Rare Book School Summer 1999

Week One
Monday 12 July - Friday 16 July 1999


11 Introduction to Medieval and Early Renaissance Bookbinding Structures. An explanation of the diversities of European bookbinding structures, up to and including the early period of more generalized practice and division of labor. Topics: identification (where possible) of the main types of binding structures; their dating and provenance; the recognition and recording of materials and techniques. Instructor: Christopher Clarkson. See the Expanded Course Description.




12 The Printed Book in The West to 1800. One of a sequence of three new RBS courses (see no. 41). This course deals with the introduction and spread of printing in Europe; the development of book design and illustration; the rise of the publishing industry; freedom and the regulation of the press; the increase in literacy and its social consequences; the traffic in printed matter and the growth of personal and institutional collections; the impact of the Industrial Revolution. Intended for those who have a limited background--but a considerable interest--in the history of the book, and who expect, sooner or later, to take the other two courses in this RBS sequence. Instructor: Martin Antonetti. See the Expanded Course Description.






13 Lithography: The Popularization of Printing in the C19. Aimed at those concerned with books, prints, and ephemera, especially of the first two-thirds of the C19. Topics: Senefelder and the discovery of lithography; lithographic stones and presses; the work of the lithographic draftsman, letterer, and printer; early lithographed books and other printing; the development of particular genres, including music printing; chromolithography. Instructor: Michael Twyman. See the Expanded Course Description.






14 Publishers' Bookbindings, 1830-1910. The study of publishers' bindings, chiefly in the US, but with occasional reference to English and Continental developments. Topics: the rise of the edition binder; design styles and how they developed; new techniques, machines, and materials introduced in the C19; the identification of rarities; the physical description of bindings; the preservation of publishers' bindings. The course will make extensive use of the Book Arts Press's collection of C19 and early C20 binding exemplars. Instructor: Sue Allen. See the Expanded Course Description.






15 Printing Design and Publication. In today's cultural institutions, the texts for announcements, newsletters--even full-dress catalogs--are composed on microcomputers, often by staff members with scant graphic design background. By precept and critical examination of work, the course pinpoints how available software can generate appropriate design from laser-printed posters and leaflets through complex projects with commercial printers. Prime concerns are suitability, client expectations and institutional authority. Instructor: Greer Allen. See the Expanded Course Description.






16 Rare Book Cataloging. Aimed at catalog librarians who find that their present duties include (or shortly will include) the cataloging of rare books and/or special collections materials. Attention will be given both to cataloging books from the hand-press period and to C19 and C20 books in a special collections context. Topics include: comparison of rare book and general cataloging; application of codes and standards (especially DCRB); uses of special files; problems in transcription, collation and physical description; setting cataloging policy within an institutional context. Instructor: Deborah J. Leslie. See the Expanded Course Description.






17 Implementing Encoded Archival Description (Session I). Encoded Archival Description (EAD) provides standardized machine-readable access to primary resource materials. This course is aimed at archivists, librarians, and museum personnel who would like an introduction to EAD that includes an extensive supervised hands-on component. Students will learn SGML encoding techniques in part using examples selected from among their own institution's finding aids. Topics: the context out of which EAD emerged; introduction to the use of SGML authoring tools and browsers; the conversion of existing finding aids to EAD. Offered again in Week 3. Instructor: Daniel Pitti. See the Expanded Course Description.

Week Two
Monday 19 July - Friday 23 July 1999


21 Introduction to Codicology. The principles, bibliography, and methodology of the analysis and description of Western medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. The course includes a survey of the development of the physical features of manuscript books and practical work by the students on particular points. This is a course for non-specialists, but applicants must have considerable background in the historical humanities; in admitting students to the class, the instructor will prefer those with at least an introductory knowledge of Latin and some previous exposure to paleography. Instructor: Albert Derolez. See the Expanded Course Description.






22 Type, Lettering, and Calligraphy, 1450-1830. The development of the major formal and informal book hands, the dominant printing types of each period, and their interrelationship. Topics include: the Gothic hands; humanistic script; the Renaissance inscriptional capital; Garamond and the spread of the Aldine Roman; calligraphy from the chancery italic to the English round hand; the neo-classical book and its typography; and early commercial typography. The course presupposes a general knowledge of Western history and some awareness of the continuity of the Latin script but no special knowledge of typographical history. Instructor: James Mosley. See the Expanded Course Description.






