The Book Art Research Database (BARD) is a descriptive database for book-art materials that goes beyond what typical library cataloging provides. We work at the University of Iowa whose special collections and archives hold a significant collection of artist books and book-art materials. Our development of BARD over a number of years arose from our confronting, as artists and educators, the challenge in searching for book-art materials in closed stacks that are not physically browsable. General library catalog information seldom contains searchable terms relating to material considerations. Often this requires a researcher to perform a keyword search: a search in which the user knows the term they want to find. BARD is designed to access library collections by documenting detailed information about the book arts; it includes over 175 visibly browsable search terms.

Researchers can search for book-art holdings that were created through specific production techniques, structures, and materials. They can also search for the makers involved in creating these works. A major drive behind this project has been to help reveal what has often been the invisible labor that goes into the creation of a book. We work to identify all involved, including papermakers, printers, bookbinders, calligraphers, typesetters, writers, and others.

Our initial aim was to help the artist or researcher who has specific goals, such as finding works that feature hand-lettering on handmade paper in an accordion format; or locating a piece containing poetry, watermarks, marbling, and letterpress-printed type. We also wanted to appeal to the novice, someone who may be curious but not certain what they want to see, or without the knowledge of the possible means of production used in creating book and paper works. We built a search function consisting of the following categories: Materials, Process/Technique, Papermaking Traditions, Structure/Physical Format, Enclosure, and Genre. Users may search for multiple terms in each category simultaneously. In addition, we planned a glossary that would define and describe our approach to choosing particular terms.¹ And we solicited essays by expert practitioners to offer context to the works in the database.

As most anyone working in our field is aware, settling on correct or agreed-upon terminology involves much debate and ongoing word scuffles. As Carol Kaesuk Yoon writes in Naming Nature, “It seems that every time you draw a line, the edges of your categories begin to blur. Each time you attempt to bring order, exceptions and complicating factors accumulate until whatever clear, clean rules of categorization you had created are obliterated.”² The book-art field is rife with multiple names for the same structure or particular means of production. This holds true for all areas of book making, including bookbinding, printing, and the lettering arts, but for this article we focus on papermaking, and the preponderance of descriptive terminology that, at best, clarifies a complex history and, at worst, reinforces colonial perspectives and practices.

At the start, we limited our terms to handmade paper, mould-made paper, and machine-made paper with any additional information entered under an other category or in the written description supplied for each object entered into the database. For example, we could expand on handmade paper by adding Gampi (a raw material) or Islamic-style (a process).

Over time, we decided our paper terms were overly general. The first change we made was to include commonly attributed names for specific traditions. To processes, for example, we added Asian-style, European-style, Islamic-style, and Nepalese-style papermaking. After employing these terms for several years, we saw a need for changes yet again. We specifically wanted to address terminology that failed to recognize the origins and development of a particular tradition. Among the many difficulties of attribution and naming of papermaking materials and techniques, the most prominent include: migration, trade, shifting geographical borders, as well as areas of production that gained political and, thus linguistic, dominance. We realized using the general term Asian-style to describe a particular object without acknowledging, when known, the historic papermaking technique employed to create the piece was doing a disservice to the maker, researcher, and the field. Or, to give another example, we see how calling paper Islamic might not be specific enough as papers made in this style were made by both Islamic communities and non-Islamic communities in predominantly Islamic lands. We have come to understand that there are no quick and simple ways to resolve these concerns. We continually ask ourselves, how can we build nuance into a binary-code database when nuance runs counter to the zeros-and-ones approach?

