Week 1: August 4th-8th 2008

Course: Special Collections Librarianship: Operations & Administration
Faculty: Lynda Claassen, University of California San Diego and David Zeidberg, Huntington Library

Description: An introduction to the principles and practice of special collections librarianship, with an emphasis on rare books.  Topics to be covered include: the definition and role of special collections, audiences and users, collection development, intellectual and bibliographic access, exhibitions and other outreach programs, preservation, physical facilities and security, grants and development, donor relations, ethics, intellectual property issues, and the impact of digitization on special collections operations and services. Institutional politics and culture and their implications for special collections will be discussed.

This course provides a conceptual and practical overview of special collections librarianship. It is intended for those who are interested in special collections librarianship, as well as those who have had limited formal training, instruction, or experience. We will consider how special collections contributes to fulfilling the teaching and research mission of educational and cultural institutions and examine strategies for enhancing and expanding the use of special collections among a variety of constituencies, especially in college, university, and independent research libraries. Current trends in higher education and libraries, including technology, will be considered from the perspective of their impact on special collections. The course will cover opportunities and challenges of the current environment, in particular maintaining core functions of special collections while adding new audiences and activities.

Participants will visit several important special collections libraries in the Los Angeles area; UCLA's Department of Special Collections, the Research Library at the Getty; The Huntington Library, and the Libraries of the Claremont Colleges.

Requirements: In their personal statement, applicants should provide a brief description of their library or special collections experience, the nature of their interest in this course, and specific topics or issues they would like to see addressed.

Course: Donors and Libraries
Faculty: Susan M. Allen, Getty Research Institute and William P. Barlow, Jr., Barlow & Hughan

Description: Particularly aimed at rare book and special collections librarians who deal on a regular basis with donors (or who would like to increase their level of activity in this area); also open to donors  (and prospective donors) and booksellers who would like to know more about how libraries and institutional personnel deal with gifts (and with prospective gifts). Topics include: needs and opportunities (the American tradition of gifts to libraries, privileges and responsibilities of donors and libraries, and dealing with bureaucracies); the institutional framework (institutional realities, dealing with changing priorities); library-donor relations (building working relationships, friends' groups, fulfilling obligations, coping with staff changes); donor research, tax and legal matters (tax incentives, deeds of gift, gift/ purchase arrangements, gift vs. deposit, appraisals, institutional  record-keeping).

Course: The History of the Book in Hispanic America, 16th – 19th Centuries
Faculty: Daniel J. Slive, University of California San Diego and David Szewczyk, Philadelphia Rare Books and Manuscripts Company

Description:

This course will present a comprehensive introduction to the history of the book in Hispanic America from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.  The focus will be on colonial period imprints, ca. 1539 through ca. 1830, produced throughout the region.  Topics will include the introduction and dissemination of the printing press; the elements of book production (paper, ink, type, illustrations, bindings); printers and publishers; authors and illustrators; audiences and market; monopolies; and censors, collectors, and libraries.  Additional selected subjects to be discussed include the art of the Spanish American book (including 19th-century lithography), modern private and institutional collectors, and reference sources.  The course will include first-hand examination of materials in class and field trips to UCLA Special Collections, the Huntington Library, and the Getty Research Institute to view additional rare Hispanic American resources.  Intended for special collections librarians, area studies bibliographers, institutional and private collectors, members of the trade, and scholars with an interest in the region, knowledge of Spanish is not necessary.

Course: Descriptive Bibliography
Faculty: Carl Berkhout, University of Arizona

Description: This introductory course is intended for special-collections librarians, members of the rare-book trade, and bibliographers whose scholarly work requires a practical knowledge of the precise, detailed physical description of early printed books. It will address all matters involving the determination and description of a putative ideal copy; the correct distinction of editions, issues, states, and impressions; the accurate presentation of title-page, colophon, and other internal information; the identification of paper and watermarks, type, and illustrative contents; and the treatment of other features and circumstances of printing and distribution. We shall focus above all on getting exactly right the understanding and close description of the format and collation of even the most complex books. We shall be concerned chiefly with books from the hand-press period -from the invention of printing to about 1800- but as time permits we shall also consider some of the earliest significant innovations of the machine age. Each class day will involve an intensive combination of lecture, supervised in-class exercises (largely the writing of full descriptions of progressively difficult original books in hand), and individual guidance.

