Baby’s Kingdom

Earlier this year, the American Bookbinders Museum received the generous donation of the Kathleen V. Roberts Collection of Decorated Publishers’ Bindings, comprising more than 400 volumes dating between 1830 and 1950. As of this blog post, about two thirds of the collection has been cataloged.

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A Day at the London International Antiquarian Book Fair : Starting a Book Collection on a Budget

A few weeks ago, I had the good fortune to be able to attend the London International Antiquarian Book Fair. My friend and fellow library student (Jill, for future reference) managed to secure tickets through her workplace. She and I are both rare books people, and I think it is

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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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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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The American Bookbinders Museum: A Brief History of the Museum, Library, and Archive

Founder Tim James has been collecting bookbinding material for twenty years, but the initial hunt wasn’t always for a museum. He began the collection with the thought that upon retiring he could move up to the Gold Country, open a 19th century bookbindery, and become the town curmudgeon. Fortunately for

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