Gillian Boal

Gillian Boal is the Hans Rausing Conservator and the head of the Conservation Treatment Division in the Preservation Department at UC Berkeley. She has been a bookbinder and conservator since 1976, having studied at the Cockerell bindery in Cambridge, England, and at the Camberwell School of Art and Craft in London. Since moving to America, she has worked at the North East Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), has taught bookbinding in the book arts program at Mills College in Oakland, and has been in her current position at UC Berkeley since 1986.

Gillian help to establish the bindery at the San Francisco Center for the Book, and was a core teacher on the Hand Bookbinders of California One Year course in craft bookbinding. She continues to teach and lecture widely in the field of bookbinding and conservation, both across the US and abroad.

Throughout her professional life Gillian has been interested in both the treatment of the Bancroft's many rare and valuable artifacts, and the challenge of caring for the many books in the circulating collections which are 'taken home in a backpack and read in the bath'.