No Scotch and Glue: How National Library Restorers Save Rare Publications and Family Heirlooms

Why some publications quietly survive centuries, while others crumble for half a century and how restorers prolong their lives

A page in the book broke, how and how do you fasten it? Surely many do this with tape or PVA glue. But neither is good if you want the book to live long. With these methods, you only spoil the publication. All the secrets of “book medicine” are known to the restorers of the National Library. On the eve of the professional holiday, Library Day, we visited them.

Books, like people, need treatment over time. They are examined, operated on, sewn and sent to a kind of hospital - so that the seams heal. 12 specialists of the restoration and conservation department are responsible for paper “patients”. Their jobs are hidden from prying eyes: without a special permit not to get. After all, it is here that the rarest and most valuable copies of the library are restored.

Olga Isayeva, head of the Preventive Conservation and Binding Sector, has been saving books for 28 years. We find a specialist behind the machine - she has a piece of skin in her hands.

- The process is called “sharfing”, explains Olga Viktorovna. The skin comes to us quite thick and rough, it must be made thinner. On the machine, I strip it layer by layer. This piece will be used to make a 1903 book spine. According to the rules of restoration of old books, I must preserve the elements of the original. But in this case, they put tape on them and can no longer be used.

The patient is called Bibliografia Polska. This is a multi-volume bibliographical reference book of Polish publications, created by the scientist Karol Estreicher. For historians, such reference books are a kind of Bible: they check the existence, rarity and exact output of ancient books.

At a nearby table, technology engineer Victoria Karabaan cleans the inside of the cover of the remnants of old paper. After that, the already restored novel by the Marquis de Sade will be pasted here. The girl graduated from BSTU this year and in July was distributed to the National Library.

- We must understand that we do not prepare book restorers anywhere, says the head of the department Diana Muratova. We work closely with BSUKI, where they teach artists-restorers. We have had two successful graduates for several years. In BSTU there is a specialty close to us – “technology of biopolymer processing”, which Victoria received.

- I have always loved working with my hands. And I am very interested in understanding all the nuances of "book healing," the girl shares. - I've already mastered the initial stage. I embroidery the publications, remove traces of previous repairs, for example, Scotch, then wash the pages in distilled water and sew again.

The restoration process involves many stages. The basic work that Victoria talked about, they know how to do everything. But over the years, everyone chooses a narrower direction. Olga Isayeva, one of the leading specialists with whom we have already met, has a mastery of binding, works with skin. Another leading specialist, head of the restoration sector Lyudmila Poltaran deals with the complex restoration of paper sheets.

- Our two restorers, including Lyudmila, left for a month for an internship in Oman. There is now an exhibition of unique manuscripts of Belarusian Tatars from the collections of our National Library, explains Diana Muratova. Oman is very sensitive to the preservation of book and manuscript heritage, using the latest achievements of world restoration. Specialists of the National Directorate of Documentation and Archives and the National Museum of the Sultanate of Oman will teach our restorers technologies in the restoration of valuable dilapidated documents of the mid-nineteenth - early XX century. Mold is the No. 1 enemy for books. She is able to eat through the edition, and at the same time move to neighboring volumes. Microbiologists help fight this scourge. But preventing mold is much easier than saving damaged books. Therefore, the library carefully monitors the microclimate: in the book depositories maintain a certain temperature and humidity.

Elena Kontsovenko. All documents stored in the library, restorers divide into three categories of value. These are books before 1830, rare publications, including modern small-circulation and local history documents, as well as books of mass demand. The latter, for example, include pocket editions, which are convenient to take with you, read in the subway, explains Diana Muratova.

Surely many people think that restorers save first of all old editions. No way. Now the emphasis is on books published in the XIX-XX centuries.

- The main criterion is not age or value, but the state of the book, the head of the department notes. - The fact is that until the XIX century, paper was made from crushed cotton and linen rags. It has a service life of about 800 years. Many old books are not needed yet. In the XIX century invented a cheap way to produce paper from wood semi-finished products. The service life of documents made on such paper is about 50 years. No matter how well the books are stored, they still begin to crumble into dust. Therefore, we cannot ignore the problem and now the first thing we try to do is to save them.

The problem of ageing books is relevant for all libraries. And the need for professional restorers is growing.

- Besides us, professional restoration of books and documents is carried out at the National Archival Fund and the Central Scientific Library named after Y. Kolas. I would like such services to appear in regional centers.

Ekaterina Volynets. The Bible, cookbooks and "Lord of the Rings" are taken by restorers of the National Library and for private orders. However, you need to understand that the cost of saving your favorite book will be a lot of money.

- Complex restoration costs not one thousand rubles. The process is hard and long. But there are those who are willing to pay, says Diana Muratova. - They often bring us Bibles. We have restored about ten such books from different periods of publication. Some of them came from great-grandmothers, grandmothers.

The second most popular is the cookbook. The value of such publications is not only in recipes. On the pages there are notes, records, gift inscriptions - a family history, which is passed along with the book from generation to generation.

There are also more unexpected orders.

- Once a man brought to the restoration of the “Lord of the Rings”, bought 30 years ago. It was a thick book, published in mass circulation from newspaper paper. The pages were already yellow, because of the glue binding, it began to crumble. Although it seems that he treated her very carefully. But the book was still on its last legs. We warned him that due to poor-quality paper, only the binding of a “driller” is possible here, and the book will open very poorly in the middle due to the volume. There is no point in saving the page because it will be very expensive. The client agreed to the binding, it was so dear to him. You can buy a new book for that money, and not one.

yankovich@sb.by