2 10 237 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/e77c2e38e00931dd6f2ebf0382b46d62.jpeg f8ee88c608cc37de17f725684d0f009b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Examining Tibetan Buddhist texts Description An account of the resource Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia visiting with Tibetan Buddhist texts. Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 2025. IIIF Item Metadata UUID 67885a8f-e1e9-4a8a-bf4e-b19efbdc9250 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/7dd7c7b6d5a15f95ffaceaeb9288cb4f.jpeg e755e5a23e4744d2ef7ce26daba5b06b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia with Sikkimese texts Description An account of the resource Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia visiting with Sikkimese texts during a research trip to Fisher Library. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource M. Moreton Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 2025. IIIF Item Metadata UUID 55b632cb-3e09-4773-94a4-07c72859322d https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/e025353df6b4001119b6ead2ae1ede06.jpeg cc66b1bb75554add51d49bc954ebc406 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia visiting with Sikkimese texts Description An account of the resource Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia visiting with Sikkimese texts during research trip to UofT’s Fisher Library. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource May 2025. IIIF Item Metadata UUID b3d99eb2-0b33-47a4-bb2e-1c85efbddd91 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/6a24dd7bfe07400c49febf117c0dd2b6.jpeg ace2b8a345aea6d4e972d7e84ec8eeed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jim Canary and Maia Balint discussing care of Tibetan paper Description An account of the resource Jim Canary (Head Cons., Indiana U.) and Maia Balint (Conservator, UofT Fisher Library) discussing care of some Tibetan paper manuscripts at UofT Fisher Library. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource M. Moreton Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Sept. 2025. IIIF Item Metadata UUID 1bb10125-3153-4928-b40a-017c3139f83c https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/5c61a93946ddf909842f69d365477870.jpeg a1f3ead144458500ac83e40556a65d37 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia and Za Thinley Gyatso Description An account of the resource Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia and Za Thinley Gyatso visiting with Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts in the Lhalungpa Collection, UofT’s East Asian Library. Gyatso completed description work for the hundreds of books in the collection. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource Sept. 2025. IIIF Item Metadata UUID 10283547-7e85-4295-a0f7-ff4e6e180d31 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/f9d272df3e893f0f9179fe4979a819ca.pdf 6a3056bf38af8b2eafe2b2ad1d67f2c1 PDF Text Text NEWSLETTER - WINTER 2026 Greetings, Table of Contents 1. EVENTS Tibetan Community Traditional Knowledge Workshop Tibetan Book Celebration Seminar on Gandharan Scrolls at Islamabad Museum Munsee Language & History Symposium 2. LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS Washington Gospels Science Convening (USA) Lecture - Indigenous Community-Centred Care (Australia) Sealskin Book Seminar (Norway) Global Past Research Initiative (Canada) Global Judaic Presentation (Israel) Since its inception during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hidden Stories project has always been about local experience and global interconnectedness. So let us just start by acknowledging — yet again — another painful and difficult time for many of those we have come to know through this work, all around the world. We are thinking of our colleagues and friends and hoping for a more peaceful future. We present this letter from the team in 2026, the final year planned for the project, with a strong sense of gathering momentum as the ideas and questions we had, the learning we hoped for, and the partnerships we cultivated, all come to fruition in a way that makes us deeply grateful. Workshop & Lecture - Hebrew Calligraphy & Printing (Canada) 3. PUBLICATIONS Volume - Studies of a Sinai Palimpsest Volume - Textiles in Manuscripts Article - Printed Cairo Genizah Fragment It is impossible to choose favourites from among the many achievements of colleagues described below; we hope that you too will be fascinated by the range of activities, from paper, ink-making, and printing with Toronto’s Tibetan community to the publication of two new volumes emerging from Hidden Stories and our previous 4. RESEARCH UPDATES Babylonian Tablet Scanning & 3D