Resources

Libraries, Museums, Games, and Online Exhibits

• 3D Imaging of an Italian Stationery Binding (Harvard Preservation Services Blog)
  For the past 10 years, a team of conservators and conservation technicians at the Weissman Preservation Center have been treating Italian stationery bindings from Baker Library at Harvard Business School. These books are part of the Business Records of the Barberini and Colonna Families, 1630-1818. Visit their 3D Imaging here.
   

• Americana: Virtual Exhibitions at the John Carter Brown Library, Providence RI
  Exhibitions are curated, interpreted and presented as a visual and narrative experience; included here are some legacy exhibits created by JCB staff over many decades.
  When the John Carter Brown Library was opened in 1904, the Reading Room included custom-made book displays, indicating that exhibitions were always part of the library's mission. Over the years, the JCB has curated over 200 exhibitions. From 2023, all JCB exhibits have a robust digital presence on Americana.

   

• Archbook
  Hosted by the University of Toronto, ArchBook is an open-access, peer-reviewed collection of illustrated essays about specific design features in the history of the book.
   
• Artists' Books Collection at the V&A
  Collection of books from the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of the world's foremost museums for art and design.
   
• Beaverpress Printshop, MIT, Cambridge MA
  The Beaver Press Print Shop was founded at MIT in Spring 2016. It features a Gutenberg-facsimile wooden letterpress designed by former MIT Hobby Shop Director and alumnus Ken Stone '72, and built by MIT students in the Spring 2016 term. It offers workshops and lectures.
   
• Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston
  The first exhibition to showcase highlights of illuminated manuscripts in the Boston area. Regular updates.
   
• Bibliography of Papers Delivered at SHARP conferences since 1993
  A bibliography of papers delivered at SHARP conferences since 1993, by James Kelly of the University of Massachusetts
   
• Bibliotheca Palatina: Collection of 3,000 medieval manuscripts now online
  One of the consequences of the Thirty Years' War was that the most important collection of books in the 17th century Holy Roman Empire, the Bibliotheca Palatina, was divided between two principal locations: Heidelberg and the Vatican. Since 2001, Heidelberg University Library has been working on several projects that aim to digitize parts of this great collection, the final goal being a complete virtual reconstruction of the 'mother of all libraries'.
   
• Book History Online
  New Resource at Harvard University Library:
  Book History Online (BHO) is the international bibliography in the field of book and library history. It provides a comprehensive survey of all scholarly publications written from a historical perspective. Included are monographs, articles and reviews dealing with the history of the printed book, its arts, crafts, techniques and equipment, its economic, social and cultural environment, as well as its production, distribution, preservation and description. In particular, BHO contains information on topics such as papermaking, bookbinding, book illustration, type design, typefounding, bibliophily, book collecting, libraries and individuals.
  
  Features
  - Access to over 85,000 records
  - Spanning four decades of scholarly publications
  - Entries ordered by subject, country or period
  - Search by title, author, keyword, language and more
  - Personal tools include save searches, search alerts, and exporting tools
  - Updated quarterly
  
  Text from BHO website: http://www.brill.com/publications/online-resources/book-history-online
   
• Bookbindings at the National Library of Sweden (Flickr)
   
• Bow and Arrow Letterpress at Harvard
  The letterpress is open to anyone with a current Harvard affiliation. Their website lists links for courses and exploration dates.
   

• "But Is It A Book? A Choose-able Path Exhibition"
  The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago.
  If you think you know all the attributes that make a book a book, turn back to the gallery door and conclude your visit to this exhibition.
   

• Cappelli online
  All that you could wish for and more in the way of deciphering Latin abbreviations in medieval manuscripts
   

• Codex Conquest
  The Game of Book History teaches students to recognize the most important printed books of Western civilization by their nation, century, genre, and current monetary value. Along the way, students learn world history and the scenarios that influence the shape of collections at institutions. http://codexconquest.lib.uiowa.edu/
   
• Coptica at Harvard
  Coptica at Harvard offers a gateway to a rich array of historical materials for the study of Coptic history, theology, and literature. The platform furnishes primary sources from late antiquity through the modern day, engaging adjacent fields such as Byzantine, Islamic, and Middle Eastern studies.
   
• Robert Darnton: The world of books on the eve of the French Revolution
   
• Digital Humanities Café
  News and updates for the Department of English Thinking with Technology Colloquium and all interested in digital humanities developments, projects and conversations.
   
