News Archives

Provenance: Tracing Owners & Collections

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 1–6 June 2025
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,495

Users and custodians of historic books are increasingly interested in evidence of former ownership, which helps to elucidate how they were used, read, regarded, and circulated. Provenance research includes recognizing and deciphering various forms of ownership markings, tracing owners and their books, and understanding the value of this information. The course will focus on all these areas, and aims to give participants an improved personal toolkit for interpreting the different kinds of provenance evidence they are likely to encounter. […]

Law Books: History & Connoisseurship

“I learned something new and insightful every day from both faculty and student interaction.” — 2016 student

Course Length: 30 hours
Schedule: 9–14 June 2024
Format: in person, Yale University in New Haven, CT
Course fee: $1,395

This course aims to teach collectors and librarians how to build focused, interesting, and useful collections of historical materials in Anglo-American, European, and Latin American law. It is aimed at individuals and librarians who collect historical legal materials and the book dealers who supply them, as well as librarians developing collections from existing holdings. […]

The Handwriting & Culture of Early Modern English Manuscripts

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 7–12 July 2024
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,395

This course is intended for anyone who is curious about English manuscripts from the Tudor and Stuart periods. It provides an intensive introduction to handwriting in early modern England, with a particular emphasis on English secretary hand. Working from digital images and an online transcription platform, participants will be trained in the accurate reading and transcription of secretary, italic, and mixed hands. We will also experiment with contemporary writing materials (quills, […]

The Printed Book in the West since 1800

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 8–13 June 2025
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,495

This course will survey the technological advances in papermaking, illustration processes, composition, printing, binding, and distribution that fueled the development of the modern book industry. It will also give an overview of those phenomena—William Morris and the modern fine press movement, artists’ books, the rise of book-clubs and organized bibliophily—that have arisen to balance this industrialization. The class will make extensive use of books and periodicals embodying the advance of printing in the West since 1800, […]

The Bible and Histories of Reading

**Due to unforeseen circumstances, this course has been cancelled for Summer 2025.**

“I came away with a broader understanding of how the biblical texts have been transmitted and used over time and place.” —2017 student

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 8–13 June 2025
Format: in person, University of Pennsylvania Libraries in Philadelphia, PA
Fee: $1,495

In this course, we will be drawing on the extensive materials at Penn to explore how “the bible” was constituted through a variety of material forms for liturgical use, […]

Advanced Seminar in the History of Bookbinding

“Knowledge from this class will help me to more effectively identify materials and structures.” — 2015 student

This course is aimed at librarians, (rare book) catalogers, curators, conservators, collectors, and book dealers who preferably have already taken at least one RBS binding course. The class will deal with selected topics in the history of binding from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. In 2018 the topics covered will include: prize bindings, almanac bindings, French and English eighteenth-century bindings, Thomas Gosden and blind stamped bindings of the early nineteenth century, bespoke and trade bindings from the period around 1850, […]

Introduction to Paleography, 800–1500

“This course was very useful and packed with information.” — 2016 student

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 23–28 July 2023
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,395

This course provides an introduction to Latinate scripts of the western European Middle Ages and the Renaissance from 700 to 1500, from pre-Caroline through Humanistic scripts. The course has three goals: literacy (learning to read different scripts and expand abbreviations); attribution (learning to use different script characteristics to determine an approximate date and place of origin); and description (learning to identify the hands of different individuals within a particular codex or group of related codices). […]

Histories of the Book, 200–2000

“An extraordinary learning experience in a special environment where you feel the love of the teachers for the books.” — 2017 student

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 14–19 July 2024
Format: in person, New York Public Library in New York City, NY
Fee: $1,395

“Histories of the Book” presents a broad survey of the development and diffusion of the book in the West (i.e., Western Europe, the British Isles, and the Americas) as viewed from multiple perspectives. It is organized around major format changes and technological transitions in book production, […]

Medieval & Early Renaissance Bookbinding Structures

Students will investigate the diversities of European bookbinding structures, up to and including the early period of more generalized practice and division of labor. Topics of the course include identification (where possible) of the main types of binding structures; dating and provenance; recognition and recording of materials and techniques.

This course is aimed at librarians, archivists, art historians, and conservators specializing in early books and manuscripts, and others who handle such material. The course will emphasize studies of the physical book and binding craft techniques of the period. It will proceed by means of lecture and discussion, and employ a considerable number of slides, […]

Introduction to the History of Bookbinding

“I came, I saw, I feel empowered with bookbinding knowledge!” — 2018 student

Course Length: 30 hours
Course Week: 27 July–1 August 2024
Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA
Fee: $1,495

A bookbinding has two main functions: it protects a text block against wear and tear, and its structure makes a book out of  separate leaves or quires. Throughout history, bookbindings have been decorated in a number of different ways, using different materials and techniques, thus often making the binding a work of art. […]