Sidney E. Berger is an American educator, librarian, and scholar who has worked and published extensively in literature, librarianship, and bibliography and the book arts, with a primary focus on papermaking, paper history, watermarks, and paper decoration.[1]
Since 2003 he has been Adjunct Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at
Simmons University and Adjunct Professor in the iSchool / School of Library and Information Science at the
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In both schools he teaches courses in rare books,
special collections, and
bibliography. At
Simmons, he also teaches a course in editing in the Department of Communications.[2]
Berger was the Ann C. Pingree Director of the
Phillips Library at the
Peabody Essex Museum from 2007 to 2014, and is now Director Emeritus of that library.[4]
A Norton Critical Edition of Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins (New York: Norton, 1980; 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2004) (
ISBN978-0393925357)
Medieval English Drama: A Bibliography of Recent Criticism. New York: Garland Publishers, 1990; second issue in the series Routledge Library Editions: The Medieval World; Volume 4. London and New York: Routledge, 2018 (
ISBN978-0824057909)
The Design of Bibliographies: Observations, References, and Examples. London: Mansell Publishers; Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1991 (
ISBN978-0313284250)
Paper Terms: A Thesaurus for Use in Rare Book and Special Collections Cataloguing. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, 1990; author/compiler; thesaurus issued by the Bibliographical Standards Committee (
ISBN0-8389-7427-9)
The Anatomy of a Literary Hoax. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books, 1994 (
ISBN978-0938768494)
Printing and the Mind of Merker: A Bibliographical Study. New York: The Grolier Club, 1997 (
ISBN9780910672191)
The Magical Painted Papers of Eric Carle. Northampton, Massachusetts: Gehenna Press, 1997 [7]
The Hand Made Papers of Japan. North Hills, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 2001 [8]
Forty-Four Years of Bird & Bull: A Bibliography, 1958-2002. Compiled by Sidney E. Berger. North Hills, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 2002 [9]
Karli Frigge’s Life in Marbling. North Hills, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 2004 [10]
Edward Seymour and the Fancy Paper Company. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2006 (
ISBN9781584561897)
[As editor and author of introduction] Marbled and Paste Papers: Rosamond Loring’s Recipe Book, Cambridge, MA: Houghton Library, Harvard University, 2007 (
ISBN9780976547259)
Chiyogami Papers. North Hills, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 2011 [11]
Rare Books and Special Collections. Chicago: Neal-Schuman, American Library Association, 2014; winner of the 2015 ABC Clio / American Library Association award for Best Book in Library Literature, 2015 (
ISBN978-1555709648)
The Dictionary of the Book: A Glossary for Book Collectors, Booksellers, Librarians, and Others. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016 (
ISBN9781442263406)
[As editor] Josef Halfer and the Revival of the Art of Marbling Paper, by Richard J. Wolfe. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2018. (
ISBN9781584563778)
Since 2003, Berger has published about 100 scholarly articles, and he has been the “Decorated Paper” columnist for Hand Papermaking Newsletter for which publication he has written over 60 articles.
With his wife
Michèle V. Cloonan he is the proprietor of the Doe Press, which has published fine-press books including:
Thom Gunn. Lament. 1985; Ernest Kroll. Six Letters to An Apprentice. 1994;
Donald Justice. Banjo Dog. 1995, and
Michele V. Cloonan, The Invisible Presence of Gertrude Stiles, 2010.[12]
Also with
Michèle V. Cloonan, he amassed a collection of over 22,000 pieces of paper, now the Berger-Cloonan Collection of Decorated Paper at the Cushing Library,
Texas A&M University.[13]