Related Institutes

The California Rare Book School (CalRBS) is a continuing education program dedicated to providing the knowledge and skills required by professionals working in all aspects of the rare book community and for students interested in entering the field. CalRBS offers weeklong courses covering a broad range of topics.

Students at the California Rare Book School benefit from expert faculty and the wealth of special collections of rare books, manuscripts and archival materials in the Los Angeles area. See the CalRBS Upcoming Courses page for schedule details.

Founded in 2002 by Steven Escar Smith, Texas A&M University’s Book History Workshop provides an intensive, hands-on introduction to the history of books and printing. The course consists of a unique combination of labs and seminars designed to provide participants with practical experience, as well as a broad historical survey of the field.

Over the course of a week, participants attend seminar sessions, which provide a thematic survey of book and printing history, with the collections of Cushing Memorial Library & Archives providing examples of some of the most significant artifacts and books in the history of recorded culture. The daily lab sessions concentrate on printing in the hand press era and its allied technologies: typecasting, papermaking, marbling, bookbinding, illustration, and ink-making. During these sessions, students will have the opportunity to cast type in a hand mould, set type, prepare it for the press, and print on a period-accurate common press.

For further information, consult the Book History at Texas A&M workshop website.

The Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar (CABS) is held annually at Colorado College, Colorado Springs. “Specialists share their expertise and experience with booksellers, librarians, and collectors in this comprehensive survey of the out-of-print, antiquarian, rare and used book markets. Basic procedures and problems are discussed both formally and informally through a series of lectures, demonstrations, discussions and practical workshops.”

For further information, consult the CABS website.

The Book History Workshop (BHW) was inaugurated in 2001 in Lyon under the auspices of the Institut d’histoire du livre. The BHW offers courses in both English and French at the Ecole Normale Supérieure – Lettres et Sciences Humaines (Lyon), with sessions at the Lyon Printing Museum and the rare book collection of the City Library.

For further information, consult the Institut’s website.

Montefiascone is a medieval walled Italian city located about half way between Rome and Siena. Each summer, conservators, archivists, art historians, librarians and others interested in the history and the structure of the book meet to participate in courses which are held within the city walls.

For further information, consult the Montefiascone Project website.

In 2001, a Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies was created at the University of London by merger of the Centre for Palaeography and the Research Centre in the History of the Book. The Institute of English Studies (part of London University’s School of Advanced Study) hosts the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies for a partnership including the British Library, St Bride Printing Library, the University of London Library, the English Departments of the Universities of Birmingham and Reading, and the Open University. Since 2004, the new Centre’s London International Paleography Summer School has has offered a variety of related one-day courses on medieval manuscripts and related subjects.

Beginning in July 2007, London Rare Books School (LRBS) has offered a series of five-day, intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects. Courses are taught by internationally-known scholars, using the library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Senate House Library.

Further details can be found at the London Rare Books School website.

Ligatus is a research centre of the University of the Arts London with particular interest in the history of bookbinding, book conservation, archiving and the application of digital technology to the exploration and exploitation of these fields. Ligatus’s main research projects currently include the conservation of the books in the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai and the development of a multi-lingual thesaurus of bookbinding terms.

Ligatus Summer School sessions were held originally in Volos and Patmos, Greece; in 2009 at Thessaloniki, Greece; in 2010 at Wolfenbüttel, Germany, &c. In 2019 the summer school was held at Krems, Austria.

The State Library of New South Wales will host the 2020 Australasian Rare Books Summer School, 3–7 February 2020.