A selection of openly available resources for studying how early printed books were made and how to work with them:
Vocabularies and working with catalogs
- John Carter’s ABC for Book Collectors: A long-running and easy to understand glossary of commonly used terms in book collecting; the online pdf of the 8th edition is a good place to start when you encounter unfamiliar terms (hosted by ILAB)
- Standard Citation Forms for Rare Materials Cataloging: Catalogs often use semi-cryptic abbreviations to refer to bibliographies and other citations; this resource from RBMS allows you to search by the abbreviated term so that you can discover that “Goff” refers to F.R. Goff’s Incunabula in Early American Libraries
- Latin Place Names: Early imprints often use the Latin form of a place name; this RBMS resource allows you to search the Latin for its vernacular, modern equivalent
- Glossary of Common Latin Terms Found in Imprints of Early Printed Books: A helpful list to consult when the entire colophon or imprint is in Latin (from RBMS)
- CERL Thesaurus: Since so many early modern personal and place names existed in multiple variants, it can be helpful to consult this thesaurus, which brings together standard authority records and variant entries into a single source
Bindings
- David Pearson et al, Preservation Advisory Centre: Bookbindings (pdf): A good introduction to basic binding structures and terms
- Matt Roberts and Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology: An online, searchable version of the standard reference work
Paper
- Timothy Barrett, “European Papermaking Techniques, 1300–1800”: A detailed account of how paper was made during this period
- Chancery Papermaking: video of Tim Barrett and his students making paper according to the papermaking techniques described above, along with context; if you don’t want to read the essay, watch the video
- Erin Blake, “Learning to ‘read’ old paper”: a good quick, illustrated account of how to recognize laid paper and wove paper
- The Memory of Paper: a project devoted to researching paper, incorporating multiple watermark archives, including the Gravell Watermark Archive
Printer’s devices
- R.B. McKerrow’s Printer’s & Publishers’ Devices in England & Scotland, 1485-1640: A facsimile of the 1913 publication online at the Internet Archive
- MAR.T.E. (Marche Tipografiche Editoriali): Printer’s devices from 17th-century Italy
- Printers’ Devices of the Ancient Book Section of the Library of the University of Barcelona
- Collection of printer’s marks at Linda Hall Library