The Fisher Library’s Book Science Project uses scientific methods and new equipment to help unearth new details about rare books and materials—supporting scholarly innovation and collaboration across the university. The project is led by Rachel Di Cresce, Special Collections Librarian for Book Science, and Stephanie Lahey, Andrews Fellow in Book Science.

Made possible through a generous donation from longtime Friend of the Fisher, Mark Andrews, and in collaboration with many others across the University of Toronto campuses, the Andrews Project for Book Science acts as a centralized space for the scientific study of rare heritage materials. The team employs a variety of techniques, including multi-spectral imaging, computed micro-tomography, x-ray fluorescence, electron microscopy, proteomics, biophysics and biochemical analysis, statistics and machine learning, and radiocarbon dating.

The Project is involved in research in areas such as text recovery, ink and pigment analysis, fibre analysis, history of book production, history of printing, and conservation science. Research in the Book Science space offers a new way to study and teach with rare materials at the university. A formal project website will be available in the coming months.

The Andrews Project collaborates closely with individual researchers and teams across the university including:

Prof. Laurent Bozec’s Matrix Functionalization and Phenotyping Lab (MFP-Lab)

Prof. Alexandra Gillespie’s Old Books New Science Lab

Prof. Giovanni Grasselli’s Geomechanics Group

Prof. Yuhong He’s Remote Sensing and Spatial Ecosystem Modeling Lab

Prof. James Scott’s UAMH Centre for Global Microfungal Biodiversity

Prof. Christopher Yip’s Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Lab

Teaching and Research in Analytical Chemical and Environmental Sciences TRACES at the University of Toronto Scarborough

Training activity in the Andrews Project is supported by the Canadian Conservation Institute.

Andrews Project for Book Science

Associated libraries