My own experience with bark stripped birch is two fold. On Grand Manan
Island it was a common practice I think to strip two swatches of bark and
fold them into a box shape which was pinned with two small end only split
sticks, of which I have an example of used for berry picking. The other
example is more modern: ball point pens write well on them and I once
received a letter from there on a piece of the stripped birch bark. I
imagine other implements may have been used in the past. Good luck with the
paper!
George Myers