Printing Tibetan Blue-Black Manuscripts at ROM 5. TEAM UPDATES Hagos Abrha Abay - Making Ethiopic Manuscripts Accessible Welcome to Alexandra Atiya Farewell to Noam Sienna 6. UPCOMING Book Science Virtual Meeting (May 29-30) Book and the Silk Roads project — one of these on Textiles in Manuscripts and the other centered on a richly layered Latin / Arabic palimpsest from St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert. Thank you, colleagues and friends, for so much kindness and so much rich thinking. We are reminded of a teaching from the nineteenthcentury novelist George Eliot: even our “unhistoric acts” can be part of “the growing good of the world” — “incalculably diffusive.” Hidden Stories co-PIs: Alexandra Gillespie (University of Toronto) Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) �EVENTS (LT to RT) Over an outdoor flame, Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia (Hidden Stories) makes traditional carbon-black ink from burnt Himalayan grain and other traditional ingredients; Jim Canary (Indiana U.) shares traditional Himalayan papermaking fiber with young students at the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre; students at the TCCC Language and Culture School print prayer flags using traditional ink, cotton cloth, and hand-carved wooden printing blocks. Photos: M. Moreton. Tibetan Community Event on Traditional Knowledge, Paper, and Printing Arts Tibetan community members gathered on September 28, 2025 at the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre (TCCC) for a day of traditional Himalayan paper and printing arts. The event was attended by several hundred members of the Greater Toronto Area’s 20,000-strong Tibetan community, including TCCC Language and Culture School children. Participants learned how to make traditional ink with Kalzang Bhutia; made handmade paper with Jim Canary from Himalayan paper fiber using a floating mould technique; and printed Buddhist prayer flags with workshop leaders, including Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa. The prayer flags were a particular focus. Used in monasteries, shrines, and homes across the Himalayas, as well as among Tibetan and Himalayan diasporic communities, prayer flags have traditionally been printed with biodegradable materials designed to degrade naturally in the environment. In recent decades, however, synthetic fabrics and toxic inks have replaced traditional methods, polluting the environment, complicating traditional spiritual practices, and detracting from practitioners’ relationship to the natural world. Bhutia, an Indigenous knowledge keeper and Lhopo scholar from West Sikkim, states that “These skills and knowledge are changing across the Himalayas as new methods and materials replace traditional knowledge and skills and our ecologies are transformed. These forms of traditional knowledge are crucial to uphold in these times of transformation.” By organizing locally while thinking globally, the event served as a space for information-sharing about the importance of revitalizing knowledge of traditional crafts and distributing this knowledge across the Tibetan and Himalayan diaspora. Elders shared with children their stories of learning ink-making and traditional arts when they themselves were youngsters growing up in the Himalayas. Passing this knowledge along to the younger generation was a powerful aspect of the workshop, which will continue to reverberate and be amplified through the Canadian diaspora’s deep connections with the global Tibetan community. The event was organized and co-sponsored by Hidden Stories, the East Asian Library (University of Toronto), and the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre: thanks to Thinley Gyatso, Dechen Dorjee (Principal, TCCC Language and Culture School), Alexandra Atiya, and Melissa Moreton. 2 �(LT to RT) Students at the TCCC Language and Culture School make traditional Himalayan paper using the floating mould technique; (LT to RT) Jim Canary, Hana Kim (UofT East Asian Library), and Thinley Gyatso (UofT) visit with a Tibetan blue-black manuscript at the event. Photos: M. Moreton Tibetan Book Celebration On September 30, 2025, Hidden Stories collaborators Gyatso and Canary also joined Tibetan community members attending The Lobsang P. Lhalungpa Tibetan Pecha Collection: A Celebration at the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library (part of the University of Toronto Libraries), organized by Director Hana Kim. Lhalungpa was a Tibetan monk, as well as an important translator, scholar, and educator, whose scholarship had a great impact upon the study of Tibetan texts and whose translations served to foster Tibetan Studies in the