Beyond the Basics

I must confess that parts of the Fine Books web site are a bit hard to use.  I learned this myself tonight when I went looking for anything on our site written by Joel Silver.  Joel, who is director of special collections at Indiana University, you might recall, wrote a column called Beyond the Basics for Fine Books & Collections during our heyday (if you can call it that). 

This search was prompted by an email I received earlier in the day from one of our still-disgruntled former subscribers complaining that we should still be publishing essays by Mr. Silver.  As much as we agree with that sentiment, for a variety of reasons, we haven't been able to do so.

Even so, at least two of Mr. Silver's wonderful essays are online, and I thought you might like a sampling.  The first is on marbled paper, which can be found here:

https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/0306/marble.phtml

The other piece is on leaf books found here:

https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/issue/0205/leaf_books.phtml

If you like Joel's work, I will shamelessly plug the Fine Books back issue collections available in our store.  But if you prefer your reading matter digital and free, please explore our search engine on this site.  You might just find another one of Joel Silver's gems.