Registration has opened for the fourteenth annual Book History Workshop at Texas A&M University, scheduled for May 17-22, 2015.  Taking place in Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, the Workshop provides an intensive, hands-on introduction to the history of books and printing.  Applicants who are accepted into the program and send their deposit before February 23 will receive a $100 registration discount.
This five-day workshop allows participants to create a complete facsimile of an eighteenth-century pamphlet by setting, correcting, and imposing type on an English common press, then printing the book in three octavo formes.  The Workshop’s projects extend to other handpress-era technologies, including typecasting, papermaking, bookbinding, and illustration. Together, these projects provide a unique opportunity for book historians, literary scholars, librarians, and students to experience a complement of practices used to create books from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
The Workshop acts as an introduction to book history, providing participants the rare opportunity to learn principles of analytical bibliography through discussion sessions.  Topical lectures about book production methods will draw from Cushing Library’s extensive historical collections.  Students will also experience hands-on sessions in which they will cast type from molten lead alloy, pull sheets of paper, and cut relief illustrations.  The activities of the week are incorporated into the finished project, the pamphlet bound in wrappers of handmade paper, featuring printers’ devices cut by each member of the Workshop.
The Workshop has traditionally attracted scholars, librarians, archivists, students, teachers, and collectors, as well as those pursuing personal interests in book history.  Three graduate credit hours are available to students through the Workshop’s partnership with the Department of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas.
To register, find out more, examine a brochure, or see photographs from previous Workshops, please go to: http://cushing.library.tamu.edu/events/book-history-workshop, or contact Todd Samuelson at todd.samuelson <at> tamu <dot> edu.