• Early Modern OCR Project (eMOP)
  The Early Modern OCR Project is an effort, on the one hand, to make access to texts more transparent and, on the other, to preserve a literary cultural heritage. The printing process in the hand-press period (roughly 1475-1800), while systematized to a certain extent, nonetheless produced texts with fluctuating baselines, mixed fonts, and varied concentrations of ink (among many other variables). Combining these factors with the poor quality of the images in which many of these books have been preserved (in EEBO and, to a lesser extent, ECCO), creates a problem for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software that is trying to translate the images of these pages into archiveable, mineable texts. By using innovative applications of OCR technology and crowd-sourced corrections, eMOP will solve this OCR problem. (Text from the eMOP website)
   
• European Jesuit Libraries Provenance Project
  This is the largest census of books owned by European Jesuit institutions prior to the suppression. It includes both texts currently held in libraries and information from pre-1773 inventories, and is an ongoing project created by Kathleen Comerford (Georgia Southern University).
   
• Exhibit: HIST 75H: A Masterclass on Houghton Library
  Harvard's Faculty celebrate Houghton's 75's birthday in 2017. The  podcasts of their presentations on Houghton treasures are available in this permanent online exhibit. 
   
• Exhibit: Founding 56 explores the history of the Boston Congregational Library & Archives’ original collection and how its ideas have shaped understandings of the Congregational story over the past 170 years.
   
• French Playing Cards, 1650-1850
  This site explores the history of French playing cards in this period as an unusual and insightful source for the history of the Old Regime, the French Revolution, and early Nineteenth-Century France.
   
• French Renaissance Paleography
  The Newberry Library, Chicago: The handwriting of earlier times is often very beautiful, but sometimes difficult to read. This paleography website presents French manuscripts written between 1300 and 1700, with tools for deciphering them and learning about their social, cultural, and institutional settings.
   
• Footprints
  Columbia's research project website "Footprints" traces the history and movement of Jewish books since the inception of print
   
• Houghton Library Blog
  Houghton Library is the primary repository for Harvard’s rare books and manuscripts.
   
• Houghton Online Exhibitions
   
• Image Compare
  Oxford University hosted open access tool for the comparison of images (for example book pages of different editions)
   
• Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
  IATH is a research unit of the University of Virginia established  in 1992. Their goal is to explore and develop information technology as a tool for scholarly humanities research.
   
• Institute for the Future of the Book
  We're a small think-and-do tank investigating the evolution of intellectual discourse as it shifts from printed pages to networked screens.
   
• Le livre scientifique. Définition et émergence d'un genre (1450-1850)
  French project exploring the early history of scientific books.
   
• Letterform Archive
  A nonprofit center for inspiration, education, publishing, and community around letter design. They have in-person and online collections and exhibition.
   
• Linotype Printing Video Series
  The Museum of Printing about objects of their collections and their use
   
• Manuscript Hunters
  German project dedicated to manuscript hunting and the great manuscript hunters throughout history.
   
• Museum of Printing, Haverhill MA
  The Museum of Printing has a large collection of Linotype and other printing machines of the 19th and 20th centuries. They offer lectures and courses.
   
• Museum of Writing
  The Museum of Writing is focused on matters central to the historical and theoretical understanding of writing from its invention to the present.
   
• Museum Plantin-Moretus woodblock collection is now live! You can browse and search through the collection.
   
• NEH 'Ajamī  project: ʿAjamī Literature and the Expansion of Literacy and Islam: The Case of West Africa (Boston University)
   
• Science & the Artists' Book
  Science and the Artist's Book is an exhibition which explores links between scientific and artistic creativity through the book format.
   
• SHARP Digital Projects showcase from the July 2013 conference
   
• Slash: Paper Under The Knife
  Online version of an exhibition that ran from 10/7/2009 - 4/4/2010 at the Museum of Arts and Design (NY).
   
• Smithsonian Open Access Database of more than 2.8 million objects
  Among them more than 5000 books, and more than 300 sample books!
   

• St. Bride Library
  The St. Bride Library collections cover printing and related subjects: paper and binding, graphic design and typography, typefaces and calligraphy, illustration and printmaking, publishing and book-selling and the social and economic aspects of the printing, book, newspaper and magazine trades.

• The Conveyor
  The official blog of Special Collections at the Bodleian Libraries.
   
