The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

Nothing enrages me more than sophisticated biblioklepts who destroy public property for their own gain. The infamous Stephen Blumberg first springs to mind, with his elaborate and large-scale book filching career that is detailed in Nicholas Basbanes’ book, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (there’s also a good [...]

Our local weekly just published a nice article on local luthier, George Weisel. I’ve been scouring the CoOL and AIC databases for Montanan conservators of various kinds and have come up short, so it was nice to see that Missoula is home to not just one but three talented strnged instrument restorers, John Joyner [...]

The flooding in the Midwest and its effect on the libraries there have had general destruction on my mind. Not too long ago, I read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (recommend!) and there was a passage there that I copied down to put my role in the conservation world into perspective. [...]

I don’t even remember what I was looking for when I found this, but I squealed when I saw it:
The Bindery in a Box!
Made by Dea Sasso of Massachusetts, this set of binding equipment collapses into a nice portable carrying case. I’ve poked around the web, and people who have used it love it [...]

I just saw this post that a friend of mine shared in my feed reader, and had to pass it along. From the ever-funny, FAIL Blog
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Click the image to see the original post. The text reads:
book rental service? was just thinking. my sister does -alot- of reading, and spends like $1000 a [...]

One of the loveliest summers I ever spent was in the employ of the Oregon State Department of Agriculture. I set and check both gypsy moth and Japanese beetle traps. I worked out of my own home, set my own hours, drove a hilarious beater government K car, drove around the fringes of [...]

Sometimes people try to help out when books begin to fall apart. One of my favorites is the hammer and nail technique. Usually someone will either nail all the way through a book and bend the nail on the other side, OR if the nails don’t go through, they’ll add more nails on [...]