IAML Online Event "Researching and Cataloging Historical Bookbindings: Two Perspectives"
Thursday, February 12, 2026
The following has reached us from the IAML Online Events Committee.
The IAML Online Events Committee and the Research Libraries Section are pleased to announce a new 2026 online event on Tuesday, February 24, 2026, at 14:00 UTC/GMT. See other time zones by clicking here.
Participation is free and open to all. The registration link is included below. Registration is required to take part in the meeting. Once registered you will get the event as a calendar item in your own time.
Event: “Researching and Cataloging Historical Bookbindings: Two Perspectives”
Duration: 90 minutes
Moderator: Dr Elisabeth Hufnagel, Berlin State Library
Speakers:
Dr Magdalena Herman (Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw)
Lecture with presentation: Hidden Histories: Recycled Materials in Early Modern Bookbindings (45 min)
Description: Early modern bookbindings are far more than protective covers: they are historical documents in their own right. The first part of this lecture introduces the basic elements of bindings, including materials, structures, and the most common types of ownership marks, to help librarians recognise what is worth noting in catalogues. Even a brief description can preserve information that is invaluable for researchers: traces of provenance, evidence of local workshop practices, and, increasingly, the hidden fragments of earlier texts and objects reused within bindings. For scholars, such details often provide the only surviving witnesses to lost manuscripts, ephemeral prints, or everyday artefacts, and they can help reconstruct the movement of books across different collections. For librarians, they offer a practical way to enrich catalogues and make collections more discoverable.
The second part of the lecture focuses on case studies of recycled materials in bindings, such as manuscript waste, printed waste, and unexpected objects repurposed by binders. Examples will include fragments of liturgical manuscripts, private correspondence, and even playing cards used as structural elements. These reused materials often preserve texts or images that survive nowhere else, offering insights into reading practices, local economies, the circulation of print, and many kinds of hidden histories.
Jennifer Ward (Editorial Center, Répertoire International des Sources Musicales)
Presentation: (Un)covering the musical past: Describing bookbindings in RISM (20 min)
Description: This presentation offers practical insight into how a bibliographic database can serve the needs of librarians and researchers in terms of describing bookbindings. Bookbindings serve a basic function of protecting what’s between the covers, but they also preserve information about owners and how the books were used. Moreover, bound music materials can uncover insights into musical practice and repertoire. The database of RISM, the foremost research tool for written historical musical sources, includes descriptions of bindings for handwritten documents, printed editions, and combinations of both. Examples will be given to illustrate how RISM catalogers approach bindings and how researchers can explore them in the RISM database.
Questions to the speakers, and other information (20 min)
Zoom registration link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ZyyjwmGIRXusy2_aciqnlw
Image: Front flyleaf of a bound volume with its owners written in, 1759. Harvard University, Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library (US-CAe) MT870 .W34 1746. RISM ID no. 900022600 (RISM Catalog | RISM Online). Available online (public domain).
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