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From the mid-15th to the 17th century girdle-books were produced and used in Europe. It is a little known book format that the user carried attached to the belt or by hand by grasping the extension of the binding. Today only twenty-four girdle-books are left and documented in museums, libraries and private collections; three in the United States and twenty in Europe. Proof of their frequent use is found in hundreds of paintings, sculptures and other illustrations of the times. This rare book format has been studied, but the literature, although growing, has not produced visual and textual description and documentation of all existing girdle-books in one resource. In some cases researching the details, history, provenance and current location of all girdle-books is problematic as their locations have changed over the years, several were displaced, and some have disappeared (now considered "ghosts"), during and after the Second World War. As librarian and hand bookbinder interested in early book structures this obscure format intrigues me and two years ago I took a course in which I learned how to construct one. My co-author Mr Jim Bloxam served as one of the instructors in the course and together we decided to document the remaining girdle-books. Several authors on the subject (Glauning 1926, Szirmai 1988, and Bruckner 1995) have noted the lack of inclusive visual and textual documentation in one published resource. Our project is to examine, photograph, and describe the books in detailed bookbinding terms and to publish the results in a monograph to close this gap in the literature of bookbinding.

Stream: Books, Writing and Reading

Paper: Medieval Girdle Book Project, The

Margit J Smith has held the position as Head of Cataloging at Copley Library at the University of San Diego since 1992 and assumed responsibilities for preservation at the Library 5 years ago. Before coming to the University of San Diego, Professor Smith was a cataloging librarian at the London School of Economics, and managed the Business Library at United States International University-Europe. She is a member of the American Library Association as well as of CILIP (Formerly The Library Association (UK)). She has master's degrees in Library Science as well as in International Relations. At the University of San Diego Prof. Smith is active on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice, is a member of the Academic Assembly and a founding member of the San Diego/Imperial County Library Disaster Response Network. Additionally she teaches occasional workshops for basic book repairs under the umbrella of the California State Library. Margit J Smith has a background as hand bookbinder and conservator having attended courses at the Centro del libro in Ascona Switzerland, at the Montefiascone Summer School Library Project, and has had instruction from binders such as Bernard Middleton and Ole Olsen among others, both in the United States and Europe. She maintains a private bookbinding/restoration studio at her home.

Jim Bloxam is an Accredited Conservator/Restorer of the Institute of Paper Conservation and has an Honours Degree in Art History (First Class). His particular research interests lie mainly in the history of books; their structural qualities and their cultural context. Mr Bloxam is a Senior Book Conservator in the Conservation Dept. at Cambridge University Library, working on a wide range of materials. He has taught for the past six years at the Montefiascone (Italy) Summer School Library Project on subjects including gothic book structures, romanesque book structures and sixteenth-century girdle-books.