• The Making of the Pictorial Webster's Dictionary
  This wonderful video documents the making of this recent dictionary starting from original engravings that were used to produce a late 19th-century edition of Webster's Dictionary
   
• Thomas Gray (1716-1771), An Anniversary Exhibition
  The exhibition focusses on three defining themes in Gray’s life and reputation: his relationship with Cambridge (Britain) and the effect on him and on his work of the friends and enemies he made at the University; his activity as a reader, in particular as a user of the libraries of his two Colleges; and the publishing phenomenon of the ‘Elegy’, his most significant poem and one steeped in his appreciation and emulation of classical tradition, as well as his sense of place and of English history and the history of English poetry.
   
• Vesalius Census (Dániel Margócsy, et al.)
   
• Virginia Fox Stern Center for the History of the Book in the Renaissance
  Reflecting the scholarly breadth of Dr. Virginia Fox Stern’s research and publications, the core of the Stern Center’s ongoing mission is the promotion of interdisciplinary scholarship rooted in the Sheridan Libraries’ rich premodern and early modern collections of rare books and manuscripts at Johns Hopkins University.
   

Digital Scholarship

• https://dssg.fas.harvard.edu/about/contact/mailing-list/
  Harvard's Digital Scholarship Support Group
   
• https://dsg.neu.edu/nudigital/
  NEU's Digital Scholarship Group, which encompasses the work at the Center for Maps, Texts, and Networks and other digital initiatives
   
• http://bostondh.org/
  Boston DH Consortium
• digitalhumanities.mit.edu
  DH at MIT: new umbrella-group; they don't seem to have a list, but may be reached at digitalhumanities-admin@mit.edu.

• https://digitalhumanitiesddp.com/
  The digital documentation practice (Laura Morreale), guide to archiving your digital humanities project

   

Online Talks, Films and Celebrations in Book History

• Cold Storage
  Jeffrey Schnapp's video about the Harvard Depository.
   
• Early Modern Book Trade
  Angela Nuovo on early modern book trade, focusing mainly on book prices and Venetian privileges.
   
• Frankenreads
  An international celebration of the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for Halloween 2018.
   
• Roger Chartier: "Global Cervantes", a talk organized by The Mahindra Humanities Center Seminar in Book History and the Department of Music, Harvard, with collaboration of the Instituto Cervantes, Harvard.
   
• Tedx talk by Michael Suarez
  The video linked below will be of interest to several members of this list. In his Tedx talk, "Glorious Bookishness: Learning Anew in the Material World," Rare Book School director Michael Suarez discusses wonder and the transformative power of learning from material objects.  Enjoy, and feel free to share widely!

Blogs, Journals, Blog entries, and Journal articles

• http://www.ofpilcrows.com/blog/2019/3/31/a-working-list-of-questions

Online resource for using rare book rooms and special collections. It seems handy for teaching.

• http://www.textmanuscripts.com/blog/entry/6_17_meet_me_at_the_fair

"Meet me at the Fair" - about a woven Book of Hours featured at the Paris Exposition of 1889

• http://www.textmanuscripts.com/blog/

Medieval texts blog--discussion of makings and meanings

•  https://bookhistorynetwork.wordpress.com/ 

A book history blog focused on the German area

• The Census 

The Yale Program in the History of the Book has launched a blog to showcase current book historical and bibliographical research at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. New entries will be posted every second Monday, unless otherwise noted.

• Rare Book of the Month

The Middle Temple Library in London presents every month the "rare book of the month", a very informative and beautiful exhibition!

• https://www.masshist.org/object-of-the-month

Massachusetts Historical Society: Object of the Month
 

• Uppercase Magazine <https://uppercasemagazine.com/>

• Brian Dettmer

  Contemporary artist: Reconstructed media -- books, maps, albums, tapes

• Celebrity Phonebook Carvings

  Amazing photos of celebrities carved into phone books.

• Chena River Marblers

• DIY First Folio at Folger Library

• Firefly Letterpress

  A local commercial hand press located in Allston, MA.

• Going West

  Maurice Gee - A material book narrative

  Printing Office of Edes and Gill

  Historic Printing Office at The Old North Church, Boston: A colonial printing experience.

• The Cinematic Possibilities of Pop-up Books

  Should books have trailers and previews just as films?  Matthew Battles (Hilobrow) explains.

• Third and Elm Press

  Newport, RI handpress specializing in limited edition books, note paper, and cards.

• Wells Center for Book Arts

  Based in Aurora, NY, the Wells Center offers courses in typecasting and papermaking, in addition to sponsoring multiple other programs in the art of the book.

University Workgroups

• Book Histories & Literacies at Minnesota

  Presenting research undertaken by students and faculty at the University of Minnesota.

