The New Gutenberg Annex has been busy five or six days a week this spring, supporting an array of student projects in its spaces.
– After a semester of preparations in Fall 2025, the 4-credit hour course, How to Do Things with Books, has proved very attractive in Spring 2026. Fully enrolled, it had a deep waitlist and will be offered again in Fall 2026. The course, co-taught by Profs Kurt Koenigsberger (English) and Barbara Mann (Hoffman Professor of Modern Hebrew) and crosslisted among English, Art Studio, Jewish Studies, and World Literature, has drawn students from an eclectic range of majors. The students work together in a seminar and workshop on Monday and Wednesday afternoons in Guilford before moving to Bellflower Hall for lab sessions. Lab sessions have been enriched by the guidance of Annex volunteer George Barnum, who brings expertise from his time as Government Documents Librarian at KSL and in the Government Publishing Office in Washington, D.C.
– In the weeks running up to spring break, students have dissected book specimens; bound pamphlets and slipcases/phase boxes to contain them; made decorative papers to cover codices they have folded, sewn, and cased in; forged digital typefaces; and begun to integrate graphic material of their own device (linocut and drypoint prints) with innovative settings of type. In the second half of the semester, they will make ink and watermarked paper, explore foundational practices of analytic bibliography, and bring their accumulated skills to bear on variously conceived “altered books.”
– Eight senior Mechanical Engineering majors are completing senior projects in Annex spaces across four teams. Students are working to fabricate type using 3D printed and laser-cut materials, design systems for replicating sixteenth-century movable musical type (after Pierre Attaingnant) (Prof. David Rothenberg [Music] is a consultant on this project), and refine CAD drawings for future fabrication of a wooden common press, modeled on the Smithsonian’s Franklin Press. One of these students, Christian Palios, has also been crucial to sorting collections of Greek type.
– Three CWRU interns have helped the Annex organize its growing collections of metal and wood type, adjust and repair some of our dozen presses, and optimize student and faculty experiences in the Annex’s spaces. Paige Erickson (senior; Art History and Art Studio), Jack Rudofsky (junior; Civil Engineering), and Nerya Freidenreich (first-year; Chemistry) have brought expertise in foreign languages (including Cyrillic and Hebrew), technical skills, and familiarity both with studio and bibliographic practices. Their excellent work has made the Annex better for everyone!
– Two Cuyahoga Community College students – Joi Scruggs and Malcolm Schmitz – are completing microinternships in the Annex with the support of the Cleveland Humanities Collaborative.
– Since 2012, students in Kurt Koenigsberger’s English 302 course have prepared commonplace books, and since 2018 they have bound them in the Annex using commercial kits. In spring 2026 for the first time students used materials decorated and prepared in the Annex with newly made equipment and tools, in addition to those purchased with the 2025-26 Nord Grant.
– The Annex is grateful for the support of the Nord Grant from UCITE; an Eirik Borve Fund grant; provisions from research and startup funds; formal donations; and gifts in kind!
—Kurt Koenigsberger
