Ligatus is a Research Centre of the University of the Arts London. The main objective of the Centre is the study of historic bookbinding through the development of digital tools and resources with particular interest to conservation.
St. Catherine's Project

The monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai, Egypt, is the oldest active Christian monastery in the world with a unique library collection. Ligatus is offering conservation support through the St. Catherine's Project.
This project is mainly funded by the Saint Catherine Foundation.

Manuscript survey
On 3rd of March 2006, Ligatus conservators finished the condition survey of the 3,307 bound manuscripts in the old library of the Monastery. This completed the most detailed condition for a whole collection of this size, and it has involved the participation of 35 people from nine different countries.		 Printed books survey
On 1st of November 2007, the last team of conservator finished the condition survey of about 1,000 early printed books in the library, which is a good sample of the large printed books collection. The recording was done digitally using XML records and digital photography.
Boxing programme
The protection of the books in the Monastery is a high priority and the use of boxes is an essential part of that. Ligatus has developed a new type of box which will allow horizontal storage of books (as Greek-style bindings were intended to be stored) and endurance in the extremely dry conditions of Sinai.		 Cell 31A
The discovery during repairs in early 2003 of manuscript fragments glued to the walls of an alcove in the west wall of Cell 31A led to a project financed by the Ruth Breakwell memorial fund to remove the manuscript leaves and also some fragments of early paper from the late 17th-century wooden partition.
Moving programme
In October 2009 the last item of the library collections was placed in temporary boxes and stored in a safe location. The library collections will remain in storage during building work which about to start. This programme involved a large team of conservators and a sophisticated tracking system. 		Conservation workshop
During the planning for the rebuilding of the library, space has been allocated for the construction of a conservation studio. Ligatus researchers have been developing the plans for the studio.
Ligatus Summer School

Ligatus Summer School 2010

Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbuttel (Germany)

2-6 and 9-13 August 2010.

The 5th Ligatus Summer School, following the success of the courses in Volos, Patmos and Thessaloniki, is to be held this year in collaboration with the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, near Braunschweig, in northern Germany. This is an exciting new venture for us, and the opportunity to use books from this magnificent collection in our courses, will make this year’s summer school a memorable experience.

About the course:

The contribution that bindings can make to our understanding of the history and culture of the book is often neglected, but they can offer insights into the study of readership, the booktrade, and the provenance of books which are often not available elsewhere. In order to realise this potential, it is important to understand not only the history of the craft but also to learn how to record what is seen in a consistent and organised way. Librarians, cataloguers, conservators, book historians and all scholars who work with early books, need therefore to understand the structure and materials of the bindings they encounter in order to be able to record and describe them. Such descriptions of bindings are not only valuable for the management of library collections, pursuing academic research and making informed decisions about conservation, but are also important for digitisation projects as they can radically enrich the potential of image and text metadata. It is our belief that bindings should be seen as an integral part of the book, without which, our understanding of the history and use of books is often greatly circumscribed.

The purpose of the summer school is to uncover the possibilities latent in the detailed study of bookbinding and it mainly focuses on books which have been bound between the fifteenth and the early nineteenth century. While both courses concentrate in particular on the structure and materials of bookbindings, each of the two courses offered in this summer school looks at bindings from different geographical areas and with a different approach. The first course looks at the history of bookbinding as it was carried out in Europe in the period of the hand press (1450-1830), with the opportunity to look at examples from the collection during the afternoons, while the second course looks at the development of bookbinding in the eastern Mediterranean and gives hands-on training in how to observe and record bindings, again working with examples from the collection. Part of this course will include the construction of an XML data structure (schema) for recording bookbindings.

The courses are taught in English and each is open to 12 participants. Although the courses can be attended individually, participants are encouraged to attend both courses in order to get a more complete understanding of the issues discussed, through the comparison of the wide range of bookbindings considered in each week. Since these are not beginner-level courses, the participants are expected to be familiar with bookbinding terminology and have a basic knowledge of the history of book production in the periods under discussion. A basic understanding of the use of databases is also desirable for those who will attend the course in the second week.

Ligatus summer school schedule 2010
apply:  Applications are now closed for this course.

This is the current schedule for the Ligatus Summer School 2010 in Wolfenbüttel. We do not anticipate any changes to this, although sessions might need to be swapped depending on the availability of library services and the availability of books.

read more
Book Works KTP

Book Words logoLigatus logo
Book Works press release image

Book Works and the Ligatus Research Centre, University of the Arts London, secure a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) that will bring over 25-years of specialist artists books online

Book Works and Ligatus have secured a 10-month shorter Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), a part government-funded programme which helps UK businesses to improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of the knowledge, technology and skills that are available within the UK knowledge base. The project will transfer the archiving expertise at Ligatus to Book Works through the development of an innovative online archiving platform.

Book Works is a London-based contemporary visual arts publisher and commissioning organisation for artists' publications. A registered charity, Book Works aims to advance art education and disseminate visual art practice through books. As a result of its commitment to working with young artists throughout its over 25-year history, Book Works now has a unique archive of material which is, in itself, a source of inspiration for new work. Although these works are in high demand both for sales and study due to their iconic and art historical value, they are often difficult to locate in the Book Works archive because of a lack of metadata and organisation within the archive.

This KTP will develop an innovative classification framework and apply it to a prototype online content management system. This will act as the foundation for Book Works’s future fully functional online archive to enable full use of the archive by artists, researchers and customers.

This KTP will enable the company to acquire Ligatus’s skills and knowledge in online archiving, with particular focus on artistic documentation which often challenges traditional archiving methodologies. The project will be undertaken by a KTP Associate, who will be based at Book Works, employed by the university and jointly supported by an academic and Book Works supervisors. The University is currently recruiting a KTP Associate for the project which is set to begin in Summer, 2010. For Book Works, University of the Arts London is the obvious academic institution for this project with its international reputation in art and its extensive experience of successfully delivering KTPs.

Bookbinding Glossary

The main objective of this project is the compilation of a definitive bilingual glossary to describe Byzantine/Greek bookbindings by combining both the existing partial and conflicting terminologies and the new terms necessitated by the St. Catherine's library survey.
Find out more
This project is funded by the AHRC.

John Latham Archive

The visionary British artist John Latham died on 1st of January 2006. His influence on the visual arts is remarkable and yet consistently under-represented in the literature. His philosophical ideas on Events and Event Structures and 'Flat Time Theory', a unifying overview of the world, are fascinating, complex and worthy of serious study. This project focuses on John Latham's archive the survey of which will offer valuable material for this study.
Find out more
This project is funded by the AHRC and the Henry Moore Foundation.