Everything in here that isn’t a book: An interview with archivist Jae Mauthe

As plans for construction progress and programming content develops, changes are taking place on the personnel side of things at the AMB as well: introducing archivist Jae Mauthe! Jae has developed and led all aspects of large scale digitization projects with libraries at University of California, Berkeley, Northern Regional Library

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Patron Saints of Bookbinding

Bookbinding is not for the timid of hand or heart. courtesy of Dan Goldberg Risk of stab by needle, loss of fingers by guillotine: these are the few perils that bookbinders face every day in their field of work. There is even one recorded case of death by beating books. courtesy of

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Saturday’s Bookbinding Tutorial

This past saturday we held our first bookbinding tutorial here at the museum.  4 of our volunteers came out and learned how to do a simple pamphlet stitch as well as the more complex sewing over tapes with a french fold, then casing into a hard cover.  Since one of

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Ephemera of the Month: An Introduction to Bookbinders’ Tickets

Few things as brazenly flout their etymological origins as the idea of collected ‘ephemera.’  In Greek, ephemera lasts only a day, and the word was often specifically used in reference to short-lived creatures, like mayflies. Printed ephemera, too, was meant to be transient–one-off or single-use items that were expected to

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Tim James Interviewed on KALW!

Check out this interview with our founder Tim James! http://kalw.org/post/making-book-beginning-end-one-san-francisco-s-last-remaining-bookbinders

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Why A Museum to American Bookbinding?

The American Bookbinder’s Museum There is nothing quite like the feeling of an old book in your hands, the smell of the yellowed pages hitting you as you open it.  As you get comfortable and settle in to spending some time with this remarkable object, you may wonder at how

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