Rare Books and Manuscripts

Short BBC film on traditional methods of parchment production. 4 minutes.

This Getty Museum video shows the processes of parchment preparation, writing, illumination, and binding of medieval manuscripts. 7 minutes.

A series of seven short films produced by the British Library documenting various aspects of the manuscript production process. 17 minutes.

Made by Encyclopedia Britannica in collaboration with the Library of Congress, this video chronicles the book production process in the late 1940s. 5 minutes.

Produced by the Book Manufacturers' Institute, this short film documents the process of book production in 2023. 8 minutes.

Short film by Anglia TV featuring footage from Hayle Mill in Kent, England showing the process of hand papermaking. 15 minutes.

Documents the papermaking operation at the University of Iowa's Center for the Book. Narrated by Timothy Barrett. 12 minutes.

Documents the 2016 attempt to produce 2000 sheets of handmade paper in a single workday. Narrated by Timothy Barrett. 7 minutes.

English-language version of this short film documenting the production of washi paper in Kurotani, Kyoto prefecture, Japan. 22 minutes.

Short film produced in 1970 by the Bedfordshire Record Office, showing paper marbling as conducted at the firm of Douglas Cockerell and Son. 13 minutes.

Series produced by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This film describes the process of cutting and printing a relief block. 5 minutes.

Series produced by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This film describes the process of cutting and printing an intaglio plate. 9 minutes.

Series produced by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This film describes the process of creating and printing with a lithographic stone. 5 minutes.

A demonstration by Andrew Stein Raftery, Associate Professor of Printmaking, Rhode Island School of Design. In this video Andrew Raftery creates a copper engraving with the same methods done by the old masters of Europe. 7 minutes.

Professor Paul Coldwell, of the University of the Arts London, introduces printmaking techniques. 14 minutes.

Produced by National Museums Liverpool and featuring Nora Hammenberg of Stone Tree Press, this film shows the process of preparing and printing from a lithographic stone. 5 minutes.

A series of five short videos featuring Stan Nelson of Atelier Press & Letterfoundry, showing the process of cutting punches, striking matrices, and casting type. 25 minutes.

Produced by the Folger Shakespeare Library, this short demo shows how a Renaissance-era printing press operated. 4 minutes.

Shot at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium, this film covers cutting a type punch; making a copper strike and justifying the matrix; casting and dressing the type; composition, imposition, and proof-reading; inking and running off the sheets; stop-press corrections. 22 minutes.

Produced by the University of Houston College of Technology and the Printing Museum, this film documents production of type with a linotype machine. 6 minutes.

Documents the last night of operation of linotype used in publishing the New York Times. 28 minutes.

This is a full-length feature documentary on the linotype machine. 77 minutes.

Former Monotype operator Claude Clotier from East Windsor, CT explains the use and operation of the Monotype keyboard and caster, one of the first automatic typesetting machines. The Monotype keyboard is on display at The Vintage Radio and Communications Museum of Connecticut. 10 minutes.

Written and produced by Glenn Fleishman on behalf of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at The Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus, OH. 6 minutes.

During the hand-press period, printers and publishers thought of their books in terms of the size and number of whole sheets of paper needed to produce them. An immediate concern in planning an edition was to establish its format, the way in which its sheets of paper would be folded into gatherings so that they could be sewn together and bound in an efficient and convenient manner. Written and narrated by Terry Belanger; directed by Peter Herdrich. 30 minutes.