Program book

Whether it's a digest-sized saddle-stapled affair printed on a mimeograph, or a hardbound four-color offset production on glossy paper with a color dust-jacket, the vast majority of conventions give their members a program book.

In the 1940s through 1970s, the program book usually contained everything the member needed -- location and hours of art show, hucksters room, consuite; maps of the facilities; information on nearby restaurants, bookstores, and liquor stores; the programming schedule; guest biographies; and messages from the concom (often specifically from the chair). It also often included advertisements for books and for other conventions (including future years of the current convention).

Later, larger, and more complicated conventions started having fancier and fancier program books, until they became too big and valuable to carry around the convention as a reference. At that point people started breaking the programming information out, both to allow printing the program schedule as late as possible (there are always numerous changes anyway) and so as to make the program schedule easier to carry around. Some conventions took to calling the fancy book a souvenir book, and kept program book for what was left. Some have gone to a three-way split, with a special publicationg containing only the programming schedule. Some smaller conventions publish a programming grid that shows the time, room, and title of program items, but not the longer descriptions; for program-heavy conventions this kind of grid can't be just a few sheets of paper, though.