Fitting a quart into a pint pot at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London: A new library management and conservation survey tool for historic libraries

Reorganising a large number of books in a library with limited available space and important architectural constraints can prove to be a difficult task without a proper management tool. In 2011 the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London initiated a renovation project with the aim of restoring the house in which Soane lived, and kept his books, to the state it was in when he died. Work on the library began with a survey of the books and the shelving in order to assess their condition and to facilitate their reorganisation within the original shelving after the removal of more recent shelving. The project was entrusted to the staff of Ligatus Research Centre, who designed and tested a new tool for this specific purpose. This tool, which will be made freely available on the Ligatus website, can be used by any library or book collection having similar restrictions and objectives. In addition to presenting the new tool and the context of its creation and use in Sir John Soane’s Library, this paper defines the methodology for collecting data in an efficient way, which has improved in the course of the survey, and the production of the reports.

About the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts 15

The present volume contains articles based on papers from the 15th international seminar on the care and conservation of manuscripts, which was held at the University of Copenhagen from the 2nd - 4th of April 2014. The seminar was attended by 147 participants from 28 different countries. There were 29 papers given at the seminar, of which 23 are represented here – plus one, based on a paper that had been accepted but unfortunately could not be given.

Care and Conservation of Manuscripts collects the best contemporary scholarship on the conservation, preservation, and use of historic manuscripts, often engaging issues surrounding the history of books and manuscripts as well. The present volume includes articles on the subjects of Árni Magnússon’s initial collection, fourteenth-century archive binding in Spain, sixteenth-century obituary rolls at Kremsmünster Abbey, and writing from the Great War.

(Source: http://www.mtp.hum.ku.dk/details.asp?eln=203745)

• http://nfi.ku.dk/cc/wednesday-2-april/au...
• http://www.ligatus.org.uk/node/736
• http://nfi.ku.dk/cc/