Bridging past and present | The Collation

 "Bridging past and present
28 August 2013 by Sarah Werner
As I hope Collation readers know by now, the Folger is committed to openly accessible resources. Last week provided one example of the exciting results from such a scholarly pooling of knowledge.
The story begins with a conference held at the Library on bindings, the culmination of a two-year project creating an online database of images of bindings at the Folger. That database, which Jim Kuhn described here last year, contains over 4,000 images of (mostly) early modern bindings from England, Italy, France, Germany, and the Low Countries, all freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The images show not only decorative aspects of bindings, but structural elements as well (a partial list of the fields and the vocabulary used gives you a sense of the scope of the project and how you can search the database). Users can interact with the database in a range of ways, including performing detailed searches, comparing images side-by-side, reading detailed cataloging information about the image and the book, and exporting the images under a CC-BY-NC license."
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Worcester Art Museum - Career Opportunities Paper Conservator

Through the generosity of the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the Worcester Art Museum seeks an exceptional Paper Conservator to monitor, study, and treat works of art on paper, and lead the work of the paper conservation laboratory."Worcester Art Museum - Career Opportunities: "Paper Conservator

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CONSERVATOR PHOENIX

CONSERVATOR(Job Id 3611)
Post Date	27/06/2013	Close Date
Category	ARCHIVIST/LIBRARIAN	Grade	19
Location	PHOENIX	Salary	38.000,00-44.000,00
Description: read more and search for job ID

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Old Books' DNA May Reveal When, Where They Were Made

"Old Books' DNA May Reveal When, Where They Were Made"

The animal-skin pages used in early medieval manuscripts contain genetic material capable of solving long-standing mysteries about the works, according to new research.

Before paper was widely used, European books were written on parchment made from the treated skins of calves, young sheep, and goats.

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"What I was looking for was a way to date and localize these manuscripts," said Timothy Stinson, an English professor at North Carolina State University.

"In the past, we used an analysis of handwriting and an analysis of the dialects" of the scribes who created the manuscripts, Stinson said.

"But these were fairly inexact," he said, noting that dates determined by this method could be off by a half-century.

Stinson wondered if the pages held enough intact animal DNA to provide useful information, so he called his brother, C. Michael Stinson, a biologist at Southside Virginia Community College.

After several years of testing, Timothy Stinson will present the brothers' preliminary findings next week at the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America in New York City.

(Related: "Ancient Texts as 'Fossils': How They Survive" [February 28, 2005].)

click here to read more... Old Books' DNA May Reveal When, Where They Were Made: 

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