Large Pages into Small Spaces

The three conservators in the McLean Conservation Department (Jennifer Rosner, Andrea Krupp, and Alice Austin) are all active members of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers.  On November 5 and 6, 2011, they hosted a workshop at the Library Company on map-folding called “Large Pages into Small Spaces: Folding Paper to Fit into a Binding Structure.” It was taught by Pam Spitzmueller, the James W. Needham Chief Conservator for Special Collections at Harvard University. Older atlases offer many examples of how this challenge was solved in the past, so Pam started by giving a presentation on some of the atlases that she has encountered over the years. Then the twelve people attending the workshop learned different ways to fold maps into book structures, and each person made a “sampler binding” to try some of them out. The workshop was both fun and interesting, and as you can see in the photos, the room was filled with cut up and folded AAA maps and out-of-date modern atlases!

Chief of Conservation
Jennifer Rosner

The Library Company of Philadelphia
1314 Locust St., Philadelphia, PA 19107
TEL 215-546-3181 FAX 215-546-5167
http://www.librarycompany.org