Preserving Bibles

I went to the King James Bible display this week. I wanted to go to the printing museum as well, but it didn’t work out, which was too bad. Last week, Alyssa did a lovely post on this same display and talked about the idea of putting books on display as a sort of sculpture. Her post has pictures of very many of the books that were shown, so look at it if you want to see them.

I would like to expand a little bit on her ideas by talking about the practical side of displaying books like this. When my Mother was in library science school, she took a class about book preservation, and so I learned a bunch about it (I swear, having a parent in grad school is like taking a college class. I learned so much). The thing about displaying a book, especially a historical book, is that books are very sensitive to light. Books are also very sensitive to temperature and humidity. Because of this, when someone sets up a display of books, preservation is a very important thing for them to think about.

The King James display had quite a few very old, probably very valuable books, and I noticed several of the things they did to obviously help preserve the books. First of all, the books were all in glass cases. There wasn’t a way for me to tell specifically, but I imagine that the humidity in these cases is controlled. If the air is too dry, it makes the pages brittle, but if it is too wet, then it allows for mildew. The cases also made sure that no one touched the books—oily fingerprints and dirt from hands can accumulate on and damage the book. The books were sitting open, but the sides were propped up by what looked like specially made supports so that the books weren’t open at an 180 degree angle, which would have caused stress on the binding. Special Collections is also on the bottom floor of the library, which makes it less prone to temperature change than an above-ground room that has doors and windows to the outside through which heat may be gained or lost.

Then there is the issue of light. The thing is, you cannot display a book without exposing it to at least some light, because if you didn’t, there would be no way to see it. Because they are exposed to light, books on display inevitably are damaged. It becomes a balancing act—you want to save and preserve this wonderful and valuable piece of history that is a book, but there is no use in preserving it if no one can enjoy it. So you put it on display anyway and shine lights on it all day long, and it will be damaged, but you do it anyway. That said, the people who make a display of books are still obviously careful about light exposure. Books are almost always displayed in a room that has no natural light shining in, because natural light is the worst for books (because it has lots of UV rays, and is really bright). The lights down in the King James Bible exhibition were quite dim in comparison with many others at the library, and they probably had UV light filters on them, since UV light is especially bad. I’m not sure what kind of light they used in particular (they almost looked like LED's, but I don't know). Generally fluorescent lights are better than incandescent ones (my brother did a science fair project on this topic two years in a row). This is probably because incandescent lights generate heat, which is bad, rather because of the quality of the light itself.

I definitely think it is important to preserve old books for future generations, but sometimes I wonder how much of the experience we lose by being so careful. Seeing a book open to two pages and sitting in a glass case is really not at all like holding an old book yourself—feeling the weight of it, feeling the texture of the paper, turning the pages oh-so-carefully because you don’t want them to break. I have seen very many old books, but the ones I remember are the ones that I felt. I think I will always remember the day I was wandering the library and discovered a shelf where most the books were at least 100 years old. All just sitting there. I pulled a few of them out and flipped through them, not really caring what they said, like Alyssa said in her post, but just feeling the history in them. I found a Common Book of Prayer dated 1830 and thought what it would be like to get this book new 180 years ago. I got to look through an old family bible that had the names and birth-dates of all the family members written in the front.

I know that this post has more to do with modern practices (dealing with historical things) than it does with historical practices, but I think it is a valuable exercise when learning about history to look at the ways in which we experience it, because the medium through which we experience it colors our view of the history.

Most of the information from this post just came out of my head, but if you are interested in book preservation, here are a few sites that talk about it.

If you are interested in old books and bibles, the Provo City Library is getting a very cool display next spring or summer from the Library of Congress that only about a dozen places in the country get, so I would encourage you to go to that a few months from now.