This is Will Noel, Director of the Kislak Center and the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, geeking out over the Rosenbach’s “bat book” – MS 1004/29, an almanack written in England in 1364. This is a girdle book, which means it was bound in a kind of pouch that was attached to a belt, and rather than being bound in the usual codex form (with a spine on the left, or the right depending on language) this one is bound at the bottom and unfolds … well, you’ll see. You’ll also understand why the term “bat book.”
We’ll be photographing this manuscript next month for BiblioPhilly, and it will be online in the next several months!
A couple of people have asked why Will isn’t wearing gloves here, and this question does come up every once in a while (recently on our video orientations) and it’s worth answering.
We never wear gloves when handling medieval manuscripts – really, never. There are several reasons for this. One, when you’re wearing cotton gloves you can’t feel the material, so it’s hard to tell when you’re being too rough. You need to be able to feel the edge of a page in order to turn it effectively. This is less important with parchment – even “bad” parchment is pretty tough – but it can be disastrous with paper, especially acidic paper which tends to be brittle. If you’re rough with brittle paper it’s liable to come apart in your hands, which you really don’t want. Another reason is cleanliness, oddly enough. Manuscripts can be dirty, and if you wear cotton gloves when you hold them the dirt will transfer to the gloves. When you move on to the next manuscript the dirt moves along too.
Hands are easier to clean than gloves, so we wash with soap and dry our hands before visiting the reading room. That way we know we’ll be careful with the pages, and the manuscripts will only be as dirty as they were when we took them off the shelf.
The British Library has a great blog post that basically said what I just said here, but if you find them more believable than me, here you go!
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