west. The collection, only recently acquired by the library, is a remarkable group of printed and manuscript texts in pecha format dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries, acquired during the scholar’s own six-decades-long study. Gyatso, a PhD Candidate in Buddhist Studies at UofT, created a descriptive handlist for the hundreds of books in the collection. Attendees heard remarks by Lhalungpa family members, an overview of the collection by Kristina Dy-Liacco (Tibetan Studies Librarian, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia U.), and a lecture on manuscripts by Gray Tuttle (Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies, Columbia U.). The UofT’s EAL, together with the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, holds thousands of Tibetan manuscripts and books; this event aimed to highlight these collections and build new connections linking community members with Tibetan cultural heritage held locally in UofT libraries. The event presentations can be watched here. Kristina Dy-Liacco with Tibetan community members at the event celebrating the Lobsang P. Lhalungpa collection at UTL’s Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library. September 30, 2025. Seminar on Gandhari Birchbark Scrolls and their Conservation - Islamabad Museum On October 31, 2025, the Hidden Stories team hosted a hybrid seminar for the Gandhari Manuscript Project, which has been working to found a birchbark conservation centre in Islamabad, Pakistan, to care for and maintain one of the world’s oldest collections of Buddhist scrolls. Three key figures in this project – Mark Allon (University of Sydney), Muhammad Azeem (Archeological Engineer for the Department of Archaeology and Museums [DOAM], Islamabad, Pakistan), and Jason Neelis (Wilfrid Laurier University) – gave updates on their work with ancient Gandhari Buddhist scrolls in Islamabad to an audience made up of community members in Toronto as well as colleagues online in Pakistan, the US, and Ottawa. 3 �Munsee Language & History Symposium The Fifth Annual Munsee Language & History Symposium took place in Princeton, NJ, and New York City on October 16-18, 2025. The event continues and deepens relationships with Lunaapeewak from Munseespeaking tribal nations as they gather on their own traditional territory, Lunaapahkiing, with students, staff, fellows, and faculty from Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS). The theme for the 2025 symposium was “Reconnecting with Lunaape Land, Language, and History,” with sessions hosted at Princeton Public Library, the American Museum of Natural History, NYC (AMNH), IAS, and The Seed Farm at Princeton. Community members give presentations at the AMNH, NYC. October 17, 2025. Photo: M. Moreton. The AMNH visit provided an opportunity for community members to visit with Munsee belongings, including a bandolier bag, beaded leggings, a wampum belt, wooden spoons and paddles, baskets, ears of corn, and ceremonial ancestor belongings. These belongings, acquired in 1907 by the anthropologist M.R. Harrington from the three Munsee communities now located in Ontario, are the focus of present-day community research and reconnection. John Nicholas and Ian McCallum (both Munsee-Delaware Nation), together with John Moses (Delaware and Upper Mohawk bands, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory), gave a presentation on their visit with Munsee belongings in Germany and Scotland during the summer of 2025. Julie Rae Tucker (Munsee-Delaware Nation), discussed the Munsee connection to sacred dolls, including one among the belongings held at AMNH, and preparations for an exhibition of new art by Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Eelunaapeewi Lahkeewiit / Potawatomi), “XWAT Naaniitus.” The day ended with discussions of the responsibilities of museums holding Munsee and other Indigenous belongings. View the program here, with recordings of symposium presentations and other Lunaape events at IAS here. Munsee community members gather at The Seed Farm in Princeton. October 18, 2025. Photo: Sameer Khan/ Fotobuddy. 