Rare Book School

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Advance Reading Lists

Rare Book School makes the advance reading lists used in its courses generally available. Each of these reading lists is provided with links leading to the relevant Amazon.com page for in-print items on the lists. Amazon's prices are competitive, and the links may be useful even if you don't intend to buy the books, because of the bibliographic information Amazon routinely provides (ISBN, edition or printing, availability of hard-cover vs paperback editions, &c.). Bear in mind that the out-of-print books listed (as well as some of the in-print books) may quite possibly be found through BookFinder.com, some of them at discount prices.

Binding
B-10  Introduction to the History of Bookbinding
B-40  Medieval & Early Renaissance Bookbinding Structures
B-50  Seminar in the History of Bookbinding
B-60  European Bookbinding, 1500-1800
B-70  European Decorative Bookbinding
B-80  The Description of Bookbindings
B-90  Publishers’ Bookbindings, 1830-1910
 
Collecting and Collection Management
C-70  Collecting the History of Anglo-American Law
C-75  Developing Collections of African-American Materials
C-80  Artists’ Books: Strategies for Collecting
C-85  Law Books: History & Connoisseurship
C-90  Provenance: Tracing Owners & Collections
 
General: Descriptive and Textual Bibliography
G-10  Introduction to the Principles of Bibliographical Description
G-20  Printed Books to 1800: Description & Analysis
G-30  Printed Books since 1800: Description & Analysis
G-45  Analytical BibliographyNew course!
G-50  Advanced Descriptive Bibliography
 
History
H-10  The History of the Book, 200-2000
H-15  The History of the Book in America
H-20  The Book in the Manuscript Era
H-25  15th-Century Books in Print and Manuscript
H-30  The Printed Book in the West to 1800
H-40  The Printed Book in the West since 1800
H-45  Printing, Publishing, & Consuming Texts in Britain, 1770-1919
H-50  The American Book in the Industrial Era, 1820-1940
H-55  History of American Music Printing and Publishing
H-60  History of European and American Papermaking
H-65  Introduction to Printed Maps
H-70  The History of the Book in America, c. 1700-1830New course!
H-75  Printed Ephemera
H-80  The Stationers' Company and the London Book Trade to 1830
H-90  Teaching the History of the Book
Illustration and Printing Processes
I-10  Introduction to the History of Illustration
I-20  Book Illustration Processes to 1900
I-35  The Identification of Photographic Print Processes
I-70  Lithography: The Popularization of Printing in the C19
I-80  Japanese Printmaking, 1615-1868
I-85  Japanese Illustrated Books, 1615-1868
I-90  The Art of the Book in Edo and Meiji Japan, 1615-1912
 
Libraries, Archives, and Electronic Resources
L-10  Special Collections Librarianship
L-30  Rare Book Cataloging
L-40  Visual Materials Cataloging
L-50  Advanced Seminar in Special Collections Administration
L-55  Donors and Libraries
L-60  Intro to Archives for Special Collections Librarians
L-65  Digitizing the Historical Record
L-70  Electronic Texts and Images
L-75  Electronic Texts in XML
L-80  Implementing Encoded Archival Description
L-85  Publishing EAD Finding Aids
L-90  Designing Archival Description Systems
L-95  Born Digital: Theory & Practice
 
Manuscripts
M-10  Introduction to Paleography, 800-1500
M-20  Introduction to Western Codicology
M-40  Latin Paleography, 1100-1500
M-50  Introduction to Illuminated Manuscripts
M-70  English Paleography, 1500-1750
M-80  Western Manuscripts 1500-1900
M-85  Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts
 
Typography and Book Design
T-10  Introduction to the History of Typography
T-50  Type, Lettering and Calligraphy, 1450-1830
T-55  Type, Lettering and Calligraphy, 1830-2000