All posts by Beth Doyle

Announcements

TRLN Bookbinders: Islamic Binding

The interesting thing about Islamic bindings is that they haven’t changed much. According to Jane Greenfield in “ABC of Bookbinding,” the format was likely learned from binders in Ethiopia. This structure strongly influenced bookbinding in Europe, traveling through Italy and Spain.

Extant bindings are generally made of highly burnished paper text blocks with a simple chain stitch. The covers were made off the book and included a fore edge flap. The case itself was adhered in a tight-back fashion (the spine of the case is glued to the spine of the text block). The endbands are an interesting combination of sewn and woven techniques as described in “Headbands and How to Work Them” by Jane Greenfield and Jenny Hille. The leather-covered boards and flap were decorated, but not the spine. More information can be found on the National Library of Medicine’s Islamic Medical Manuscripts web site.
Our models strayed a little from the extant bindings we looked at from our collections. Mostly due to our desire to keep personal costs down, we used Western paper and book cloth to create our samples. They follow the original structure, and we now understand the bindings a little better than we did before. You can see Jamie’s wonderful models on his Flickr page. Henry’s model is at the top of this post, can see more on Henry’s web site.
What struck me is how influential these bindings were on the progression of binding through Europe. The chain stitching, sewn headbands, the case construction…these were lost and seemingly rediscovered sometime later in the 19th Century A.C.E. What happened? how did this structure migrate through Europe, get lost, and come back without being cited as a major influence in the histories of book binding? We need a better understanding of non-European bookbinding history. Anyone have some good resources for that? they seem to be missing from the canon.
Announcements

TRLN Bookbinders

The Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) Bookbinders is a group of staff members from the conservation labs of UNC, NC State and Duke University libraries that meet monthly to study historic book bindings and recreate them by making binding models. Membership to the group is by invitation only as our space is limited.

We have been meeting for a little over a year, and I’m far behind on reporting on our projects. I’ll be uploading several posts over the next few weeks for your reading enjoyment.

Our first project was to investigate Ethiopic bindings. We have several extant bindings in our Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library so we had a lot to look at.

Dating from the 4th Century C.E. the Ethiopic Binding, also sometimes called Coptic Binding, is the first multi-section binding known to exist. It was commonly used until the Middle Ages, but similar bindings are found through the 19th Century C.E. The text blocks were made of papyrus or parchment, however our models are paper. The boards are sewn directly onto the text block. These books were commonly covered with leather and carried in a leather case called a Mahdar. Many of our models were left uncovered so you can see the sewing structures. An in-depth discussion of the history of these bindings can be found in J.A. Szirmai’s “Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding.”

The single book on left is by Jamie Bradway. Finished models by class participants.

More images from our sessions can be found on Flickr.

Announcements, Digital Production Center

Ten Years, Ten People: Oscar Arias, Digitization Specialist

Oscar Arias has been at Duke University Libraries for eleven years. Six months ago he joined the staff of the Digital Production Center as a Digitization Specialist. The DPC digitizes rare and fragile items to make them available in digital format.

Oscar is usually involved in any of the three main stages of the digitizing process: assessing the collection to develop a digitizing work flow and digitization guide, the actual scanning or digitizing of materials (using a variety of scanners or video digitizing equipment), and the quality control phase.

When asked to describe an interesting project he has worked on, Oscar replied:

One of the most interesting collections I’ve worked with is the collection of papers of Marshall T. Meyer. Dr. Meyer was an American activist Rabbi who worked in Argentina in the 1970’s, during the period of military dictatorship and repression. This period gave way to what came to be known as “La Guerra Sucia,” or the Dirty War, as it came to be known, in which thousands of Argentine citizens were “Desaparecidos,” or disappeared and presumed dead, or incarcerated without trial for suspected opposition to the government.

Rabbi Meyer was an activist and advocate for human rights during this dark period of Argentine history, and he personally advocated for the release of political prisoners. As part of the collection that we had to digitize, there were many original hand-written letters from prisoners and other original documents filled with gut wrenching testimonies of arrests, incarcerations and torture, and the desperate plight of family members of those disappeared or incarcerated.

I remember reading in school in some distant history book about the military dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970’s. But being able to browse and read some of these hand-written, first-hand accounts in Spanish (my native language) was a profoundly different experience. It helped to remember that behind the news headlines of some distant conflict or behind the title of a chapter in a history book, there are real human beings with names and faces and real stories of tragedy during times of war and oppression. I look forward to the time of the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “And they will have to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 4:2)

Note on image: Correspondence to Rabbi Meyers from Deborah Esther Benchoam, a political prisoner who was held in cell 55 of the Villa Devoto women’s prison during the repression. From the RBMSCL Marshall T. Meyer Collection.

Announcements, Preservation Week

We Are Winners!

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Heritage Preservation, the sponsors of May Day 2010, has pulled our name from a hat and awarded us a prize for our May Day blog post. Four winners from all of the participants were randomly drawn by members of the DC 16 firehouse, Heritage Preservation’s local firemen. Very fitting, no?

A list of all the participants finds us in good company. The other winners were Lycoming College’s Snowden Library, the Toy and Minature Museum of Kansas City, and the Balboa Art and Conservation Center.

Our prize is six Rescubes, perfect for those days when you come into work after a long summer holiday weekend only to discover that a water fountain pipe burst sometime at the beginning of that three day weekend, and there are three floors of wet carpeting and a small mold issue to deal with. Not that we would know from personal experience. [It’s all cleaned up now and dehumidifiers and carpet fans are on scene.] Happy Tuesday!

Technology

Preservation Underground Word Cloud




access ago aic alcts alex artifacts avoid best beth blog book box care case center choose clean collections comes comments conditions conservation contents controlled damage days department digital disaster display documents doyle duke dust e-forum enclosures environment family foil food format fragile give handling hands hang home humidity idea information items keep labels library light lot manuscript materials mold national original page paper people ph photographs photos plan plastic pollutants posted preservation production project protect provide pt quality rare read recommend relative resources safe sensitive store sure temperature ten textiles things think tin tips tools university web week work years
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Collaboration

ALCTS e-Forum on Web 2.0 Tools

We are participating in an ALCTS e-forum today called “Using Web 2.0 Tools to Enhance Technical Services Work.” The question is “how can you solve problems within technical services using Web 2.0 tools?”. Anyone have good ideas to share? I’m listing some of the more interesting ones on our Face Book page.

You can sign up for future ALCTS e-forums at this link, you do not need to be an ALCTS member to participate. The forums discussion is via email.

So far, some of the ideas including using social media for outreach and education (my first post to the discussion), using a wiki for your instruction manual, and using blogs for current events, and using instant messaging for large group projects.