Wash your hands is the new worldwide credo, and rightly so, as it can prevent the spreading of the Corona virus SARS-CoV-2.
Washing hands has thankfully become common practice when handling manuscripts and rare books. At the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík, the home of Paper Trails, it is placed prominently in the handling instructions for manuscripts: “Wash your hands thoroughly with soap” (find the guidelines here). And we are of course not alone in this instruction. For example, the famous J. Paul Getty Museum in California requests from their visitor to wash hands before handling rare items (Point B ii of the instructions).
Washing hands before handling manuscripts and rare items can prevent discolouration of the objects. Art historian and engineer Kathryn Rudy examined manuscript discolouration with a densitometer, which measures darkness on a reflecting surface. Although darkening of manuscript leaves due to wear is often visible with the naked eye, particularly in the lower third of outer margins, the densitometer allows for more objective and measurable results.
Another reason for washing your hands before working with manuscripts is to avoid possible “effects of microbial or bacteriological activity” on manuscripts. You can read a blog entry, co-written by specialist of forensic fingerprint analysis Terry Kent, here.
I recommend that you wash your hands both before and after you handled manuscripts. Keep in mind the information from Kathrin Rudy’s article, and note the amount of dirt on my fingertips after a day of handling manuscripts:
So, please wash your hands! Wash them thoroughly and wash them with soap. For your sake, for the manuscripts’ sake, for all our sake! Thank you!
Further reading
Cordelia Rogerson, Paul Garside, Sarah Hamlyn, and Terry Kent, “Fingerprints & their potential impact in relation to handling library collections” Blog entry 26 September 2016 British Library https://blogs.bl.uk/collectioncare/2016/09/fingerprints-their-potential-impact-in-relation-to-handling-library-collections.html
Kathryn M. Rudy, "Dirty Books: Quantifying Patterns of Use in Medieval Manuscripts Using a Densitometer," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 2, issue 1-2 (Summer 2010) https://jhna.org/articles/dirty-books-quantifying-patterns-of-use-medieval-manuscripts-using-a-densitometer/
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