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Among the many books in original bindings in Marsh's Library, Dublin, a surprisingly large number are in decorated blind- or gold-tooled, calf, pigskin or goatskin bindings, which date from the 15th to the 19th centuries. The bindings come from all over Europe, ranging from Ireland to eastern Europe. While most were made in England, some fine and interesting examples from Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Holland are also included. In this volume, leading scholar Mirjam Foot first gives an overview of how books were bound by hand and then describes the bindings by country of origin, within each section treating them chronologically and by type of decoration. The detailed descriptions of the bindings are illustrated with 52 black and white photos and 8 colour plates. Contents: Introduction; Great Britain; Ireland; France; Spain, Italy and Russia; The Netherlands and Germany; Afterword; Selected literature; Index.

The book-binding technique (BBT) has been developed to minimise extra detachment and mobilisation of the duodenum for totally laparoscopic distal gastrectomy (TLDG) with Billroth I reconstruction. Because of the cost-effectiveness and maximisation of the anastomotic lumen, we have modified the BBT in collaboration with the laparoscopic hand-sewing technique. Herein, we introduce a modified BBT (MBBT) and discuss its outcomes. The MBBT was performed using laparoscopic hand-sewing techniques with an absorbable barbed suture instead of using linear staples to close the defect of the anterior wall of the anastomosis site. The data of 163 patients with gastric cancer who underwent TLDG with Billroth I reconstruction performed with MBBT were retrospectively collected between April 2014 and December 2019. The mean anastomosis time was 25 min (interquartile range, 21 − 30). Postoperative complications of Clavien-Dindo grade II or greater occurred in 20 of the 163 patients (12.3%). Anastomotic leakage occurred in three patients (1.8%), whereas anastomotic stenosis occurred in one patient (0.6%). The cumulative incidence rate of anastomotic stenosis that required endoscopic dilation at 1 year was 1.2%. The MBBT method may be safe, practical, cost-effective and results in reduced staple use and anastomotic time.

Preserving cultural heritage can be efficiently supported by structured and semantic representation of historical artifacts. Bookbinding, a critical aspect of book history, provides valuable insights into past craftsmanship, material use, and conservation practices. However, existing bibliographic records often lack the depth needed to analyze bookbinding techniques, provenance, and preservation status. This paper presents a proof-of-concept system that explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) can support knowledge graph engineering within the context of 19th-century Greek bookbinding (1830–1900), and as a result, generate a domain-specific ontology and a knowledge graph. Our ontology encapsulates materials, binding techniques, artistic styles, and conservation history, integrating metadata standards like MARC and Dublin Core to ensure interoperability with existing library and archival systems. To validate its effectiveness, we construct a Neo4j knowledge graph, based on the generated ontology and utilize Cypher Queries—including LLM-generated queries—to extract insights about bookbinding practices and trends. This study also explores how semantic reasoning over the knowledge graph can identify historical binding patterns, assess book conservation needs, and infer relationships between bookbinding workshops. Unlike previous bibliographic ontologies, our approach provides a comprehensive, semantically rich representation of bookbinding history, methods and techniques, supporting scholars, conservators, and cultural heritage institutions. By demonstrating how LLMs can assist in ontology/KG creation and query generation, we introduce and evaluate a semi-automated pipeline as a methodological demonstration for studying historical bookbinding, contributing to digital humanities, book conservation, and cultural informatics. Finally, the proposed approach can be used in other domains, thus, being generally applicable in knowledge engineering.

In the field of bookbinding, accurately and efficiently detecting signature sequences during the binding process is crucial for enhancing quality, improving production efficiency, and advancing industrial automation. Despite significant advancements in object detection technology, verifying the correctness of signature sequences remains challenging due to the small size, dense distribution, and abundance of low-quality signature marks. To tackle these challenges, we introduce the Book Signature Marks Detection (BSMD-YOLOv8) model, specifically designed for scenarios involving small, closely spaced objects such as signature marks. Our proposed backbone, the Lightweight Multi-scale Residual Network (LMRNet), achieves a lightweight network while enhancing the accuracy of small object detection. To address the issue of insufficient fusion of local and global feature information in PANet, we design the Low-stage gather-and-distribute (Low-GD) module and the High-stage gather-and-distribute (High-GD) module to enhance the model’s multi-scale feature fusion capabilities, thereby refining the integration of local and global features of signature marks. Furthermore, we introduce Wise-IoU (WIoU) as a replacement for CIoU, prioritizing anchor boxes with moderate quality and mitigating harmful gradients from low-quality examples. Experimental results demonstrate that, compared to YOLOv8n, BSMD-YOLOv8 reduces the number of parameters by 65%, increases the frame rate by 7 FPS, and enhances accuracy, recall, and mAP50 by 2.2%, 8.6%, and 3.9% respectively, achieving rapid and accurate detection of signature marks.

