blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

As every collector of rare books and documents knows, one of the biggest barriers to collecting is preservation. The effect of time, dust, light, and moisture in the environment on paper and parchment can often lead to discoloration and degradation. Care must be taken to protect delicate books and documents from being slowly destroyed by age and the elements.

This is no different for historical documents, whose caretakers endure great pains to preserve history's most important works. In the case of the Constitution of the United States, the National Archive enlisted an unlikely source to help preserve one of America's most notable documents: NASA.

     

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Each year, the Caldecott Medal is given to a children's book of exceptional quality that exhibits the highest level of artistic excellence. The illustrators given the award are selected by a committee and are believed to have substantially contributed to the children's book illustration field that year. The Caldecott Medal is the highest honor an American children's book illustrator can receive. Continuing our Caldecott Medal Winning Book Series, today we take a closer look at Emily Arnold McCully, who was awarded the medal in 1992:

     

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One of the most important innovations in human history, printing, was the ability to reproduce copies of the written word for mass consumption and distribution. Printing has taken many forms over the centuries, dating back to ancient Sumer, when documents were pressed into clay using cylinders. Methods of printing patterns onto cloth evolved into means of printing, and in ancient China, woodblock printing and eventually movable type made book printing possible throughout China, Japan, and Korea. The 16^th century was a period of massive change within the printing world as new inventions and methods revolutionized how people read.

     

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