Requirements: In their personal statements applicants should clearly describe all education, experience (or not), and professional expectations bearing upon this course. Although the course has no formal language requirements, students should prepare themselves with at least a functional bibliographic knowledge of as many classical and modern Indo-European languages as possible-chiefly Latin, German, French, and Italian. The course readings are not merely suggested; it is imperative that every student will have read these texts carefully.

Week 2: August 11th-15th

Course: Book Illustration Processes to 1900
Faculty: Terry Belanger, Rare Book School

Description: The identification of illustration processes and techniques, including (but not only) woodcut, etching, engraving, stipple, aquatint, mezzotint, lithography, wood engraving, steel engraving, process line and halftone relief, collotype, photogravure, and color printing. The course will be taught almost entirely from an extensive collection of original examples of illustration processes owned by the University of Virginia's Rare Book School and lent to CALRBS for this course.

Requirements: In their personal statement, prospective applicants should describe the extent of their formal and/or informal background in the field.

Course: Book Collecting: History and Techniques
Faculty: Bruce Whiteman, Head Librarian, The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA

Description: This course will be of interest to both neophyte and experienced book collectors, private and institutional. The first half of the course will focus on the history of bibliophily in Europe and North America, beginning with the ancients and progressing through to the 21st century. We will examine how books are gathered into collections: why collecting happens, how books spread through Europe in both ancient and modern times, who the great collectors were, and the records they left behind of their collections, whether they survive or not. The second half of the course will focus on the ways in which collections are born and grow, including booksellers and the book trade, auctions, the scholarly and bibliophilic literature, description and terminology, building a reference library, the care of collections, the use and abuse of the Internet, book collecting clubs and societies, and values. Although not a course in bibliography, the basics of book structures (paper, type, binding, and printing) will be given some attention as well in response to students’ needs.

Members of the course will visit at least one Los Angeles antiquarian bookshop and one private collector. The course will be taught at the Clark Library.

Requirements: Students will be expected to own and to have read John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors (8th edition) and Nicolas Basbanes’ A Gentle Madness. A list of further readings will be supplied in advance. An effort will be made to incorporate individual student’s particular bibliophilic interests into the course content, so all students are encouraged to contact the instructor in advance in order to discuss their areas of collecting or proposed collecting.

Course: The Book in the West, With an Emphasis on California
Faculty: Gary Kurutz, California State Library

Description: This course presents an introduction to the history of the book in California and an exploration of classic Western Americana. Topics will include 1) the bibliography and bibliographers of the Golden West with profiles of Robert E. Cowan, Henry R. Wagner, J. Frank Dobie, Carl I. Wheat, Francis P. Farquhar, Ramon Adams, Jeff Dykes, Lawrence Clark Powell, and others; 2) The Zamorano 80 (the most famous list of the important books of the West), Dawson 80, Washington 89, Arizona 50, and other lists; 3) The making of a Gold Rush bibliography; 4) Great illustrated books from Catlin to Landacre; 5) A Southland Bohemia: Charles Lummis to Ward Ritchie and print culture along the Arroyo Seco; 6) The Nineteenth Century book trade with a look at pioneer printing, publishing, and bookselling and early library formation and reading in the west; 7) fine press books and bibliophilic organizations. Some miscellaneous subjects will be included such as cookbooks, promotional literature, trade catalogs, books on pioneer auto trips to the West, and ephemera. Visits to libraries, an antiquarian bookseller, and a private collector specializing in Western Americana will be a part of the course.

Course: Preservation Stewardship of Library Collections
Faculty: Mark S. Roosa, Pepperdine University

Description: An introduction to the principles and practices of contemporary library preservation with an emphasis on development and management of programs that make possible the responsible stewardship of analog and digital collections. Topics to be covered include: the physical characteristics of library materials, factors affecting collections and control strategies, assessing needs and setting priorities, and development and management of a balanced preservation program. Special emphasis will be placed on the role of science in preservation, conservation, reformatting endangered materials, and the safe exhibition methods. Theoretical models and innovative solutions to preservation problems will be explored as will approaches to aligning the library preservation program with the mission and agenda of the university, museum or institution. Participants will visit select libraries, preservation departments, and laboratories in the Los Angeles area and will hear from leading preservation practitioners.
Requirements: In their personal statement, applicants should provide a brief description of their library or preservation experience, the nature of their interest in this course, and specific topics or issues they would like to see addressed.