A Book A Week 2014: Made, Altered, or Repaired. Week 2

Week of 13 Jan 2014

This is a book I repaired for Rochester (MN) Public Library. Book repair has different functions at different kinds of libraries. Generally, at a public library, you repair books that are out of print, but still circulating. If a book is still in print, the public library will usually just discard a nasty (dirty, ripped, stained, unreadable) and order a new copy. Also, the type of repair you would do on a public library book is different than the type of repair you would do in an archives (if you repair it at all, or you might just create a box to place it in). 

In a public library, you want to get as many circs out of the book as you can, so you want it to be durable.

You can see the before and after on the spine of this book. Above, you see a red spine with a handwritten label. Once I took the book apart, I found the original spine under the red one. I liked the look of the red accents on the black book, so I created a new spine with red repair tape, but glued on the original spine label. I think it looks smart, don't you?                                             

 I gave it new corners for a half-bound book.

The book is now ready for many more circulations.

A Book A Week 2014: Made, Altered, or Repaired. Week 1

During 2014, I am going to post each week about a book I have made, altered, or repaired. And I'll even do it retroactively, since it's Jan 27 already. Here goes:

Week of 6 Jan 2014. 

Here is photo documentation of the books we made at the library. Using our new empty Makerspace room, our goal was to make 100 blank books out of recycled materials to catalog and make available for patrons to check out and hand write their own local history. Our project was called Your Community Your Library Your Story. We used discarded fiction books from our library, sawed off the spines, pulped the text blocks to make new paper and used the discarded covers as new ones.

Here you see I used book repair tape to join the covers. 

We used a simple 5-hole pamphlet style binding.

You can see the stitching on the outside.

Fun to see the finished books, all different colors.

 Me and Deanna. See how proud she is?

I had a smaller project for people to make and take home. Here you see little 3-hole pamphlet stitch books, with folded paper covers and pretty colored crochet yarn.

Here's a stack of our handmade paper, and you see, I even dyed  the binding thread blue.

I was pressing the paper with some of my favorite books and awesome train case (that I use for my book binding tools.

Nicole even color coordinated her book with her cute outfit!

 Proud book binders.

Even Andy learned to sew. Nice work!

Making Paper at the Library's Makerspace

   

     Papermaking was our first project to open our new Makerspace at Rochester (MN) Public Library. We now have a dedicated, windowed room with tables and chairs to promote the Maker movement.
   For 3 hours a day for 5 days, with 100 people, we ultimately made 400 sheets of paper.

I set up 4 paper stations - 3 for making 8 x 10 blue sheets for our project, 1 for making small cookie cutter shapes for people to take home.

Shredded Paper from discarded fiction

We dried our paper on the windows

Pressing the dried sheets

Our paper samples - see how each is unique?

Sample of glittered paper shapes

Looking in to the Makerspace

 

We ordered aprons for use in the Makerspace

  

We used Arnold Grummer large pour handmolds. They held up well and worked great for lots of people and lots of use.                   

Your Community. Your Library. Your Story

     Rochester (MN) Public Library opened up a Makerspace last month. A Makerspace is new trend nation- (probably world-) wide that provides a public space combined with tools, equipment and education where a community can learn to make things. Makerspace.com describes it well and provides a playbook for opening your own.

     Recently, libraries have been opening Makerspaces in varying levels of sophistication from a physical space (think Harry Potter's room under the stairs) to a room full of machinery, computers and a 3D printer (think Professor Snape's Potions classroom). No matter the level of sophistication, library Makerspaces all have an element of teaching and community involvement.  RPL's version leans more toward the under-the-stairs version (being only a physical space), although it is bright and sunny and is mostly windows, one wall facing the busy skyway so people can see what we're playing with and encourage them to join us. 

   The library wanted to make a big splash of our new space by having a series of projects. I wrote a proposal to include crafts which are library-focused, using personal skills of mine: papermaking, screen printing and book binding, one craft per week.



Here you can see two of the work stations.





We branded the project (Your Community Your Library Your Story) and the Makerspace (Dream it, Make it) (see branding on card). Our library has started using Save the Date cards for events. Here is what we used to help advertise

     Our goal was to make 100 blank books out of recycled materials to catalog and make available for patrons to check out and hand write their own local history. We used discarded fiction books from our library, sawed off the spines, pulped the text blocks to make new paper and used the discarded covers as new ones.
  So, here they are - ready to check out!!!
I can't wait to read them.

