Cradle Making at the V&A Dundee
In this blog Conservation Technician Gemma Kelly from the National Library reports on a recent exhibition cradle making course hosted at the V&A Dundee. In December last year, I had the pleasure of attending a course…
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Conjuring the Light and Shadow in the Past: The Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) Workshop
The Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technique opens up new horizons for the close study of the materiality of palpable objects like manuscripts. It reveals things we cannot easily observe with our very eyes,…
RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) Workshop 2 – hidden features brought into the light
At a workshop back in April I applied RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) to the processing of images of a twelfth-century parchment leaf and found some details that were difficult to observe with the naked eye.…
The St Andrew manuscript ‘cutting’ and reflectance transformation imaging (RTI)
As light glimmers over the fifteenth-century illuminated initial, the calm and focused expression on the face of our university’s eponym St Andrew remains unchanged. He seems to look directly at the shadow of a…
HELP! It’s an emergency…
In June, staff from the University’s Library and Museum Collections attended a one-day training course on the salvage of library, archive and museum collections. The course was organised by the Library’s Special…
Out of the ashes: framing the panel of reagents
Part of the Library’s Special Collections role in caring for its irreplaceable historic collections of rare books, photographs and archives is to develop and maintain an Emergency Response Plan. Our Emergency Response…
Get your boards on: A new method of board re-attachment for tight-back bindings
A tour around the rare books in the Library’s Special Collections reveals many volumes with bands of cotton tape tied around them. The white tying tape serves to warn staff that the ‘tied’ volume is physically damaged…
LGBT History Month in the Library
Since 2005, the month of February has been observed as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) history month in the UK. The aim of LGBT history month is to raise awareness of both LGBT history and the issues…