The lithography books of Iran, despite their historical importance, have received relatively little attention. This study aims to comprehensively examine an Iranian lithography book from the Qajar period titled Hayat al-Qolub, to identify its materials. The paper pulp, sizing, inks and leather of the bookbinding were analyzed through various methods, including staining tests for identifying paper pulp, light microscopy, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, Micro-spectrophotometry, multi-band imaging, SEM-EDS and LC-MS. The findings suggest that the book was made of rag paper composed of linen and cotton fibers, while animal glue and gypsum were used for paper sizing and filling, respectively. Carbon black was used as black printing ink and cochineal was used for red ink. The leather cover of the book was made of goat skin that was tanned with gallotannins and unhaired with lime. Evidence of the use of liming in the unhairing process was also observed in this leather. This research enhances our understanding of paper and bookmaking techniques of the Qajar period in Iran.

The article discusses the cloth-bound and decorated books stored in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, and expands on the use of textile depending on the content of the book and its purpose.

This article examines the intersecting forces of gender, class, and education in early twentieth-century Britain through a feminist reading of Pip Williams’ historical novel The Bookbinder of Jericho. Centering on the fictional character Peggy Jones—a working-class young woman employed in the Oxford University Press bindery—the study explores how women’s intellectual ambitions were constrained by economic hardship, institutional gatekeeping, and patriarchal social norms. By integrating close literary analysis with historical research on women bookbinders, educational reform, and the impact of World War I, the paper reveals how the novel functions as both a narrative of personal development and a broader critique of systemic exclusion. Drawing on the genre of the female Bildungsroman, the article argues that Peggy’s journey—from bindery worker to aspiring scholar—mirrors the real struggles of working-class women who sought education and recognition in a male-dominated society. It also highlights the significance of female solidarity, especially among those who served as volunteers, caregivers, and community organizers during wartime. Through the symbolic geography of Oxford and its working-class district of Jericho, the novel foregrounds the spatial and social divides that shaped women’s lives and labor. Ultimately, this study shows how The Bookbinder of Jericho offers not only a fictional portrait of one woman’s aspirations but also a feminist intervention that recovers and reinterprets the overlooked histories of British women workers. The novel becomes a literary space for reclaiming agency, articulating resistance, and criticizing the gendered boundaries of knowledge, work, and belonging.

Efforts to read medieval manuscript waste recycled as bookbinding material in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have resulted in the chemical analysis of four books housed at the University Library of Southern Denmark and the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington DC. Four green coloured book bindings have been investigated by optical microscopy, micro X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy, and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The results show that the green pigments used to obscure the manuscript waste in all four cases contain orpiment (As2S3) and indigo (C16H11N2O2). Although the books were printed in diverse places in Europe—Basel, Bologna, and Lübeck—the styles of their bindings indicate that they were likely bound in the same region in the same period. It is further likely that they acquired their arsenic-rich paint as part of the bookbinding process. Issues concerning the toxicity, health issues for library staff, conservators and researchers handling the books are also addressed.

The transition from buying books unbound or temporarily bound to buying them already bound represents a fundamental turning point in literary history, yet bookbinding's influence on the novel remains underexplored. This essay challenges two \"truths\" about the novel's material forms: first, that most Romantic-era readers would have purchased novels in unbound sheets or temporary board bindings, and second, that most historical readers would have viewed board bindings as \"temporary.\" Using quantitative analysis of available datasets and bibliographic research on hundreds of volumes in their original bindings, the essay argues that novels were marketed to readers as ready-bound objects much earlier than is commonly understood.

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny's Archaeology of Tibetan Books provides a comprehensive guide to the making of Tibetan books. Concerned with the relation of papers, inks, and layout to questions of provenance and dating, this work is a must-have companion to any textual analysis.