Golden Moments

Sneakily logging on from the Rare Books Reading Room, where I've been trawling through museum-ey stuff for the afternoon.

I did the BL's Conservation Centre tour today, which was an absolute treat. A batch of conservators took our small group through aspects of their role, and we got a glimpse of several works in progress. One book had been taken part, each page washed (that's right, they wash paper), strengthened and painstakingly spot-healed with japanese tissue paper; after that the pages would be remounted and finally rebound. To get that one book stabilised, ready for next generations, would take about 250 hours.

The BL holds 14 million books.

Now, I'm not saying that all of them need looking at, yet, but you get the impression that there are no 'down' times where the staff twiddle their thumbs, waiting for paper to degenerate or a spine to break.

We finished up, appropriately, in the Finishing Room. Book Finishers are the rock stars of the book conservation world - those who stamp lettering on spines in gold leaf. It's a thing that you're either excellent at or not, irrespective of training. By all accounts, scientists will identify a Finisher gene marker some decade.

Our guide asked us to pass around a sheet of gold leaf, which of course crumbled in our hands. And left several of us with sparkley fingers, which we perhaps delighted over while sitting out in the sunshine, eating popcorn with care :-)

A picture paints a thousand

Been meandering through more paper art; loving the way different media inspire and effect each other. Really enjoyed Su Blackwell's work:



Words and light interacting in delicate, evocative scenes - who wouldn't be enthralled!

Collaborations

Last night, the ten thousandth round of the pub quiz ended in a dead tie between us and another team. Time for a quiz face off! I contributed little throughout, but earned my keep in the film/mythology departments with the 'Juno' questions. And in the end, we won :-)

The Golden Notebook Project caught my attention this week: it describes itself as "part of a long-term effort to encourage and enable a culture of collaborative learning". Seven writers (all women) are reading Doris Lessing's classic as an e-text, adding marginal comments as they go. So, the public can read along with them, add their own views in forums etc. Interesting idea. I don't know if it's the best way to read a book for the first time (which it is, for me) but if it was a book that I knew quite well, I would probably be eager to dip in and out of the responses of seven intelligent people.

In other news, here's a short exposing the nefarious nature of cats, complete with cute little kitty noises. And it's just for Maggie :-)



Little machiavellian fluffball...

Have a great weekend, folks.