Traditional care practices of books, such as exposing manuscripts to air and sun once a year, greeting them in the language of the community who made them, or wrapping them appropriately in textiles or skin carrying cases to keep them together and keep out dirt and insects, are all ways in which communities of origin have for hundreds of years cared for and preserved this heritage of the book. 

Traditional care can be parallel to European care models, but often diverges from it in critical ways. Books, understood as more than human relations by many communities, are closely connected to their users and caretakers. In many traditions, books have spiritual as well as physical needs. They are a part of regular rituals that provide for their care, protection, and bond them with their community. Books and their protective cases and wrappers hold meaning, which is often lost when objects are held in collections outside their communities of origin. 

Another aspect of this area focuses on the physical care of books. Each book is created in different climatic conditions which vary widely across the globe - from the cool Ethiopian highlands and subtropical areas of Nepal, to eastern woodlands of North America which experience extremes in seasonal temperatures. Taken out of their places of production and often now living within institutional repositories, books and book-adjacent objects (such as wampum belts/ sashes, Sikkimese prayer flag texts, healing scrolls) are generally stored at a uniform temperature and humidity. This standard, for many repositories, was set decades ago and tailored to the care of medieval European parchment books with leather-covered wooden boards. This ‘one size fits all’ approach does not provide for the range of environmental needs that diverse book traditions require since global book traditions make use a wide variety of materials including palm leaves, non-western papers, coated and painted sheet material, cord, wampum shell beads, cloth coverings and wrappers and were created under a wide range of climatic conditions.

The Hidden Stories project is keenly interested in traditional practices of production and care and aims to share these with a broad audience of public readers, scholars and researchers, book conservators, and care professionals who look after these books in GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) and conservation labs. With the goal of integrating traditional care practices into the non-traditional GLAM spaces and conservation labs, project collaborators hope to both improve the care of books and integrate ritual into these spaces, to better connect these book relations to the origin communities who created and traditionally cared for them. 

Areas of inquiry include:

• How are Ethiopic manuscripts and amulet scrolls handled and stored in collections outside of Ethiopia? Scrolls, manuscript books, textile coverings, and mahdar (case) all require special attention for storage, use, and display.

• How are Indigenous wampum sashes/belts cared for in institutional repositories in North America and Europe, far from the communities that made them? 

• How can basic care practices such as the proper wrapping of a Nepalese or Tibetan pothi-style manuscript in its cloth robes be shared?

• What are the best practices for disseminating knowledge about traditional care and integrating care into GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) and conservation labs in ways that involve traditional knowledge keepers and source communities?