Manuscript Mondays: Singing Books [Music Manuscript Bindings]

Sponsored by The Manuscript Society

Guest Presenter: Lilla Vekerdy, Head of the Special Collections Department, Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Host: Gerald “Jay” Gaidmore, The Manuscript Society
A live presentation followed by a Q & A with presenter Lilla Vekerdy Title: How Can Book Bindings Sing?
Presentation Description:
How Can Book Bindings Sing? will examine Renaissance books bound in fragments of medieval music manuscripts. These “singing bindings” are hundreds of years older than the printed text blocks inside them, and the texts are on mathematics, physics, or astronomy and absolutely not on music. How is that possible?
Lilla Vekerdy, Head & Curator of Special Collections at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, will shed light on the peculiarities of these unique volumes, held in the rare book collection of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology.
Biography:
Lilla Vekerdy has been the head of Special Collections at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives since 2008, where she oversees rare materials in 16 library research centers, and also serves as the curator of Physical Sciences Rare Books in The Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology. She earned Master’s degrees in Literature & Linguistics as well as in Library Sciences in Budapest, Hungary in 1984, and completed her doctoral coursework in Medieval and Renaissance History at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri in 2005. Her research interest and publications are in the history of science and medicine, as well as in rare book and manuscript studies, and often cover the overlay of both realms.

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