CU People: Andreas Dombrowskyj
Title
Technical assistant, Conservation lab, Butler Library
Years at Columbia
54
What He Does
Dombrowskyj is a bookbinder whose healing skills, he says, sometimes resemble those of a doctor. “You have to diagnose what’s wrong with a book and know what needs to be done. Each book is a different challenge.”
Dombrowskyj’s “patients” are the books in Butler’s stacks in need of repair. For a binding job, he trims and sews end pages and cuts cardboard for new book covers. He often works with books that commercial binderies won’t handle, such as those with brittle pages. His work can also entail disbinding, the process he used with a set of the Japanese newspaper Nyu Yoku Shimpo (1911-1940), whose pages had become brittle. The leaves were stapled together and had to be carefully separated to allow it to be digitized while saving the originals for future study.
Road to Columbia
In 1944 his family left Lviv, a Polish city then occupied by the Nazis and now part of Ukraine. They lived in German displacement camps until 1949, when they emigrated to the United States and settled in Jamaica, Queens. His mother was a nurse’s aide and homemaker. His father, who had earned a doctorate in history in Prague, became a postal worker but continued to pursue scholarly interests, joining the New York-based Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In spring 1949, Dombrowskyj enrolled in first grade at P.S. 50 Elementary School, learning English from a Humpty Dumpty children’s book. He graduated from John Adams High School in Ozone Park and considered becoming an engineer, but didn’t have the math skills. His father wanted him to study at Columbia. “I earned about 100 credits here on subjects such as ancient history,” he said. In 1961 Dombrowskyj was hired by the binding department at Butler. He began as a letterer who wrote call numbers on book spines, a practice no longer in use. Today’s books have computer-printed labels.
Best Part of the Job
Dombrowskyj enjoys working with Conservation head Alexis Hagadorn, who he says creates a pleasant environment in the lab. He especially likes knowing that the books he repairs will last so other readers can enjoy them. “My satisfaction is preserving things for the future,” he said. What’s it like working for more than five decades at Columbia? “Each year you see new students, it’s like life beginning anew.”
Memorable Moment
Working on the archive of the Columbia Spectator. As he separated the newspapers from their bound volumes to prepare them for digitization, he could view the sweep of Columbia history from 1877 to 2012. “I got to see things that predate me,” he said.
In His Spare Time
Dombrowskyj is a stamp collector who focuses mainly on European countries. He’s particularly fond of Greek stamps because of the history he learns from them. Dombrowskyj also likes to take his dog, Rex, a German Shepherd and Doberman mix, for walks around a nearby pond, and work on his two 1976 Delta 88 Oldsmobiles. They’re large, safe and have “real bumpers—the closest thing to an armored car.” His alltime favorite pastime is gardening. Some of his favorite plants are in the African violet family, and he is a proud member of the North American Rock Garden Society.