4 �LECTURES & CONVERSATIONS Early Books Research - Washington Gospels Science Convening In January 2026, Andrew Nelson (Western University) and Jessica Lockhart participated in a two-day Science Convening on the Washington Gospels hosted by the internal Project Team at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in Washington, DC. Purchased in Egypt by Charles Lang Freer in 1906, the Washington Gospels is among the oldest extant gospel books in the world: a 4th- or 5th-century parchment codex written in Greek uncial script, with a now-much-deteriorated Coptic binding of wooden boards decorated with encaustic paintings of the four Evangelists, in a style dated to the 7th or 8th century. This Science Convening marked an early milestone in a large-scale interdisciplinary research project investigating the materiality and history of this codex, announced at a Forbes Colloquium Examining the boards and a detached gathering of the Washington Gospels. National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1906.274. Photo by Hutomo Wicaksono. in September 2025. Specialists in research methods from ancient DNA sequencing to hyperspectral imaging examined the codex and identified priorities for future research. Nelson and Lockhart are working with the NMAA team and colleagues at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History on how to safely microCT scan the book’s binding and covers, with the aim of accessing hidden details within the spine and boards. Centering Relational Responsibility and Indigenous Community Authority In November 2025, Amanda McLeod (Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation) spoke at the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM) during the conference “More Than Materials: Collaborative Approaches in Cultural Heritage Conservation,” held at the State Library of Queensland, Brisbane. The event brought together more than 320 global delegates to explore how conservation practice is shaped by cultural relationships, ethical accountability, and community-centred care. For the first time in AICCM’s history, two of the three days were curated with First Nations leadership at the center of the program. This initiative, co-designed with Caroline Martin, a Senior Boonwurrung Custodian and Founder and Managing Director of Yalukit Marnang, centered on truth-telling, relational responsibility, and community authority in conservation practice, foregrounding cultural protocols, Indigenous worldviews, and critical reflection on colonial legacies. McLeod’s presentation brought together Hidden Stories work, including the Traditional Care Practices video series, with her own ongoing research into the care of wampum belts and other Indigenous belongings held in museum and library Amanda McLeod speaking on “Wâhkôhtowin: Hidden Stories, Indigenous experience, and recentering the wampum” at the 2025 AICCM conference in Brisbane, November 13, 2025. Photo: Juanita Kelly-Mundine. collections. She explored how material conservation cannot be separated from treaty relationships, kinship systems, community authority, and culturally grounded decision-making, while emphasizing institutions’ responsibility to participate in communityled frameworks for access, interpretation, and care. McLeod’s participation in the AICCM conference strengthened international connections among conservation and heritage colleagues, reinforcing momentum toward community-centred models of stewardship and ongoing global dialogue on relational care and cultural integrity. For more updates, visit the Great Lakes & Eastern Woodlands page on the Hidden Stories digital hub. 5 �Sealskin Book Seminar - Oslo Hidden Stories team members Melissa Moreton and Alberto Campagnolo presented on November 4, 2025 at an international seminar at the Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo, on a medieval sealskin-covered manuscript recently acquired by the library, likely dating from the early 13th century. The seminar, “The Hagenes Codex and the Conservation of Medieval Manuscripts,” was organized by researcher and Head of Conservation Chiara Palandri. Known exemplars of sealskin-covered books from the Nordic medieval context are extremely rare, and Palandri was the first to identify the cover as sealskin using protein analysis and visual analysis under magnification. Moreton’s presentation, “Tacketed Limp Bookbindings in Medieval Europe: Contextualizing the Hagenes Codex of 13th-century Norway,” and Campagnolo’s, “From Sealskin to Codex Structure in the Digital Medium,” were followed by a model-making workshop with a small interdisciplinary group of scholars and book conservators. (LT - RT) Alberto Campagnolo (KU Leuven/U.Tours), Jiří Vnouček (Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen), and Chiara Palandri (Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo) examine the sealskin cover of the Hagenes Codex. Nov. 5, 2025, Conservation Lab, Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo. Photo: M. Moreton. Global Past Research Initiative Manuscript Workshop Graduate students and professors from the University of Toronto, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and the American University in Cairo met for the third workshop of the Global Past Research Initiative (GPRI), held in the Toronto area on