Anette Creutzburg and Jan Simane:
Material Evidence in Rare Books

Since 2009, the KHI library has been running a long-term project to examine, digitize, preserve and occasionally conserve its rare book collection. This special collection comprises around 8,000 volumes of predominantly printed literature dating from around 1500 to around 1900. The project focuses on the object nature of the book - its many formal, material, collection-related and historical facets - and correlates with a detailed documentation of all findings. In this way, two goals are achieved: on the one hand, historically and book-scientifically relevant knowledge is gained and the appropriate preservation of the works is ensured. On the other hand, the generated data is made available to the interested public in the spirit of the Open Science paradigm and open access to the works is possible through gradual digitization. The work-in-progress presentation is intended to outline the genesis of the project and will focus on some of its special aspects. By means of selected examples the talk will illustrate the methods of book-scientific analysis applied within the project as well as its specific conservation and preservation measures, some of which are pioneering in their field.

This presentation is part of the seminar series "Work in Progress. A Series of Conversations", which is dedicated to ongoing research projects at the KHI and organized by Hannah Baader and Hana Gründler.