Since then, HMML has worked with more than 550 partner libraries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India to photograph and digitize 250,000 manuscripts, ensuring that a record persists for future generations of scholars and those who are fleeing their homelands. The project was driven by a concern that those manuscripts might disappear forever if Austria came under attack during the Cold War. It all started in the 1960s with one of Father Columba’s predecessors, who walked, rode trains, and drove a VW minibus around Austria to convince abbots to allow him to microfilm the manuscripts in their abbeys. Their efforts are to make photographic and digital records of manuscripts threatened by war, neglect, theft, or that are so remote they are nearly inaccessible. In the centuries-old tradition of his Benedictine order, Father Columba’s mission is to preserve knowledge, but he and his colleagues do it with a modern twist. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. When he and his colleagues decoded them, they discovered that the previously hidden scribbles were a coded puzzle that translated to “I see you but you cannot see me."Īs Marzo writes, conservation experts work to make sure the integrity of the documents remain in tact while ensuring they preserve details like that, those "unique and invaluable physical features related to history and use.”Īn inscription hidden in the cover of an 18th-century manuscript was uncovered during a recent restoration project.“Manuscripts at risk have always been in our DNA,” says Father Columba Stewart, executive director of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at St. When Marzo undid the stitching to repair the book, he uncovered a series of annotations hidden inside the edges of the pages, as well as a mysterious set of scribbles on the inside of the manuscript’s cover. However, a previous restoration attempt had left the binding damaged in such a way that made it impossible to see or scan some of the text. In one recent instance, Marzo was given a manuscript from the British Library’s Delhi Collection to scan as part of a digitization project. The worst ones can destroy priceless artifacts, while some simply obscure precious information due to carelessness or a lack of skill, as conservator Flavio Marzo writes for the British Library’s Collection Care blog. But like any other kind of repair job, there are bad restorations, too. A properly trained conservator will not only know how to do it, but will know what is historically sympathetic to the material.”īeing sensitive to the materials and techniques used to make an ancient book can reveal all sorts of information about the documents it contains. Not only is it not the same materials, but the techniques that were used are not the same. “In much the same way, you can’t restore a 16th-century book in the way you would a 20th-century book,” conservator Sonja Jordan-Mowery tells Humes. Meanwhile, binding techniques evolved throughout the centuries, with different eras and areas using different styles to keep their books whole, Larry Humes reports for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Researchers study how to make books themselves in order to understand how older manuscripts and documents were put together, as well as what materials were used to originally make them. However, when it comes to restoring these books, it takes a lot more than simply scanning the pages into a computer.Ĭonserving books is as much an art form as it is a skilled trade. There are a lot of advantages to these techniques-not only can they be stored and cleaned up even if the originals are too delicate, but digitizing old books can allow more people to read them than if they only existed as physical objects. In recent years, conservators and preservationists have turned to digital tools to preserve old texts and manuscripts.
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