It may be the age of the Kindle and iPad, but Brien Beidler sees his future in good old-fashioned books.
The senior chemistry major is a bookbinder, or book conservationist, and he spends three days a week mending pages, spines and covers in the Special Collections department of the Addlestone Library. It’s meticulous work, and right up Beidler’s alley. He was romanced long ago by the warped boards, cracked leather and yellowed pages of old books.
“I would do it every minute of every day if I could,” Beidler says of his repair work. “I love how old books are such a good mixture of beauty and function.”
Last summer, courtesy of a Summer Undergraduate Research with Faculty grant and the support of Special Collections head Marie Ferrara, Beidler traveled to Scranton, Pa., to learn from a master bookbinder. It was an experience he called the “most exhausting week of my life,” but also among his life’s most rewarding. He was encouraged enough by the experience to want to make bookbinding his profession, and possibly do postgraduate work at Boston’s famed North Bennet Street School for craftsmen.
“There’s just something about holding books,” says Beidler, who often reads the tomes he repairs. “I would rather have 20 pounds of books on my back than a one-pound electronic tablet. The extra strain on my body is totally worth the enjoyment I get.”
