Personnel Announcement

I am delighted to announce that Elizabeth Rideout, Project Technician, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, MA.  Elizabeth will start her one-year appointment at the nationally known conservation center this June. 

Elizabeth has been a member of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set/ NewsBank Project Team since 2011.  She has been the lead technician for the last eighteen months and has been instrumental in keeping track and accounting for all the returning volumes as the project comes to a close.  Elizabeth has also been active in the Book Arts Program, leading workshops on a variety of book binding methods.

Elizabeth’s last day is Friday, May 31, co-incidentally, the official closing date of the eight year project.  This is a fabulous opportunity for Elizabeth and we wish her well on her next adventure.

The Final Countdown

Now in the homestretch of the U. S. Congressional Serial Set Project the Readex/Dartmouth team is working through some end-of-project tasks. With only a few weeks of the project remaining, our end date being May 31st, it is time to check through the collection to discover volumes with missing labels, and compile a list of volumes that remain missing. Over the years of processing incoming and outgoing Serial Set volumes it has been standard procedure to take note of any missing volumes and make a note in a spreadsheet which lists the entire set. Early in the project each volume was assigned a barcode which is also indicated on this master list.

After reading all the number labels of Serial Set volumes in the stacks, a list of approximately 400 numbers was typed and printed. In an effort to match existing labels on early volumes the numbers were printed on taupe colored Moriki tissue and consolidated with a klucel-G solution to prevent fading.

One by one each new label will be glued to its' corresponding volume.

Finally, when the approximately 100 remaining volumes are returned from scanning, they will be repaired as needed, checked for labels, and returned to the stacks. Farewell my dear Serial Set!

By Elizabeth Rideout

Book Review: Suave Mechanicals, Volume 1: Essays on the History of Bookbinding

Julia Miller (Editor), Sauve Mechanicals Volume 1: Essays on the History of Bookbinding, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Legacy Press, 2013 ISBN: 978-09797977453, 538 pages, with DVD, $85.00

Reviewed by Deborah Howe

Picking up the volume of Suave Mechanicals is serious business. Not only is it robust and heavy in physical weight, a well-rounded three and a half pounds, but it contains nine densely academic book history essays which take the reader into a detailed appreciation of what books can tell us when we pay attention and listen.

Being a practitioner and not a scholar, I was a bit intimidated to agree to write this review (I thank Peter Verheyen for that), but none the less I am challenged and invigorated by the direction which this volume presents in creating new pathways and foundational research into our field of book history...

Read the full review at  Bonefolders Extra.