• Book History and Print Culture at the University of Toronto

  Sponsored by the Department of English and the Faculty of Information in conjunction with Massey College, BHPC is an interdisciplinary graduate program in which the resources of the University of Toronto are brought to bear on multiple aspects of the creation, transmission, and reception of the written word.

• Yale Program in the History of the Book

  The Yale Program in the History of the Book brings together scholars across disciplines to explore the materiality of the written word over time and across cultures.  A collaboration between Yale’s Department of English and Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

• University of Iowa Center for the Book

  A distinctive degree-granting program that integrates training in book arts practice and technique with research into the history and culture of books.

• Cultures of Communication: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium on the Study of the Book

  This colloquium brings together scholars from different departments in Stony Brook's College of Arts and Sciences whose work engages aspects of the study of the book. In recent years the study of the book has promoted collaboration between researchers from the fields of intellectual and cultural history, comparative literature, communication theory and network analysis, material studies, source studies and stemmatics, epistemology, and the sociology of knowledge. The book as medium and message—to gloss Marshall McLuhan's memorable formulation—invites a convergence of scholarship from the humanities, social sciences, and media and technology.

• HoBO : History of the Book @ Oxford

  History of the Book events and resources at Oxford and throughout the UK.

• Libri: the history and art of the book

  Libri is the Pioneer Valley forum for announcements and discussion involving the history and art of the book: all technologies of the word, from the origins of writing to the digital age. Events listings pertain generally but not exclusively to Massachusetts and the greater northeast. 

• The Center for the Study of Books and Media at Princeton

  Established at Princeton on 2002, the Center promotes research and teaching in book history through workshops, colloquia, and special lectures.

• The Centre for the History of the Book @ University of Edinburgh

  Established in 1995, the University of Edinburgh's Center for the History of the Book is home to advanced research on all aspects of the material culture of texts.

• The Material Texts Network at Birkbeck College, University of London

  Network for researchers at the University of London, Birkbeck, on material texts, including information for future projects and grant bids.

   

Regional and Interregional Societies

• Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography: Junior Fellows Program Informational Session (session taped in November 2021)

• Book History Research Network

  The Book History Research Network was established in 1998 by the former Book Trade History Group in co-operation with the Institute for English Studies at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London.

• SHARP (Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing)

  Founded in 1991, SHARP is the premier international scholarly society for the study of the book.

• Society for Textual Scholarship

  an international organization of scholars working in textual studies, editing and editorial theory, electronic textualities, and issues of textual culture across a wide variety of disciplines. The Society welcomes all those whose work explores the ideological structures and material processes that shape the transmission, reception, production, and interpretation of texts.

• The Bibliographical Society of America
• The Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) is the oldest scholarly society in North America dedicated to the study of books and manuscripts as physical objects. 

• The Boston Athenaeum

  Boston's Athenaeum is a library that goes back to 1807 and is a rich source for the history of books and of publication.

• Massachusetts Center for the Book
  ...nonprofit dedicated to inspiring a love of reading, from literacy, open access to book, to book awards.

• The New England Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers

  The Guild of Book Workers is a national organization of bookbinders, book artists, calligraphers, paper makers, printers and marblers.

• The Ticknor Society

  Based in Cambridge, the Ticknor Society is an organization of book collectors, booksellers, librarians, historians, archivists, conservators, printers, publishers, writers, and all lovers and readers of books. We are dedicated to the enjoyment, promotion, and support of books and book culture.

• The Book Studies Initiative at Wellesley College

  “Book Studies” is an umbrella term for the study of the artifact, history, impact, and future of the book across disciplines. It encompasses the history of the book, both as a vessel for the transmission of text and image and as evidence of material culture.  In its broadest sense, book studies can be thought of as the evolution of written communication, of which the “book” is only one part.  It is historic, contemporary, and interdisciplinary—offering a framework to examine the social and political forces at work on the dissemination and reception of written, printed, and digital texts.

  Book studies endeavors to incorporate many features of the liberal arts experience: analytic thinking, collaboration, creative thinking, experiential learning, problem solving, and visual literacy. Please follow the link above to learn more about Wellesley College's Book Studies Initiative and get involved.

  (Text from the Wellesley College website)

Libraries, Museums and Online Exhibits

• Archbook

  Hosted by the University of Toronto, ArchBook is an open-access, peer-reviewed collection of illustrated essays about specific design features in the history of the book.

