'll see how well they've done over the years.  You can see here:  https://guildofbookworkers.org/awards

This year Peter Verheyen is being given the Lifetime Achievement Award and Catherine Burkhard is receiving the Laura Young Award.  Perfect choices, both of them.

Makes one kind of proud of the organization, I'd say.