I first heard about University of Otago’s Printer in Residence Program in 2013 when I started working at Dartmouth College as the Book Arts Special Instructor—which is the manager of the Book Arts Workshop in Baker Library. Howard Amos, the University Librarian at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand had just visited during a Matariki Network event hosted at Dartmouth. The Matariki Network of Universities (MNU) is an international group of leading, like-minded universities, each amongst the most historic in its own country. (That last sentence comes straight from the MNU website, which you can see here: http://matarikinetwork.org/). Howard Amos saw our Book Arts Workshop at Dartmouth and talked about it with Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian and Otakou Press coordinator at University of Otago. Together they came up with an idea, and planted the seed to have one of our printers from Dartmouth visit, as the Printer in Residence in New Zealand. I filed that idea away in my head right away—thinking, “wouldn’t that be amazing!”
Nothing came of the idea until in 2014, when David Seaman, Associate Librarian for Information Management and Morgan Swan, Special Collections Education & Outreach Librarian—both from Dartmouth—went to the University of Otago, for another Matariki event. The seed that was planted earlier grew over dinner between Donald, Howard, David, and Morgan. At least this is the story as I know it. All I really know is, when David came back to New Hampshire he asked me if I wanted to go to New Zealand. “Yes, please,” I said.
And now after a bit of strategizing, anticipating and fretting (mostly on my part) I’m about to fly out to Dunedin for six weeks and a fantastic project with amazing people! I’m very thankful to the Matariki Network of Universities and University of Otago for funding this project and trip. Of course I’m super thankful to the Dartmouth College Library for making it possible for me to do this at all!
If you want to know more about book arts and printing at Dartmouth and University of Otago check out these websites:
www.dartmouth.edu/library/book-arts/
http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/printer_in_residence/overview.html