Gerald Ward is a bookbinder, librarian, and maker with over two decades of experience in preservation, design, and historical media. He currently serves as the Media & Digital Services Librarian at High Point University, where he leads creative and educational programming in book arts, digital storytelling, and media production. Gerald is the founder of Bibliopathologist, where he specializes in custom bindings, archival enclosures, and the restoration of rare and collectible books—each piece built with intention, precision, and a reverence for the stories it protects and preserves.

A veteran of the U.S. Navy, Gerald brings the same discipline, precision, and commitment to excellence to his craft that he brought to his service. Bibliopathologist is proudly veteran-owned and operated.

Throughout his career, Gerald has performed conservation work on volumes of international significance. His past projects include treatment and repair of an Algonquian Bible (First edition of the first Bible printed in the New World,1663), William Shakespeare’s Second, Third, and Fourth Folios, Johannes Fust’s 1466 printing of Cicero, two first editions of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s presentation copy to Robert Browning of Poems before Congress. He has also worked on the autograph manuscript of Oscar Wilde’s The Decay of Lying, among other rare and remarkable texts.

With a background spanning archival conservation, large-scale digitization, and hands-on teaching, Gerald combines deep technical expertise with a thoughtful, design-driven approach. His workshops—ranging from zine-making to historical bookbinding—have reached audiences at libraries, universities, and museums across the Southeast and Midwest. He believes in the power of physical media to connect us to history, to each other, and to ourselves.