Bookbinding workshop and the Rare Book School

I am in the process of setting up a one day bookbinding/book arts workshop for DUSLA. I'm really excited about getting my fellow librarians interested in the structures of books and how to make them as well. Unfortunately, the workshop probably won't take place until after this quarter is over, so I won't be able to include pictures on my site. I still think it's a really neat opportunity, though, so if any of you are interested in learning how to make some simple book forms, keep your eyes peeled for ads around the Rush building.

Another bookbinding event I'm excited about is a 5 day intensive Introduction to the History of Bookbinding being offered through the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. I have heard excellent things about the Rare Book School from other professional librarians and I hope that it works out that I can attend this seminar.

Website basic structure ideas

I've been doing some poking around online to see if I can find some other good sites on book arts/binding that will help give me some ideas about how I want to structure my site and also provide some good external link references. A lot of the sites I've come across are very informative, but not necessarily appealing. A good example of this is aboutbookbinding.com. It has LOTS of information (several free entire online books on binding!) but it was kind of boring to look at and a lot of the instructions are hard to follow because there aren't a lot of pictures. The Bookbinding for Beginners part of that site was a little better because it had diagrams, but I would like to have step by step photographs on my site. This book assembly photo-journal on livejournal and this bookbinding: start to finish set on flickr are closer to what I'm thinking I'd like to do. Here's another excellent instructional article on binding from a site by Brian Sawyer.

Some of the major sections I think I would like to have on my page would be

• Materials
• Basic book forms
• Paste paper
  
• Folding techniques
• Concertina
• Case Binding
• signatures
• sewing
• cover

These are just a few rough ideas, but hopefully this will give me a good start.

Finally, a final project topic!

I think I finally decided on a topic for my final project. Over the past year I've become really interested in book arts and book binding. I'm currently taking a book arts course at the Fleischer Art Memorial where I've learned how to make several types of books. I've decided to make my final website on book arts and book binding with instructions on how to make several different book forms. I think my fellow class mates will find it interesting and it'll be a great way for me to show off some of my work. It also takes care of the image licensing issue because I can simply take pictures of my own work. Now that I have a topic, I'm getting kind of excited about this project!

Website color theory

The Kuler site I posted before got me thinking about color theory for websites. I really liked the fact that it allowed you to try color combinations on your own, but I was also curious about how to use color and what things really worked. The site Kestrel Designs seemed to have some really good explanations of how to use color. I thought the page on how color conveys mood and the page on color combinations other sites have used were particular interesting.

This Web 2.0 how-to design tutorial also has some good tips.

Possible final project topic?

One of the problems I'm encountering as I think about what my final project should be on is licensing of images. I really enjoy comic books and I'm sure I could make a stellar about some of my favorites, but unfortunately I know that I don't have rights to any of the images and that they would probably be carefully copyrighted. I'm not sure how long copyright lasts after an artist's death, so an older comic like Little Nemo by Winsor McCay might be possible.

Another idea I had would be to make a site about my favorite books. Wannabe librarian, books, seems pretty straightforward, right? Greatest book lists are always a little far fetched because everybody has such different perspectives and opinions. If you were to give 20 critics a list of 20 classics and ask them to rank them, I'm sure you'd end up with 20 different lists. I suppose Best of lists are kind of fun simply for their inflammatory nature. It gives people something to argue and debate about. For example, this list from the Telegrah claims it is the "Perfect Library." It's pretty good, I suppose but perfect? Come on! No library of only 110 books could possibly be perfect.

It'd be easy enough for me to make a site about my favorite books, give synopsizes, and critiques, but I'm not sure how wide of an appeal it would have since it's simply my own opinion. Also, I think I might run into the problem of image rights again if I wanted to include pictures of the covers. Perhaps it would work if I took my own pictures of the covers?

I'll have to do some more brainstorming to come up with ideas where I can easily use images of my own.

Colors

I've had sort of a mental block with blogging because I'm having a hard time coming up with a topic I want to do my final project on. Once I figure out what it is I want to do, I'll be able to use this blog as a place to organize my ideas, collect sites that would be useful for reference, and share tips and woes of web page building.

Although I'm not exactly sure what topic I want my website to be about, I know that I really want to make it well designed. There's so much content on the web to look at that if a site isn't visually appealing, I know that I tend to turn off to it even if the information is good because there's so much else to look at. Because this is my first website, I know that I'm not going to be able to make it really technically complicated . However, I think that by carefully planning out my design and choosing a good color palate, I can still end up with a very professional and classy looking site.

This website, kuler.adobe.com, has some really good color palate themes that look very modern and chic. I particularly like the Orange on Olive and the Firenze. This is a particularly helpful site because once you find the palate you like, you can click on the little icon with the sliders on it and it will give you the hex values, CMYK, RGB, and more for each one.

NEXGENLIB

One of the first really useful library professional related websites I found when I started library school was the Google group NEXGENLIB. It describes itself as a, "Discussion group for young, young-at-heart, and forward thinking libraryfolk." It seems like there's a good cross section of users from current MSLIS students to professionals. Discussion threads have ranged from job postings, to professional and ethical questions, to interview and coursework advice. The users seem friendly and genuinely eager to help out fellow librarians, so it's a good place to ask any library related questions.

You can find out more about it and sign up by going to Google groups and searching for the group "nexgenlib." You can also click on the following link to take you to the NEXGENLIB page: http://groups.google.com/group/NEXGENLIB?hl=en