When our Public Services Librarian, Megan May, came to me inquiring whether we could create custom enclosures that serve not only as storage for rare books and artist books but that function as a display for those items, I eagerly took on the challenge . Normally, we build clamshells for our most at risk and rare books, so the difficulty was to add something to allow for the display element. After much research and brainstorming, I decided to create a built-in book cradle that would live inside of a clamshell thereby housing it securely while also allowing it to be opened up for display in a safe manner. However, I could not find instructions on how to build such a structure. Thus, began prototype building (Image 1). Utilizing board scraps and some tape, I worked on creating a structure that would mimic a book cradle’s shape but also make it collapsible.  

The main trick was determining a way to decide the angle of the book cradle so the book spine would be protected by not allowing the book to open all the way. The solution was to create a mock cradle, propping the book between weights to determine the height of the side piece. The result can be seen in the below images. The process of creating this structure was very enjoyable and will be a staple for future clamshells that we build! 

This particular book is an artist book from Special Collections’ annual Artist Book Competition entitled “Case #xxxx”. (View the catalog record for this book)