Inside ZSR
Sam Ellenport, proprietor of the Harcourt Bindery gave me a tour of their shop. Harcourt has been a commercial fine bindery since 1905 in several locations in Boston. They do it all- I saw a little gold tooling work by a NBSS graduate while on tour. more ›
The entrance to NBSS- a craft school which has been teaching for 100 years in Boston’s north end-just 2 doors down from the Old North Church. more ›
A wooden sewing frame was used to sew the signatures of the book onto alum-tawed leather thongs. more ›
A piece of airplane linen was placed over the spine to strengthen it. Small holes were cut out for the sewing stations and leather thongs. more ›
A leather thong is sewn over as a headband at the head and tail of the book. Linen thread is looped around the leather thong in a pattern which produces the headband, more ›
Because vellum is expensive, we made a template of our cover from 10 point board. more ›
Connecting the vellum cover with the text block: the extra length of each thong is threaded through punched holes in the vellum cover. These thongs are then re-threaded inside the cover to secure them in place. This binding style was used during the 14th century, but is also similar to the Nag Hammadi bindings discovered... more ›
Limp Vellum Bookbinding The Limp (meaning the vellum is not stretched over a rigid board) Vellum Bookbinding course began with a discussion of this 14th century binding style. There is almost no adhesive used in this binding, since there is lots of sewing to hold it together. The binding is made up of a group... more ›
On Tuesday, October 23, I journeyed to Boston to attend a workshop held at the venerable North Bennett Street School. The school was originally founded as a trade school in 1885 by The Boston Atheneum. NBSS now has full-time, 2 year programs in furniture, preservation carpentry, jewelry, violin-making, piano technology, locksmithing, and bookbinding. NBSS also... more ›
Carolyn and I presented a poster session titled “Utilizing ILL Deflection to Improve Workflow” on Thursday, October 18. Many fellow librarians stopped by and inquired about the new OCLC ILL deflection feature. As an ILL lender, we receive requests for all types of materials. Popular movies and TV series, such as 24 and Sex and... more ›