Stories in the Making in a Nutshell

The process of making our books taught me so much about a subject that I had previously known very little about. We were able to go through the outdated process of making a book that the people in the 1700’s went through in order to publish books. We were taught the process of making paper, binding a book, setting type, and using a Benjamin press. All of these are things that I had previously known nothing about and never dreamed of being able to do. The reason I showed interest in this particular seminar is that I really love objects with history and a story behind them which made this class about historical books and the method to make them so interesting to me. 

            On the last day of class, Dr. Samuelson gave us a parting speech that asked us to think about the future of books. With the growing popularity of Nooks and EBooks, paper books may one day be deemed obsolete, and bookstores will go out of business much like the movie rental business. I had previously thought about this topic and had even written about it earlier in the year on the seminar’s blog page, but I have thought about it much more now. In some ways, not having the traditional books could be useful such as not having to spend hundreds of dollars on college books and instead paying much less for online books. Online books would also never go out of stock like the traditional paper books do. After making our books from scratch though, I have come to respect paper books so much more and understand their significance. Books contain within them secrets of the past that EBooks could never have. If I wrote my name and the year I made it on my book I made and someone a hundred years from now picked it up, they would know who owned that book and around when it was made. Every mistake I had made in making the book would be evident, but these mistakes would give the book character. Uneven binding would help distinguish my book from my fellow classmate’s similar copies. These differences are what make books so important to history. We have studied again and again historical books in class that, through the seal stamped on the inside cover or the opinions of a past reader on the margins of the book, we can trace the history of the book and know its story. I have come to learn that if traditional paper books disappear then a large part of history might as well.

            In all, I greatly enjoyed this seminar. It not only taught me an amazingly awesome (if outdated) skill, but it also taught me how very important books are to our history.