23 Book Illustration to 1890. The identification of illustration processes and techniques, including woodcut, etching, engraving, stipple, aquatint, mezzotint, lithography, wood engraving, steel engraving, process line and halftone relief, collotype, photogravure, and color printing. The course will be taught almost entirely from the extensive Book Arts Press files of examples of illustration processes. As part of the course, students will make their own etchings, dry-points, and relief cuts in supervised laboratory sessions. Instructor: Terry Belanger. See the Expanded Course Description.






24 The American Book in the Industrial Era, 1820-1940. Manufacturing methods, distribution networks, and publishing patterns introduced in the US during the industrial era. There will be hands-on sessions in which students examine and describe books produced during the period, providing an introduction to analytical and bibliographical practice. Students will also have the opportunity to discuss their own research projects with the instructor. Instructor: Michael Winship. See the Expanded Course Description.






25 Introduction to Rare Book Librarianship. Overview of the theory and practice of rare book librarianship. Topics include: the function of rare books in libraries; the interpretation of rare book collections to their publics; patterns of use; special collections reference materials; security; environmental desiderata; exhibitions and publications; and friends' groups. Instructor: Daniel Traister. See the Expanded Course Description.






26 How to Research a Rare Book. A survey of major reference sources covering rare and early printed books, and the strategies for working with them. Aimed at reference librarians and others who need to find citations and interpret particulars, whether for work in acquisitions, cataloging or description, captions in an exhibition, or informed work with readers. Instructor: D. W. Krummel. See the Expanded Course Description.






27 Electronic Texts and Images (Session I). A practical exploration of the research, preservation, editing, and pedagogical uses of electronic texts and images in the humanities. The course will center around the creation of a set of archival-quality etexts and digital images, for which we shall also create an Encoded Archival Description guide. Topics include: SGML tagging and conversion; using the Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines; the form and implications of XML; publishing on the World Wide Web; and the management and use of on-line texts. See for details about last year's course. Some experience with HTML is a pre-requisite for admission to the course. Offered again in Week 4. Instructor: David Seaman. See the Expanded Course Description.

Week Three
Monday 26 July - Friday 30 July 1999


31 Introduction to Latin Paleography, 1100-1500. An introduction to this neglected field, including reading, transcribing (and expanding abbreviations), identification, classification, dating and localization of the principal kinds of Gothic and humanistic book script. Examples of Latin texts (and, exceptionally, French and English ones) will be studied from photocopies, slides, and manuscript fragments. The course is designed for all those who have to deal with late medieval MSS. Applicants should have a good basic knowledge of Latin and at least some previous formal exposure to paleography. Instructor: Albert Derolez. See the Expanded Course Description.






32 Japanese Printmaking, 1615-1868. A survey of Ukiyo-e, the art of the Japanese woodblock print. Ukiyo-e literally means floating world art, and it is through an exploration of the Floating World that produced this art that we come to understand it. The course considers how the Floating World developed in the C17 out of the earlier court culture, how it created an interest in the courtesans, actors, and famous places of Japan that became the chief subject matter of C17-C19 printmakers, and how it declined and changed in the late C19. The course will take advantage of the extensive collection of Japanese prints owned by UVa's Bayly Museum. Instructor: Sandy Kita. See the Expanded Course Description.






33 Managing The Past. This course is intended for librarians and others for whom the custody and deployment of books printed or written before 1850 is part of the day's work. How to make the most of what you've got, what to buy, how to buy, whether to sell (and if so, how and when) is on the agenda; but the core of the course will be the analysis of copy-specific data: what makes this copy in (or about to be in) my library different from and more important than anyone else's? Instructor: Nicolas Barker. See the Expanded Course Description.






34 Advanced Descriptive Bibliography. A continuation and extension of RBS course no.45, Introduction to Descriptive Bibliography, this course will be based on the intensive examination of a representative range of books from the 1550-1875 period. The goal of the course is to deepen students' familiarity with the physical composition of books; to gain further experience in the use of Bowers' Principles of Bibliographical Description; and to consider critically some of the uses of Bowers' method (and its limitations) in the production of catalogs, bibliographies, critical editions, and histories of books and reading. Instructor: Richard Noble. See the Expanded Course Description.






