The Beinecke Library is home to 500,000 volumes of rare books and "several million" manuscripts making it one of (if not the largest) repositories dedicated to the collection and preservation of rare writings. Among the documents housed therein are an original Gutenberg Bible and, as discussed in these pages earlier, the Voynich manuscript.
Hopefully, the documents will be around for a while, but that's not a given. One of the biggest problems with caring for old books is that the paper (or other materials) they're written on will, over time, disintegrate. The library's job? Slow down that process as much as possible. The solutions: gas, freezers, and stone.
More from Now I Know.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment