Contents: Project | Course | Project Bibliography | Creator
Project
This digital exhibition was created by Brandis Malone as a final project for The Book 1450 to the Present. The goal of this assignment was for students to analyze an aspect of book history they found particularly interesting. After completing the course, Brandis decided to maintain the site and continue to work on it, adding examples from her own personal library.
Students were required to:
- Engage meaningfully with books and demonstrate that they have learned in class how to look at books and why the study of books and their history is important.
- Demonstrate that they can communicate effectively and professionally—facts, deductions, assessments, and stories connected to some aspect of the history of the book.
The Spring 2023 History of the Book from 1450 to the Present was taught by Rebecca Baumann, Head of Public Services and Associate Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at the Lilly Library.
“This is a course about books: beautiful books, ugly books, old books, new books. We will learn how and why books were made at different times and places, and we will also meet some of the people who made the books and think about the people who might have read the books. We will focus on the book as a cultural object—that is, a physical thing whose physicality matters and which can give us insight into the culture that created it.”
Project Bibliography
- “Bindings Designers in PBO: Biographies and Examples.” Publishers’ bindings online. https://bindings.lib.ua.edu/designers2.html.
- “Burn and Company (London): Organisations: Ra Collection: Royal Academy of Arts.” Royal Academy of Arts. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/organisation/burn-and-company-london.
- Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall. Encyclopedia of the Book. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2001.
- Heritage, Barbara, and Ruth-Ellen St Onge. “Bindings.” Essay. In Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day. How Manuscript, Printed, and Digital Texts Are Made, 161–235. Ann Arbor, MI: Legacy Press, 2022.
- “Maurice Prendergast.” Smithsonian American Art Museum. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/maurice-prendergast-3875.
- Minsky, Richard. The Art of American Book Covers: 1875-1930. New York, NY: George Braziller, 2013.
- Suarez, Michael Felix, H. R. Woudhuysen, and David Pearson. “Bookbinding.” Essay. In The Book: A Global History, 245–57. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Creator
Brandis Malone is a second-year master’s student in the dual Russian and library science program at Indiana University. She is specializing in archives and records management, as well as rare books and manuscripts. After completing her degree in spring 2024 she plans to work as a rare books cataloger.