Dr. V.S. Krishna Library in Andhra University possesses over 6,000 manuscripts in paper and ‘Tala patra’ (palm leaves). A few of them are centuries old and they contain matter related to religion, medicine, astronomy, agriculture and defence strategy. And now the challenge is to preserve and restore the treasure trove.
“This is not the challenge for AU alone; it is the challenge for the entire country. There are thousands of such manuscripts and they need to be preserved and conserved using scientific techniques,” said Mallika Mitra, Director of Conservation Institute, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach), Bhubaneswar.
According to her, the entire process can be broadly classified into two parts: preservation and conservation, and both processes are scientific art.
While preservation deals with management of the entire environment, which includes managing the micro and macro climate, conservation is more about treating the materials with chemical solvents, polymers and natural colours.
“Both the processes involve scientific process and should be done without tampering the originality of the material,” Ms Mallika told The Hindu .
According to Ms. Mallika, the micro and macros climate plays an important role in preservation.
“The ideal lighting or luminance in the library, where such books or manuscripts are stored, should be around 50 to 55 lux, the humidity should be about 55 per cent and the room temperature should be about 26 degree Celsius,” she said.
Lack of knowledge
On the conservation part, she said toxicology and de-acidifying played an important role. “Cellular fibres and polymers are also used to fill the holes and special natural inks and colours are used to increase the legibility,” she said.
According to her, conservation should be included as a full-time subject in library science. “What we have now is just a passing reference in the course. It should be made a full-time subject. It should also be included in archaeology along with archaeology conservation. In the present day, librarians are not trained and equipped to handle the preservation and conservation of books and manuscripts,” she said.
Home recipe
On preservation of books and manuscripts at home, Ms. Mallika said that regular dusting, placing home-made pest repellents such as powdered turmeric or pepper on the shelves and exposing them to sunlight at least once in a year, could work wonders.