35 Teaching The History of Books And Printing. Aimed at academics and librarians who are currently teaching undergraduate or graduate courses dealing with the history of books and printing, this course will emphasize not history but pedagogy. It will compare a number of different approaches, including (but not only) printing history as the history of technology, history of art, intellectual history, business history, descriptive and historical bibliography, the dissemination of texts and their reception. The course will consider the varieties of currently available print and (especially) non-print resources available to instructors and students in the field. Instructors: Michael T. Ryan and Daniel Traister. See the Expanded Course Description.






36 Book Collecting. This course is aimed at persons who spend a fairly substantial amount of time, energy, and money on collecting, but who feel rather isolated from the national (and international) antiquarian book communities. Topics include: the rationale of book collecting; developing relations with dealers; buying at auction and via the Internet; evaluating prices; bibliophile and friends' groups; preservation, conservation, and insurance options; tax and other financial implications; what finally to do with your books; and the literature of book collecting. Instructors: William P. Barlow, Jr and Terry Belanger. See the Expanded Course Description.






37 Implementing Encoded Archival Description (Session II). This popular course will be offered twice in RBS 1999. The two sessions will have identical content. For a description of the course, see no. 17. Instructor: Daniel Pitti. See the Expanded Course Description.

Week Four
Monday 2 August - Friday 6 August 1999



41 The Codex Book in The West, 500-2000 AD. A new beginning-level course, intended for non-specialists who have had no previous formal exposure to the history of the book and want a broad, kaleidoscopic survey of the entire spectrum of Western book history from the introduction of the codex form in later antiquity to current developments in private press bookmaking. The course is particularly intended for those who are not yet ready to contemplate working their way through RBS's new sequence of history-of-the-book courses: The Manuscript Book (to be offered for the first time in 2000), The Printed Book to 1800 (see no. 12), and The Printed Book since 1800 (to be offered for the first time in 2000). Instructors: Eric Holzenberg and Suzy Taraba. See the Expanded Course Description.






42 The Use of Physical Evidence in Early Printed Books. The use of a wide variety of evidence--paper, type, rubrication and illumination, bindings, ownership marks, and annotations--to shed light both on questions of analytical bibliography and wider questions of book distribution, provenance, and use. There will be a fairly detailed discussion and analysis of both good and bad features in existing reference works on early printing. The seminar assumes a basic knowledge of descriptive bibliography and some familiarity with Latin. Instructor: Paul Needham. See the Expanded Course Description.






43 European Bookbinding, 1500-1800. How bookbinding in the post-medieval period developed to meet the demands placed on it by the growth of printing; techniques and materials employed to meet these demands; the development of temporary bindings (for example, pamphlets and publishers' bindings); the emergence of structures usually associated with volume production in the C19; the dating of undecorated bindings; the identification of national and local binding styles. Instructor: Nicholas Pickwoad. See the Expanded Course Description.






44 Publishing History, 1775-1850. An exploration of the changes that occurred in the publishing and related industries during the late C18 and earlier C19, especially in Great Britain, but with occasional reference to the United States and elsewhere. Topics include: the transformation of organizational structures (from bookseller to publisher, the decline of the Stationers' Company, the rise of unionism); new technologies (machine-made paper, the power press, edition binding in cloth); the rise of a mass market. Instructor: Michael Turner. See the Expanded Course Description.






45 Introduction to Descriptive Bibliography An introduction to the physical examination and description of printed books, especially of the period 1550-1875. Designed both for those with little previous formal exposure to this subject and for those with some general knowledge of the field who wish to be presented with a systematic discussion of the elements of physical description. A major part of the course will consist of small, closely supervised laboratory sessions in which students will gain practice in determining format and collation and in writing standard descriptions of signings and pagination. In daily museum sessions, students will have the opportunity to see a wide variety of printed books drawn from the extensive Book Arts Press laboratory collections. Instructors: Terry Belanger and Richard Noble. See the Expanded Course Description.






46 Introduction to Electronic Texts And Images (Session II). This popular course will be offered twice in RBS 1999. The two sessions will have identical content. For a description of the course, see no. 27. Instructor: David Seaman. See the Expanded Course Description.


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