October 10-16, 2025. The workshop facilitated student engagement with multiple manuscript traditions and collections, with visits to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, and UofT’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. Hidden Stories team members contributed to multiple stages of this event: Alexandra Gillespie offered an introduction on ethical considerations for manuscript study, while Jessica Lockhart and Rachel Di Cresce organized a comparative introduction to book formats and technologies using examples from the Fisher’s collection, and provided training in the use of a DinoLite digital microscope for ink characterization. The Zulfikar Hirji discusses a Qur’an from coastal East Africa with GPRI participants. October 16, 2025: Photo: Jessica Lockhart DinoLite came in handy again for the display and discussion of a Qur’an from Siyu, Kenya, by Zulfikar Hirji (York University) on the final afternoon. Global Judaica - Lectures & Workshop (Israel and Canada) In September 2025, Noam Sienna participated in a workshop at the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East (Jerusalem), on the topic of “Books and Libraries among Jewish Communities of the Islamic World.” His paper presentation, based on research from the Global Judaica project, discussed the Ibn Nahmias family and their printing house in Ottoman Constantinople, the first Hebrew press in the Islamic world. While in Jerusalem, he also spent several days examining 16th-century Constantinople imprints from the collection of the National Library of Israel, including two copies of the 1493 Arba’a Turim. In November, Sienna also spent a week in Halifax as a Scholar/Artist-in-Residence at Dalhousie University’s Center for Jewish Studies, in collaboration with King’s College and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His activities included class visits, two hands-on workshops on Hebrew calligraphy and letterpress printing, and a public lecture on “The Theology of Jewish Printing in Ottoman Constantinople.” 6 �PUBLICATIONS Two New Books Published We are thrilled to share that two edited volumes associated with the project have just been published. The Early Illustrated Apollonius of Tyre: Studies of a Sinai Palimpsest presents the extraordinary discovery at St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai of a fragment of a 6th-century illustrated codex of the Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre. On parchment first reused for an Athanasian Creed in Latin and, since the 9th century, bound into one of the earliest Arabic Gospels (Sinai, Arabic New Finds 8 and 28), the fragment preserves three layers of textual history — a triple palimpsest in Latin, Latin, and Arabic. Co-edited by Michelle Brown and Jessica Lockhart, and published by Barkhuis as a supplemental volume of Ancient Narrative, this volume’s essays offer new perspectives on the ancient novel and on late antique and early medieval Mediterranean networks of language, religion, patronage, and trade and are accompanied by high-quality images, edited transcriptions, and an appendix that describes all the fragments in the manuscript. The second publication is the richly-illustrated Textiles in Manuscripts: A Local and Global History of the Book, published with De Gruyter. The volume, co-edited by Melissa Moreton and Suzanne Conklin Akbari, emerged from the 2021 Textiles in Manuscripts workshop, hosted virtually at the IAS, Princeton, as part of The Book and the Silk Roads project that preceded Hidden Stories. The book includes chapters by workshop presenters as well as new contributors, broadening the scope to include: • New research on Syriac, Armenian, Byzantine, Ethiopian, Chinese, Mongolian, Islamic, and Hebrew manuscripts from late antiquity through the early modern period • Production, trade, and exchange of books in a global perspective • Contributions by book historians, textile scholars, conservators, art historians, and codicologists Article on Printed Cairo Genizah Fragment Noam Sienna recently published on the Cambridge University Library blog an article concerning a poem on chess that he discovered preserved in a printed fragment from the Cairo Genizah, originally from the Ibn Nahmias press which was active in 16th-century Constantinople: “‘Their Battlefield is Eight upon Eight’: A Newly-Discovered Hebrew Poem on Chess (T-S Misc. 17.60).” Read the post here, on the Genizah Research Unit website (Nov. 2025). 