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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

I believe one of the early maps of the americas by Amerigo Vespucci was found in a similar way. Re-using paper to hand making the binding, padding the covers, wrapping the bound signatures before the outer leather or board was added was surprisingly common. John Le Carré uses it in "the perfect spy" as a mechanism to pass secret information to an amateur book binder.

It speaks to me of Robert Grave's fictitious account of Claudius deciding rather than hiding them, to leave his (fictional) autobiographical scrolls just lying around, let history decide what to keep and what to dispose of.

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As you pointed out, reusing parts of old books or manuscripts was quite common. Evidently, there was quite a lot of it going on in England just after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Their libraries had a lot of books that were "unwanted" and there was also a lot of new stuff getting printed that needed binding. Parchment is a very sturdy material (consider that it's essentially a bag meant to hold in the internal organs of an animal that may weigh hundreds of kilos).

Anyway, I guess the novelty here is that they were able to read much of the older work without dismantling the Turducken book (one article I read used that term).

Was a little surprised to see that the researchers seemed to be holding the book with bare hands. Would have guessed those sorts of things are usually handled with gloves but maybe this was about pioneering the technique on something considered less valuable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_waste

I've noticed recently historical works being handled differently depending on the materials. I think there's been a revision in the protocols: Maybe the white cotton gloves are mechanically harmful sometimes? I doubt they let somebody do it who just fixed their bike chain, but if you wash your hands before touching it's possible for parchment, it's not that big a deal.

https://library.pdx.edu/news/the-proper-handling-of-rare-boo...

Oh, interesting. Makes sense, I suppose. The article you linked doesn't recommend it but if you wash your hands with detergent (e.g. a drop or two of liquid Tide) you'll pull all the oil right out of your skin. No fingerprints! It only lasts for a few minutes however and I doubt that removing the oil from your skin is really doing you any favors, long term but maybe there's some extremely narrow Venn diagram intersection where you need to commit the perfect crime but are unwilling to carry nitrile gloves but are willing to carry around a bottle of laundry detergent and wash your hands every few minutes. ;-)

Anyway, thanks for the link.

I think some of the harm of wearing gloves is in the loss of sense. Fingertips are very sensitive, which must be helpful when handling something delicate. They mention tearing in the link. I guess they just found you're more likely to accidentally tear the pages when wearing gloves.

can confirm that this is the logic. odd source of confirmation, but nonetheless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZDx8dmCXM&pp

In the highly educational show Cunk on Shakespeare, she's told not to wear gloves when looking at an early book since doing so tends to result in people being more heavy handed with the pages.

yes true!

link for anyone curious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZDx8dmCXM&pp

It's important to note that Cunk, whilst highly informative in many domains, is essentially winging it when it comes to Shakespeare.

Somewhere I read that the cotton gloves are just for show, because onlookers get in a tizzy if they see things being handled without them. Gloves limit dexterity, so it's apparently less damaging to use bare hands.

there is oil on your skin and perhaps waxes.. if those stay on the paper after handling the paper, then those elements will contribute to accumulation of dirt and new kinds of rot

I love how these layers of reuse in bookbinding turn ordinary archival work into a kind of historical archaeology

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