Marleena Vihakara & Wiebke Findeisen:

Conservation and digitisation of over 9000 parchment leaves: A case study of how we handled the mass in the National Library of Finland

The National Library of Finland houses over 9,000 parchment leaves, making the collection one of the world's largest collections of medieval manuscripts. These fragments were written in Latin, mostly in Finland, during the Middle Ages. Some leaves date back as early as 12th century. It has been estimated that the parchment fragments are from as many as 1,700 different manuscripts. During the Reformation in 16th century, the codices were broken into single leaves and reused as cover material for taxation scrolls. The fragments then travelled mainly between Finland and Sweden, but some as far as Germany. Later on these scattered leaves were collected together.

In 2007 a research project was launched by the historians of the University of Helsinki to explore this treasure. The project became part of the National Library of Finland's Save the Book digitisation project. The aim of Digitisation is to ensure the access worldwide and to preserve this collection with both national and international research value.

The logistics of the Conservation and Digitisation of the parchment collection project had to be organised well throughout the whole circle of different working stages, to meet the strictly set time frame. Around 200 individual fragments varying in size and condition had to pass through the Conservation studio every week to be ready for digitisation. The work procedures and studio set-up were modified to be as efficient as possible; from the arrival and reception of the parchments, through the conservation and digitisation, onto their departure back to the Library.

As a result of their passage through time, the fragments suffered from varying degrees of damage, i.e. soot, fire and humidity damage, tears, folds, lacunae, cockling, ink corrosion and mould. However, the tight time frame for the conservation presented considerable restrictions for the treatments. The objective of the Conservation department was therefore to prepare the individual fragments, with minimal intervention, to the best possible digital image quality, as well as to document and stabilize the overall condition of the collection.