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Watch the national news next week as Book Drop goes live. This is the book art vending project of the University of Iowa Libraries course “Structure of the Hand Made Book”. Sales of handmade books and kits for making books will benefit the UI Center for the Book.

its been an uninteresting year, until now

Forget terror, pre-emptive government and economic collapse; they are routine. But check out
AcmeBook News! The return of Kafka’s library, Howard Rheingold on the history of the future of technologies of integrated problem solving and the new age of fearless overlays from CLIR on the emerging role of the artifact in the context of its digital simulations. Craig has popped-up again with some of his legendary booknotes.

learn and do book art

Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord has a very orderly and informative very book like
site. Susan offers many great teacher-to-teacher instructions and insights.

center for book art

Hollanders
paper shop in Ann Arbor provides a base for an awesome community of book artists. Kits and workshops bring book arts to everyone else.

Blue Oak Bindery

Kristin Baum, Assistant Conservator, UI Libraries has posted her
resource page.

***“a fire broke out .”

Within two days of the completion of the restoration of the Old Capitol dome (first state capitol building of Iowa, 1840) a workman’s torch set off a 10 minute blaze that consumed the entire dome tower. The good news is that installation of structural steel in 1924 included a poured fire slab under the dome which stopped the fire and shed almost all of the water. Obviously, the structural engineers of that era understood the fire risks of the natural ventilation designs of the 19th century as well as the fire hazard of a wooden dome.

Happily too, much of the best of the original column capital carving survives off site. Ultimately the damage is much more symbolic than material since the Old Capitol dome is a symbol of both the University and the State of Iowa.

Was it a FotB premonition that invoked the posting on the Cottonian Library fire (see “endless recovery saga”, below)? The Preservation department of the UI Libraries will be playing a significant role in the recovery.

Endnote; it was false economy to work with the lowest bidder in the restoration project. The contractor had no experience with historical buildings and disregarded instruction on appropriate methods. An estimate of damage is now set at five million. (picture)

publish on demand

While ebook investment contracts, IUniverse
get’s 18 million venture funding for its publish and print on demand service.

the paper book is a reading device too

Walt Crawford brings more good sense to the discussion of reading efficiency in the December
“Cites & Insights”. Turns out that the technologies of reading devices diverge toward efficiencies of automated search and discovery – or – toward efficiencies of comprehension.

Specifically see his summary of list threads on ebooks and his report of linear or multiplexed reader perception (Miall & Dobson on hypertext reading). All that’s lacking in the Crawford grip on the obvious is a suggestion of the precept of distinct reading modes and the dynamic of thresholding between them.

an endless recovery saga

The October 1731 number of the newly-established Gentleman’s Magazine included the following notice in its reports of ‘Casualties’ for the month:

“23 [Oct.]. A Fire broke out in the House of Mr Bently, adjoining to the King’s School near Westminster Abbey, which burnt down that part of the House that contained the King’s and Cottonian Libraries. Almost all the printed Books were consumed and part of the Manuscripts. Amongst the latter, those which Dr Bentley had been collecting for his Greek Testament for these last ten years, valued at 2000″

This short note, tucked away between reports of the discovery of a disfigured corpse near Bath and an accidental shooting at Hackney, records what was perhaps the greatest bibliographical disaster of modern times in Britain. It is difficult to quantify the scale of the losses to the Cotton library as a result of the fire at Bentley’s residence, Ashburnham House. A number of letters preserve colourful anecdotes about the fire, such as the famous story of Dr Bentley escaping from the flames in nightgown and wig with Codex Alexandrinus under his arms.
(restoration of the manuscripts)

unlost

(found)

earth to Clifford to Iowa

Clifford Lynch delivered the Stoflet Lecture at the University of Iowa Libraries. Topic: “The Future of the Book in a Digital Age”
The scenarios only increase the hyperventilation of the role of technologies needed to pose alternatives to the book. The real future strength of the paper book is its ability to diminish the technological mediation needed for delivery to the reader.
(more)

old in the new, new in the old

Comments on a recent binding project,
(more)

for the smokers on your list

This new Ethiopian binding kit is sized for a clean vend from a cigarette machine. The BookoMat idea comes from
ArtoMat and the binding type from desert sectarians of late Antiquity.
(store)