7 �RESEARCH UPDATES LT: 3D printed tablet both true to size (left) and enlarged for easier reading (right). Printed by Grasselli Geomechanics Lab, UofT; RT: Alistair Mascarenhas, Lab Manager for Grasselli’s Geomechanics Lab, checking completed scan. Photos: Rachel Di Cresce Babylonian Tablet Scanning & 3D Printing The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is home to a Babylonian tablet from 1789 BCE; it is the oldest object in the library’s collection. As part of a collaborative Hidden Stories project between the library, Grasselli’s Geomechanics Lab, conservator Maia Balint, and PhD candidate Raquel Robbins, the tablet was scanned using the EasyTom X-ray CT system to produce a 3D model which allows users to manipulate and read the tablet (access to which is severely restricted). The scan enabled two 3D prints of the tablet: one to scale and another enlarged for greater legibility. We are excited to have these models as part of the Fisher Teaching Collection, so that students and researchers can handle and learn about the tablet in a new way. Raquel is now preparing a transcription and translation; we hope new information regarding the use, history, composition, and provenance of this ancient book will soon be brought to light. Tibetan Blue-Black Manuscripts at ROM Jim Canary visited Tibetan mthing shog or blue-black manuscripts in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in September, 2025. Mthing shog manuscripts are the highest level of Tibetan Buddhist manuscript production and have a distinctive shiny, blue-black surface created by painting a sheet of Himalayan paper with a mix of soot, brain (yak, goat, or sheep), and hide glue, and burnishing it to a high sheen. Sacred texts are then calligraphed on the sheets, often in gold or silver inks. Mthing shog manuscripts are the focus of conservation research, since some suffer from issues of ‘white bloom’—saponification of the fats of the brain which migrate to the surface, obscuring the sacred writing on the page. This is a conservation issue for Tibetan books in the Himalayas and within many global collections and is a focus of research by the Hidden Stories team. Stay tuned for updates! Jim Canary and Jessica Lockhart with a blue-black Tibetan manuscript leaf at the ROM (957.211.1). September 29, 2025. Photo: M. Moreton 8 �TEAM UPDATES Hagos Abrha Abay - Making Ethiopic Manuscripts Accessible Scholar and Gə’əz philologist Hagos Abhra Abay completed his Hidden Stories research associateship in 2025, in conjunction with the Textiles in Ethiopian Manuscripts (TEM) project, UofT’s Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, and the Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, where he taught Gə’əz language. We are very happy to share that Abay will continue to stay connected with Hidden Stories as he completes textual descriptions of the Ethiopic manuscripts at the UofT’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. His work will allow the collection of approximately forty codex manuscripts to be catalogued, digitised, and made accessible online through the UofT. Hidden Stories Welcomes Alexandra Atiya We are thrilled to welcome Alexandra Atiya to the Hidden Stories team! Atiya just completed her PhD on late-medieval English and Iberian drama at UofT and will be dividing her time between the Hidden Stories project, the Old Books New Science Lab, and the Records of Early English Drama project at the UofT. As a research assistant, she supported the “Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Roads” exhibition at the Aga Khan Museum (2021-2022), contributing important information on the manuscripts and texts included in the exhibition. More recently, Atiya has been working with the Andrews Book Science project team to scan and process multispectral book images. Her Hidden Stories work will include assisting in organizing events, arranging logistics for scholar visits, as well as supporting community-led research. Atiya notes, “I’m looking forward to continuing my work with Hidden Stories welcomes Alexandra Atiya to the team! Photo: Elah Feder OBNS and Hidden Stories!” Noam Sienna Completes Global Judaica Postdoc Fellowship We sadly say farewell to postdoctoral fellow Noam Sienna, who wrapped up an incredibly productive postdoctoral fellowship at the end of 2025, co-hosted by Hidden Stories, the Centre for Jewish Studies, and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. Sienna notes that the two years spent with the Hidden Stories project have transformed his research, advanced his career, and introduced him to new methodologies, resources, and relationships. Over the course of his fellowship, he explored many areas of and topics in Jewish book culture of the premodern Islamic world, including Abbasid Baghdad, medieval Egypt, 16th-century Istanbul, and early modern North Africa. Among other research strands, his main research efforts have been centered on a monograph on Hebrew printing in Istanbul 1493-1530, which took significant shape during his fellowship. Sienna says that this research field “continues to surprise me with its depth and richness,” and concludes, “I am so grateful for the opportunity to study Jewish books in the global context of premodern history, and I hope that the Hidden Stories project continues to produce innovative work and lead the field through its interdisciplinary collaboration.” Thank you, Noam! Noam Sienna at the Jewish Theological Seminary, NYC, examining a copy of the Arba’a Turim, for his research on early Hebrew printing in Istanbul. 