We have found that nuance usually addresses itself in the form of conversations with practitioners and researchers. We turned to our University of Iowa colleagues, paper specialists Tim Barrett and Nick Cladis, and had a conversation in which the idea of describing fibers used and processes employed emerged. Even this, of course, proved complex. Should we use the term paper mulberry even though there are numerous species of paper mulberry? Or, despite the fact that the fiber grows in many places, should we call it kozo, a word of Japanese origin, which has been commonly used in English for many years? Could we make the term more inclusive? And how? How would it effect the database’s efficacy if we chose not to use a word that many users would search for? In this instance, we settled on paper mulberry, and included in the glossary definition other terms (and their origins) used to describe this fiber. After a year of use, we believe this approach is working well and offers important information that is both identifiable for those inputting data and for those searching.

We also decided to replace common terminology for processes (Asian-style, for instance) with terminology that focused on how the sheet was formed (dipped or pulled or poured). What emerged was the realization that almost every tradition uses these sheet-formation techniques. “Actually, it’s not the dipping or pouring,” as Tim Barrett noted in our conversation. “It’s formation aid that can make a major difference in the type of paper that results from the sheet-forming process.”³ At this point we pulled pillows over our heads. After a year of attempting to use these process-based terms, we realized rather than making the database more inclusive by creating a less-Eurocentric nomenclature, we had utterly erased the many global traditions of papermaking.

We refocused. This fall, we consulted a number of papermaking practitioners for advice. This was an enriching and heartening experience. Each person we spoke to acknowledged the issues we all face, and that ongoing attempts have not resolved them; however, we are slowly finding ways to articulate the complexity involved. Papermaking has a history of twists and turns that does not allow for definitive lines between historical traditions.

We have chosen to retain the process and material descriptors, and also, to bring back terminology that highlights geographical and cultural origins to supplement the terminology that highlights materials and processes. We plan to describe these as Major Papermaking Traditions. This category will have tiers of specificity to reflect the fact that these traditions are being practiced far from their places of origins and with methods that have evolved from earlier iterations. We have asked ourselves: how do we weave the historical practices and traditions with contemporary craft practices in order to acknowledge the blending of techniques and contemporary experimentation? What do we call Indo-Islamic-style paper made in Boston or Mexico City, or paper that uses a traditionally Asian fiber with a Western-style mould? At this time, we plan to utilize style and contemporary to designate papers made in a particular tradition that has been adapted, and for papers utilizing contemporary methods (such as the use of vacuum tables or deckle-box manipulations). This is untested territory, but it became clear after months of working with terms that solely describe the formation method too much was lost.

We are on the brink of test-driving BARD and we invite the books-arts community to interact with and send feedback about the database. This is where we feel the database lives, not in the zeros and ones of terminology, but in the conversations the terminology sparks.

Authors’ Acknowledgements: Our research was supported by a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft, an Arts & Humanities Major Project Grant, and an award from the University of Iowa International Programs. This project has been a collaborative effort, that is richer for the input from these people: Maria Carolina Ceballos, Jocmarys Viruet Feliciano, Colleen Ferketish, Hannah Hacker, Sara Luz Jensen, India Johnson, Andrea Kohashi, Isabella Myers, Sara Rieger, Theresa Vishnevetskaya, and Katie Wollan. We also want to acknowledge the assistance and expert advice we have received from Timothy Barrett, Jenna Bonistalli, Nicholas Cladis, Tatiana Ginsberg, Aimee Lee, Radha Pandey, Andrea Peterson, Steph Rue, Sara T. Sauers, and Johan Solberg. All conversations have been invaluable—all missteps and inaccuracies are ours alone.

___________

NOTES

1.
In a related project we are collaborating on the launch of University of Utah’s Opening Artists Books (OAB), a new endeavor spearheaded by Marnie Powers-Torrey and Jonathan Sandberg to create a comprehensive descriptive vocabulary for book arts. Our BARD glossary will provide a link to terms defined in the OAB, which will offer context by including synonyms and ‘also-called’ terminology. The project has an open-source component to engage the greater community in continuing to build and enrich these resources.

2.
Carol Kaesuk Yoon, Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 33.

3. Timothy Barrett, conversation with the authors, November 27, 2020.

‍