Sender: Rare book and manuscripts <EXLIBRIS-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
perhaps the bible - or maybe the latest john grisham book... certainly
never any publication i've been involved in!
> "Most recently, these rare books and thousands like them were being stored
> in
> the library stacks alongside modern volumes that are printed by the
> millions
> instead of by the dozens."
>
> What books are printed in the millions?
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Everett Wilkie" <ewilkie@IX.NETCOM.COM>
> To: <EXLIBRIS-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 7:41 PM
> Subject: [EXLIBRIS-L] Description of new PA state library rare book wing
>
>
>> This appeared in the Post Gazette. One interesting aspect of the new
>> library is that they seemed to have banned traditional writing
>> instruments
>> entirely from the reading room. --ECW
>>
>> http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08069/863695-85.stm#
>>
>> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>
>> State library's new wing slows aging of old documents
>> Sunday, March 09, 2008
>> By Tracie Mauriello, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau
>>
>> Brady C. Bower for the Post-Gazette
>>
>> HARRISBURG -- Paper booties, cotton smocks and blue latex gloves are de
>> rigeur in the austere and darkened corridors, where hidden cameras,
>> key-card
>> readers and fingerprint scanners track every movement.
>>
>> A filtration system removes harmful gases from the air. Sensors detect
>> chemical changes as subtle as new colognes worn by the small cadre of
>> personnel authorized to enter the innermost sanctum.
>>
>> This isn't a scene from "The Matrix." There are no secrets being guarded
>> here, rather documents that the curators want you to see.
>>
>> This is the new $7.2 million Rare Collections wing of the Pennsylvania
>> State
>> Library.
>>
>> After two years of design and two years of construction, the wing now is
>> being filled with 12,000 of the state's oldest and most valuable
>> holdings,
>> including Ben Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanacs" and a well-worn copy
>> of
>> the Magna Carta that the founding fathers referred to during the
>> Continental
>> Congress as they drafted the U.S. Constitution.
>>
>> In six months, the wing will be ready for scholars and researchers who
>> come
>> from all corners of the state and, recently, as far as Japan to view the
>> state's collection of historical documents.
>>
>> The documents will be available to the public, too.
>>
>> "Our purpose is to make documents available to serious researchers and
>> students, but we had a limited capacity to make them available to the
>> public. Now, because we can protect them, we can make them known," said
>> Caryn Carr, director of the Pennsylvania State Library. "Now we can make
>> them available to greater numbers."
>>
>> There is a 1739 ceremonial Bible that the Pennsylvania General Assembly
>> used
>> in its earliest days. There is a 1795 map of Harrisburg hand-drawn on
>> animal
>> skin. There a copy of the 1752 newspaper in which Benjamin Franklin
>> first
>> described his kite-and-key experiment that resulted in the discovery of
>> electricity.
>>
>> The collection also includes agricultural pamphlets, musical scores,
>> ornithology books and religious texts, including the German Saur Bible,
>> the
>> first non-English-language Bible printed in the colonies.
>>
>> For the oldest volumes, the relocation to the collections wing will be
>> their
>> 12th move since in 1777.
>>
>> Thought to be a target of British soldiers in the Revolutionary War, 425
>> volumes were taken at night from Philadelphia to a hay barn in Easton
>> for
>> safekeeping, said Mary Clare Zales, the state Department of Education's
>> deputy director for libraries. All but two of those volumes survived
>> war,
>> fire, flood and neglect, she said.
>>
>> Most recently, these rare books and thousands like them were being
>> stored
>> in
>> the library stacks alongside modern volumes that are printed by the
>> millions
>> instead of by the dozens. Centuries-old documents were stored on metal
>> shelves in a room with peeling paint, dusty curtains and florescent
>> lights
>> known to cause paper to disintegrate.
>>
>> "They are in a much better environment now, much better," Ms. Carr said.
>>
>> Thousands of books, pamphlets, maps and newspapers have been moved to
>> the
>> new environmentally controlled area already, and library employees are
>> transporting the rest one bookcart at a time from the library stacks to
>> the
>> renovated 18,000-square-foot wing that used to house card catalogs,
>> meeting
>> rooms and administrative offices.
>>
>> The area includes an elegant reading room with Venetian plaster walls,
>> stained-glass depictions of Franklin and granite floors and tabletops
>> that
>> reflect and amplify light, which is kept at low levels to better
>> preserve
>> documents. The room is framed on three sides by Pennsylvania black
>> cherry
>> wood, which came from trees hand picked by project architect Cornelius
>> Rosnov, of the state Department of General Services. The fourth side
>> comprises plaster tryptychs depicting figures from Greek mythology.
>>
>> No pens or pencils are allowed here, lest graphite dust and stray ink
>> mar
>> its treasures. Instead, patrons can use laptop computers to take notes.
>> The
>> reading room is the only elaborately decorated part of the wing. It was
>> designed with people in mind, while the rest of the vault is aimed not
>> at
>> creature comforts, but at book preservation. Translation: It is dim and
>> cool.
>>
>> Out of that darkness will come new light shed on the state's past as the
>> library provides greater access to the treasures of William Penn's time.
>>
>> "This is really going to help us elevate the discourse about that time
>> period," Ms. Zales said.
>>
>> The high-tech environment is the only one of its kind in Pennsylvania,
>> and
>> already is becoming a model for other states. It was designed by a team
>> of
>> architects, engineers, chemists, physicists, historians, librarians and
>> paper-preservation specialists.
>>
>> "We are showing that we can produce an appropriate environment to
>> preserve
>> books despite the climate inside," Mr. Rusnov said. "It is a model
>> project
>> that other libraries could learn from."
>>
>> Paper and other artifacts cannot be stopped from deteriorating, but Mr.
>> Rusnov believes he has created the perfect environment to slow the
>> process.
>>
>> "These things are going to continue to deteriorate naturally. They are
>> going
>> to rot," he said. "We can't stop the process, but we can extend the life
>> of
>> these materials until technology catches up and can extend it again."
>>
>