Lecture Series

• Beinecke Lectures in the History of the Book Series

  In manuscript and print, as cultural and technological artifact, the book has provoked discussion from the early modern period through the present. This series will further our historical understanding of the book as a cultural object, a discussion made all the more relevant as text becomes an increasingly electronic medium.

• Book History Seminar series at the Mahindra Humanities Center

  Ongoing seminar series at the Mahindra Humanities Center (Harvard) on the production, circulation, and reception of texts.

• Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies

  Lectures and courses in Book History, and more.

Courses and Schools

• Boston Paper Collective

  A local group that provides a studio for paper artists in Charlestown. Join them for their many workshops and open vat nights! 

• Bow & Arrow Press

  Located in the underground of Harvard's Adams House, Bow & Arrow Press offers lessons in the use of hand presses.

• Editorial Institute at Boston University

  The Editorial Institute at Boston University was formed with the conviction that the textually sound, contextually annotated edition is central to the life of many disciplines.

• Garage Annex School for Book Arts

  Located in Easthampton, MA, the Garage Annex School holds many workshops related to book making and binding.

   

• Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography: Junior Fellows Program Informational Session (session taped in November 2021)
   
• North Bennet Street School

  Established in 1986, the North Bennet Street School offers a two-year program in bookbinding. The first year is spent learning the fundamentals of bookbinding techniques, including conservation and repair. The second year focuses on leather bindings, medieval to modern; advanced paper treatments are also considered.

• Virginia Rare Book School

  The Virigina Rare Book School (RBS) provides continuing-education opportunities for students from all disciplines and levels to study the history of written, printed, and born digital materials with leading scholars and professionals in the field.

  The RBS website also provides convenient listings of other rare book programs around the world: http://www.rarebookschool.org/related/

• Katharine F. Pantzer Jr. Fellowship in Descriptive Bibliography

  This fellowship is available to assist scholarly research in descriptive bibliography at Houghton Library and carries a stipend of $3,600 per month, up to twelve months (maximum $43,200) - this information is for year 2016 - award amounts will vary year to year.  

  This fellowship is available to assist scholarly research in descriptive bibliography at Houghton Library. Houghton Library is the principal rare book and manuscript library of Harvard College. The Library's holdings are particularly strong in the following areas: European, English, American, and South American literature, including the country's pre-eminent collection of American literary manuscripts; philosophy; religion; history of science; music; printing and graphic arts; dance; and theatre. Fellows will also have access to collections in Widener Library as well as to other libraries at the University.

  Preference is given to scholars whose research is closely based on materials in Houghton collections, especially when those materials are unique; fellowships are normally not granted to scholars who live within commuting distance of the library. Fellows are expected to be in residence at Houghton Library for the duration of the fellowship.

• Watts History of the Book Program, Brown University

  The Charles H. Watts Program in the History and Culture of the Book, based at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, runs a variety of courses, workshops, lectures, and activities for undergraduates studying the history of the book. The program has especially strong resources in book arts, thanks to a partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design.

  The program's Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/WattsJCB

Funding and Job Opportunities

• Maass Grant from the Manuscript Society

  Offered by the Manuscript Society, Maass grants offer up to $5,000 for doctoral candidates doing substantial research in manuscript sources.

• Max Planck Institute Postdoctoral Fellowships
   
• Postdoctoral Fellowship in Book History and Digital Humanities

  The Interacting with Print Research Group at McGill University and the University of Montreal is seeking a postdoctoral fellow with interests in developing digital humanities methodologies for studying the print culture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. Candidates may specialize in history, art history, literature or a related discipline, and should have their doctorate in hand by the start date.

• RBS-Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography

  A three-year fellowship program that provides focused training and mentorship for doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty members in the humanities. Fellows will be provided with the following: travel and research stipends 1_ to attend three week-long courses over the course of three years at the Virginia Rare Book School; 2) to attend seminars on critical bibliography; 3) to attend collaborative field trips and bibliographical field schools.

• The Council on Library and Information Resources
  The CLIR offers several grants for doctoral, postdoctoral, and professional research on topics overlapping closely with the field of book history.

Degree Programs

• Masters Program in Book and Digital Media Studies at Leiden

  A one-year Masters degree dedicated to the study of the history of textual communication from its analog to digital forms.

• MSc in Material Cultures and the History of the Book at Edinburgh

  This one-year program (two semesters) at the University of Edinburgh integrates traditional bibliographical training and archival research with theoretical approaches to the study of cultural history and communications.