Christoph Flüeler & Andrea Giovannini: Restoration and digitisation: A complementary approach

With the scarce resources for libraries, archives and museums, should money rather be spent on digitization or on restoration? In my opinion, such a question, posed by many institutions, is misguided because not only can restoration actually support and advise digitisation in a variety of ways, but also can digitisation support and enhance restoration.

I will illustrate the fruitfulness of such cooperation with several examples of the collaboration between Swiss restorers and e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland (www.e-codices.unifr.ch). Since the beginning of e-codices in 2005, collaboration with various restorers has been an integral part of the workflow for digitisation and digital manuscript research, and as of recently it is also considered by leading Swiss manuscript conservators to be an important addition and a part of the careful documentation of the restoration process. Restoration and digitisation in Switzerland has resulted in several outstanding innovations and remarkable finds. This would not have been possible without the close cooperation of these often competing disciplines.

Conservators particularly appreciate that the often very detailed restoration report is published on e-codices as a pdf along with the manuscript. These reports not only document each step of the restoration procedure, but above all they contain numerous codicological observations that are important for manuscript research.

Prof. Dr. Christoph Flüeler, University of Fribourg

Head of e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland