Nil Baydar, Türkye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanliği (Turkey Manuscript Institution)

The history of a book hospital: Management of manuscript conservation in Turkey

According to a law introduced in 2010, all manuscripts being held at several libraries around Turkey were transferred to 17 manuscript libraries existing in different cities of the country. All procedures such as library services, conservation, digitisation and transcription of manuscripts and facsimile production have since then been under the auspices of a single institution. The Presidency of Turkey Manuscript Institution under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has its own budget and is responsible for taking care of more than 170 thousand manuscripts. As part of this institution a book hospital was opened in 2014 for the purpose of research and conservation of unique Islamic manuscripts with a contemporary perception. Today 41 conservators, 15 chemists, 3 biologist and 4 scanning technicians are working at this hospital.

The idea of establishing a book hospital is not a new concept. In 1949 it was planned to build a binding studio in order to preserve the manuscripts but it was only realised in 1956 as a Binding and Pathology Service at Süleymaniye Library. There are 78 thousand manuscripts at Süleymaniye Library which is one of the most important manuscript libraries in the world. In 1960, chemists and conservators began work there for the first time and were sent to Italy to take training courses. One can figure out from the correspondences at that time that this service was built to preserve the precious manuscripts in Istanbul and Anatolia, to take care of the items against insects and to determine the most important factors to preserve the items.

The advent of the Book Hospital beginning in the 1960s gained a new dimension with the establishment of the Presidency of Turkey Manuscripts Institution and the studies of Directorate for Conservation of Manuscripts and Archive which came into being in 2012. The Directorate for Conservation of Manuscripts and Archive had to face the problems of 170 thousand manuscripts which had not had any common conservation standards applied to them before.

In this paper, the sense of management of all the practices about preservation of manuscripts in different manuscript libraries, restoration and digitisation of the items, research and development studies and the education of staff will be explained. It will be described how the standards for condition assessment studies of books, storage conditions, form documentation, photographing criteria, staff education, training documents preparation, conservation ethics and techniques development and chemical and biological studies were created and are being applied. And the question of the quick change of common understanding in manuscript conservation in Turkey will be answered.