What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?
White cotton gloves are not for use with paper-based books. We use them for some photographs and artifacts, but for handling “regular” rare books the professional standard has been clean, dry hands for decades.
White cotton gloves are not for use with paper-based books. We use them for some photographs and artifacts, but for handling “regular” rare books the professional standard has been clean, dry hands for decades.
Comments
I'm not an expert at book preservation but it still seems wrong to me.
I think that whole eye of newt thing was just started to make it hard for newcomers to join the guild
recently-ish wrote a scene set in 1942, scholar puts on gloves to work with an old manuscript & one of my readers felt the need to clarify whether I was trying to be period-accurate or discipline-accurate.👍
I ain’t got time for that. Books I really care about, I use gloves
Well…back when I READ the Times…
Thank you, I will ask an actual art historian about it while we’re in edits!!
For most of the work to catalogue artefacts, etc, we don't wear gloves (with a few exceptions for specific materials)