Reference & Bibliographies

• Book_Arts-L FAQ and Archive
• Bibliographies: Includes bookbinding manuals (with tables of contents), conservation & preservation articles, marbling, typography, paper arts.
• Tutorials: Instructions for a wide range of book art related structures and glossaries.
• Conservation & Preservation Links: resources on book repair, collections conservation, preservation administration, digitization, and conservation vendors.

Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

The Multi-lingual Bookbinding/Conservation Dictionary Project: The goal of this project is to combine, in one place, all the known bookbinding and book conservation terminology, in as many languages as possible. We are also including both current and archaic terms, to make the dictionary useful for both practicing conservators and bookbinders, as well as book history scholars.

• ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter & Nicolas Barker, 8th ed. (At ILAB)
• Abkürzungen für den Antiquariatsbuchhandel (Abbreviations for the antiquarian book trade): In German, English, and French. Created by ZVAB.
• Conservation OnLine (CoOL): The mother of all conservation and preservation sites.
• Die Bestandteile eines Buches: Als Antiquarin kann ich mir kaum vorstellen, dass es Menschen gibt, die mit den Bezeichnungen von Buchbestandteilen nicht wirklich etwas anfangen können. Ist aber – wie bei allen Fachausdrücken – eben doch oft der Fall. Darum möchte ich Ihnen in diesem kleinen Artikel die wichtigsten Bestandteile eines gedruckten und gebundenen Buches kurz vorstellen und erklären.
• Binde ABC: German language dictionary of bookbinding terminology.
• The Book an interactive description: Javascript enabled description of the parts of a (German) case binding, but works for almost all other kinds as well. Thank you to Peter Baumgartner for letting me use his illustration and script.
• Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: THE English language encyclopedia for bookbinding and conservation (At CoOL). Digital version of print edition from HathiTrust - view from US-based IP addresses only.
• Bookbinding/Reliure: From Diderot's encyclopedia.
• Bookbinding Vocabulary / Vocabulaire de la Reliure: French / English bookbinding terminology by ARA Canada
• Buchbinder-ABC: Online version of Moessner's German-language encyclopedia of bookbinding terminology (1981 ed.). Presented online by Schmedt, and now at the Internet Archive.
• Dictionary of Book and Paper Conservation in Five Languages, Budapest, 1997: Hungarian, German, English, French Italian. Link to PDF file. Click here to download in other formats.
• Druck ABC (Printing ABC): Printing, typo/reprographic, binding glossary. In German.
• Illustrated Guide to Book Terminology: Produced by the Conservation Center for Art and Historical Artifacts, Part one guides you through the specialized terms used to describe book structure. Part two is the same for terms used in book conservation.
• Kleines Glossar Typographie und Layout im Desktop-Publishing: Glossary in German.
• Ligatus Language of Binding: Online thesaurus of bookbinding terms. Can be searched by keyword or alphabetically. The concepts contained in the thesaurus are, however, also arranged hierarchically, based on a class/sub-class relationship, which allows concepts to be retrieved by navigating down the hierarchies even if their label (the term) is not known.
• Translation of Book Arts Terms, from English to French: From the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists website.

Other Readings

• Definition of the Artist's Book: Transcript of a discussion held on Book_Arts-L in 1998. Topics included: Definition of the Artist's Book; What is a Book; BSO's (Book Shaped Objects); Art vs. Craft.
• Development of the Artist's Book: What is a book? An artist's book? A livre d'artiste? Written by Peter D. Verheyen.
• From the Traditional to the Transformative: Two Approaches to Visual Books, an article "compiled" by Mary Stewart in which Nancy Callahan and Peter Verheyen discuss the book arts. The article was published in Volume 4, Issue 1, Summer/Fall 1996 of the Journal for the Mid America Print Council.
• The Future of Hand Bookbinding: By Sam Ellenport.
• Getting us out / Bringing us together: How listservs and the Web have changed the way in which book artists work and communicate. Presented at "Hot Type in a Cold World," a symposium celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Silver Buckle Press at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. November 20, 1998.
• Is It A Book?: A page on nonlinearity in literature and the book arts by Karen Drayne (a.k.a. Powell), Barbara Davison, and Emily-Jane Dawson.
• Der Pressbengel / The Bone Folder: Dialog between a bibliophile and bookbinder written in 1922 by Ernst Collin. Available are the full-text of the German original as well as the full-text, a downloadable edition in signatures, and a Lulu POD edition. This translation originall appeared in the 2009 edition of the Guild of Book Workers Journal, 2009.
• The Philobiblon of Richard De Bury: The first book about the meaning, care, and handling of books.
• The Virtual Codex from Page Space to E-space: A lecture by Johanna Drucker to the Syracuse University History of the Book Seminar.
• The Whatness of Bookness: Letter by Philip Smith on definition of the book.
• Why Book Art Matters: An article by Kathy Walkup, Director of the Book Arts Program at Mills College.