The British Library : Conservation and Digitization

On the right, is a large (accessible by staff) tower in the middle of the library containing the original "founding collections"

The "founding collections" of the British Library (BL) were donated and/or acquired from Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Hans Sloane, Robert Harley, King George II, and King George III.

When we arrived, we were given our swanky little badges, split into two groups, and were on our way to get a behind-the-scenes look at the conservation and digitization work being conducted. In my group, we learned the Qatar Foundation Partnership Programme and the processing of items like scientific manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings, maps, and more from the Gulf Coast.

In their work the goal is to be as minimally invasive as possible and in the event that anything is done to the material, it must be something reversible and all actions taken must be well documented.

Scientific manuscript from the 17th century with owners' annotations in margins
Image Source: Megan Doyle "A Librarian's Adventures in London"

One 17th century manuscript that we viewed is in Persian but using Arabic characters. This item is deemed important due to its subject and content and also due to the annotations in the margins added by previous owners over time. One action that had to be taken by the conservation team was the removal of adhesive which was added by previous conservators in an attempt to preserve the illustrations but in-turn, threatened their longevity.

To learn more about the Qatar Digital Library, please watch the video below.

Comments

The National Art Library at the V&A

Walking into The National Art Library located at the Victoria & Albert Museum is like walking onto a movie set for a period film. If it weren't for the contemporary and studious patrons, seated at the desks with their laptops and smartphones, it would seem like an untouched time capsule. The reading room, which was the first room in the V&A to have electric lighting. (Image source: Megan Doyle ) We were separated into two groups and off we went on our tour of the back rooms of The National Art Library. My group's guide, Cassandra Gilbert-Ward led us to the rooms that house the majority of the collection and from which the librarians retrieve materials. There are 25 staff members and they fall under the Word & Image Department within the museum and there are about 10 individuals staffed daily public retrieval. She went on to tell us that the collection is publicly accessible and all an interested researcher needs to do is become a registered member. The lib...

Going Underground

Though I was not able to visit Wales, the work done there in safeguarding the collections of so many institutions in the UK makes it worth mentioning. I am interested in how libraries and archives survive in times of conflict. The factors involved in: the initial decision to move the collection, the choice of where to move the collection, the work involved in preparing the chosen site, etc. are all things that could lead to saving priceless works or the destruction of so much. Many of the same places that house Britain's fine art also housed their library collections and archives. One example of wartime relocation of fine art was The National Gallery . Image from The National Gallery website A slate mine in Wales was chosen and unused sections of it were converted into storerooms for the collection. The temperature controlled environments in these mines even led to adjustments to how works of art were stored and displayed once the war was over back at the museum. The...

The National Museum of Computing

One train ride and a short walk was all it took to arrive at a place which houses and cares for machines that helped to bring the power of information into the global arena. Our guide at The National Museum of Computing , Sheridan Williams, led us through the eras of computing and the machines with which companies were able to exponentially streamline their industries. Before this though, Mr. Williams took us to the rooms containing the coding machines of World War II. One example was The Lorenz SZ42, which used a complex combination of 12 rotors to encrypt a message. Every individual message was encrypted in a different way by changing the start position of each rotor before transmitting the message. Mr. Williams asked us how many combinations of unique sets of start positions there could be, but none of us being mathematicians (far from it) we couldn't guess. The answer is 1.6 million, billion. And no, the "billion" following that "million" is not a typo...

Rovings and Ramblings of V

Search This Blog