Students in the program, which is available to those with all levels of experience, will receive instruction in the Letterpress and Bindery Studios. They will also have the chance to participate in special book arts workshops like "The Dancing Pen," which will focus on the art of cursive penmanship.
Recent news suggests, however, that the world beyond the workshop's walls seems to be rejecting the "art" of the printed book. The closing of all Borders stores in July and the growing rumors about Barnes and Noble's imminent bankruptcy have bookworms flustered. The skyrocketing sales of e-reader devices slated to reach about 67 million by 2016, according to a November article in Bloomberg Businessweek indicate that digital content is now winning out over printed copy.
"No more books that's it," journalist and essayist Michael Wolff wrote in a recent Vanity Fair article, saying everybody is anticipating "the end of paper, printing and binding."
Despite the recent hardships of the publishing industry, participants in Dartmouth's Book Arts Workshop still spend their weeknights working to perfect the same printing and binding techniques Wolff believes are on the way out.
The Book Arts Workshops, as well as Dartmouth's Book Arts Studio Seminar course, listed as College Courses 11, are popular among students and community members, according to library collections conservator Deborah Howe. This term, there was a waiting list for the workshops, according to Howe. Although the program is not heavily advertised, it does fill up quickly.
"I first found out that we had the program my sophomore Fall, but I didn't get in," former Book Arts participant Shengzhi Li '12 said. "Last term, I remembered to sign up early."
Yoon Ji Kim '13 also became hooked on the Book Arts studio her freshman Fall.
"I wanted to have some little handmade notebooks to give to people as gifts," she said. "I also wanted to see what bindery was like."
Kim took a class called Coptic Binding, in which she studied a specific stitching technique that allows the pages in the book to lie flat. In another class, Kim learned how to make an imitation Moleskine notebook.
Kim is a member of The Dartmouth Staff.
The Book Arts studio contains several different kinds of late 19th and early 20th-century printing presses, including a Pearl Press, a Washington Press and an electric Vandercook Press, according to Howe. Many of our current computer font styles including Futura, Baskerville, Emerson and Palatino come from the types used on old-fashioned printing presses, Howe said.
"A lot of our current vocabulary also comes from printing presses," Howe said. "Mind your p's and q's' originated when people had to be careful that they put letters in the correct place in the type case."
Students interested in the Letterpress Studio must first attend a series of introductory classes and then develop their own lettering projects, according to Howe. Students in the Bookbinding Studio take part in three to four sequential core classes. They first learn how to handle the equipment and make a basic pamphlet and then develop more advanced bookbinding techniques such as folding, measuring, cutting and ultimately designing their own projects.
"The more you come, the more expertise you get," Howe said. "Some people get into really elaborate projects."
The Book Arts Workshop offers an annual Book Arts Prize. Students can receive up to $500 for creating a hand-bound and printed book in the studio.
Participating in a Book Arts workshop is a significant commitment, according to Kim.
"The classes take a long time, about three hours, so you really have to make the time to go," she said.
In spite of this time-consuming process, an appreciation for the aesthetic value of a printed book motivates many Book Arts participants, Howe said.
"With the rise of electronics and e-books, it's becoming more and more important for people to come back to the studio," she said. "This is an artistic way for people to creatively express the written word."
In his Vanity Fair article, Wolff questions whether a "counter-revolution" or a "fight for pp&b [paper, printing and binding]" would one day emerge. "Can literature resist? An aesthetic rebellion?" he wrote.
For some, participating in the Book Arts workshops might represent such a "counter-revolution" or an aesthetic rebellion. Other Book Arts participants, however, believe the printed book is in fact on the way out.
"I read a lot of books, but I guess the decline of the physical book was bound to happen eventually," Kim said.
While other students echoed the nostalgic sentiments for print media, some welcome the transition to electronic books.
"Ultimately the decline seems inevitable, but the essence of literature is in the text, so I love my Kindle," Li said. "Perhaps one day books will become like written letters today time consuming, but all the more rare and precious."
Although it is becoming increasingly more important to acquire electronic books and journals which students can access at all hours and use to display complex diagrams and three-dimensional images it still remains crucial to amass printed texts, according to Elizabeth Kirk, associate librarian for information resources. Few electronic resources, for example, offer non-English texts, and many students still need to study older, handwritten manuscripts, she said.
"People also have an emotional attachment to texts," Kirk said. "There's a difference between holding a 500-year-old manuscript and holding a floppy disk."
Although she is a Kindle owner, Li also said that she holds such a "personal attachment" to physical texts.
"To have a book in your hand especially old books is a very special feeling, and no electronic media can ever replace it," Li said. "The oldest book I own is an 1835 volume of poetry, and when I read it, it's like interacting with its authors, its age when it was printed and all its past owners."
Although Wolff's "counter-revolution" might not happen anytime soon, Kirk said that it will be a long time before tangible texts become extinct.
"Some people say the content of a book is intellectually attached to the physical book, and print books continue to inspire authors," Kirk said. "Print is going to have a long run here."
