Some years ago the Library established a Fine Bindings Collection, formed initially by transferring rare, fragile or interesting bindings found elsewhere in the printed collections. Further examples have been added to the Collection over the years. A former member of the Library’s staff, Eiluned Rees, wrote a series of articles about bookbindings in the National Library of Wales for the Library’s Journal between 1983 and 1990.
Following the retirement a couple of years ago of Julian Thomas as Head of the Bindery, efforts are being made to maintain expertise in this aspect of the Library’s collections. An internal seminar was held earlier this year, bringing together staff working on rare books, manuscripts and maps, in which we each brought examples of interesting bindings from the collections we are responsible for and discussed their distinctive features and how they should be catalogued.
I subsequently attended a training day at the British Library’s Preservation Advisory Centre in London on “Understanding and caring for bookbindings”. The day included sessions by David Pearson of the Guildhall Library on “Binding types and structures and their significance”, and by Karen Limper-Herz of the British Library on “Describing bindings”, as well as sessions on the conservation of bookbindings.
As a result of this training and the contacts made with experts in the field, I shall now be able to begin creating full descriptions of our Fine Bindings Collection in the Library’s electronic catalogue. Many of them have already been described in the microfiche catalogues, but these are only available to visitors to the building. I hope that cataloguing the collection online will make it accessible to a much wider audience.
Timothy Cutts