Romaunt Version of the Gospel According to St. John, 1848

  The last book in the World Languages Bibles Collection at St. Olaf College, caught my eye, not for its outward beauty (it's plain and has been "mended")

but for the look of its language and that it says it was written in "Provencal". The text had almost a medieval Latin language look to it, but maybe a cross with Spanish or French. The word Romaunt seemed similar to Romance so I did some research to see what it was. Merriam-Webster says Romaunt is Middle English from the Old French romant, first known use in 1530 AD. Inside the front cover of this book is a typed paper explaining Romaunt and the text itself:

Here it says that Romaunt is Gallic (French) and that this was the first vernacular translation of the Gospel of John condemned by the Catholic Church, probably originally written in the 12th century. It seems like the Romaunt language was a common Romance language spoken in France in the region of Provence.

Now, this particular printed volume has a copyright date of 1848, as does the one at St. Olaf.  A quick search online shows other libraries to hold the same version. The University of Chicago has copy # 8086  and you can read the whole book online! The page opposite the title page has written, in beautiful script, "A FacSimile of the Paris MS No 8086". The copy at St. Olaf says it is No.7268. So in 1848 there must have been a huge print run of these. Here is a not great photo of the text, but you can see the pretty hand drawn script and doodles. There are a few more of these throughout the book, and in color, well, red and blue ink.

Better pics here from Lt. Colonel Dave:

  One more point of interest from that typed sheet inside the cover is that it mentions the Waldenses, "the only dissenters from the Catholic church in the middle ages that continue to live". So, who were the Waldenses? A quick search at Encyclopaedia Brittanica gave me quite a bit of information about them. Basically, they began as a sect in southern France that aspired to follow Christ in poverty and simplicity. Followers of this church wanted to be able to read the Bible in their vernacular tongue, and so it was translated into Romaunt. Here is another interesting text about the Waldenses, written by 

J. A. Wylie (1808-1890)

Archives are cool

Archives are cool, right?

So here is the vault for Special Collections at Rolvaag Library, St. Olaf College. (BTW, that's Ole Edvart Rølvaag  author of Giants in the Earth, who roomed with my grandpa, Hjalmar S. Froiland, at St. Olaf in the 'aughts.)

What's not to love about really old beautiful books and compact library shelving where you get to turn the crank to move the shelves? But wait, there's more --

     Look at this beautifully carved book cradle. This (and other ones that are clear acrylic - useful but unattractive) are used for patrons wishing to look at books in the vault. The cradle helps protect the rare book from being opened too wide, and provides a convenient resting place for the book while it's being .read

Why are card catalogs still so appealing? 

I love them. 

They were made sturdy, useful, and of beautiful wood. I have a 36 drawer catalog myself, in which I keep craft supplies.

 Then there are these amazing calf or goat skin covered volumes well over 150 years old. I love looking at the pages of these because the paper is so surprisingly white and quite sturdy. Paper used to be made of cotton rag, which has longer fibers and lacks the acid content of 50 year old wood pulp paper.

  I like the mystery of the acid-free "boxes" in which the more deteriorated books are kept. I used to make these, when I worked in the Preservation lab at UW-Madison, for items to be kept in original bindings, preventing them from excessive deterioration.

  I also am fond of the cotton "tape" used to hold a book together. There are a couple of other "tapes" used in book repair that are non-adhesive: linen tape on which to sew signatures, and tape for headbands.

The calfskin was a good choice for covers because it retained its color and remained supple for centuries.

The Vault

World Languages Bibles in the St. Olaf College Vault

     I'm thrilled to get to work a bit in the Library Special Collections at St. Olaf College, my alma mater (where I was a Latin major, can you tell?)  Above you see just a few pretty tomes in Norwegian and Africaans. 

     The collection of World Languages Bibles in the St. Olaf College Vault contains 248 full or partial Bibles in many languages, some of which no longer exist (such as Old English). There are Bibles in many Native American languages including Ojibwa, Arawak, and Micmac.

     My goal is to find out and tell the story of how the collection came together. My next step is to get my hands on the book

The Norlie collection of English Bibles / by Olaf Morgan Norlie

because a large number of these Bibles were donated by, and have bookplates designating, O. M. Norlie. So, apparently, Olaf wrote a book about his collection. 

     I'll keep you posted on what I find out.