9 �UPCOMING EVENTS Book Science Virtual Meeting As part of a collaboration with Professor Paul Dilley (University of Iowa), the Hidden Stories team is organizing a two-day Book Science Virtual Conference on May 29-30, 2026. Global participants will come together to discuss the state of the field, current projects, and future directions. On the first day, scholars will give opening statements introducing specific subfields of book science research from their perspective: what has been accomplished so far, and where the next goals and hurdles lie. The second day will open out to lightning talks with the theme of “new discoveries, new directions,” where research teams will report on their current work, as well as responding or adding to the perspectives shared on the first day. If you’d like to attend, please register here. (LT to RT) Hidden writing revealed through multispectral (MSI) image on a water-damaged 15th-c. Hebrew manuscript on paper from Iberia (Freidberg MSS 3-012, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library); MSI image of a parchment binding fragment, identified through imaging and analysis as a 15th‑c. letter drafted from King Louis XI (Reuter FF0012, Robertson Davies Library, Massey College, UofT); Image of amatl/ ficus fibre of a Techialoyan Codex (1690-1720) taken at UofT’s Yip Lab with ZEISS Axio Z1 optical microscope, 40x magnification (Axoloapan Xoloctlan, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library). MSI image credit: Stephanie Lahey. Visit our Digital Hub to learn more about the project, Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book Editorial Credits: Melissa Moreton, Jessica Lockhart, Rachel Di Cresce, Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Alexandra Gillespie Banner image: Indian textile pasted onto the inner cover of a 19th-c. Ethiopian manuscript. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Aeth.f.29, in Textiles in Manuscripts: A Local and Global History of the Book, p. 170. Designer: Azure Pham 10 � IIIF Item Metadata UUID b9208864-a1d1-4286-b69b-425aafcf3668 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Newsletter #6 - Winter 2026 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/a6b43ec33623359d22a9c88cec606786.png f38e325bae8f8c95af3a71bc2e591a98 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image of amatl/ ficus fibre Description An account of the resource Image of amatl/ ficus fibre of a Techialoyan Codex (1690-1720) taken at UofT’s Yip Lab with ZEISS Axio Z1 optical microscope, 40x magnification (Axoloapan Xoloctlan, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library). IIIF Item Metadata UUID 8817f8d6-00ec-4130-b358-af87724b89c2 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/78102b8854402c6443e070b7146b2544.png 0560c92494764858797a8cd90482b072 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource MSI image of a parchment binding fragment Description An account of the resource MSI image of a parchment binding fragment, identified through imaging and analysis as a 15th‑c. letter drafted from King Louis XI (Reuter FF0012, Robertson Davies Library, Massey College, UofT). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource S. Lahey. IIIF Item Metadata UUID e066be2c-b405-42c3-9203-12224859f291 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/5c2d95d18bb2566640d0c4417c515dbb.png 1818f216e781e352b751079b833b711c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hidden writing Description An account of the resource Hidden writing revealed through multispectral (MSI) image on a water-damaged Iberian 15th-c. Hebrew manuscript on paper (Freidberg MSS 3-012, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library). Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource S. Lahey. IIIF Item Metadata UUID dbcd6d3c-b054-47b4-b456-b5f19a25befb https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/e8a989bef72e75e7f96a200b51763e47.jpg 91f267f07d4c16f0bc6448363fb2561d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Amanda McLeod Presenting Description An account of the resource Amanda McLeod speaking on Wâhkôhtowin: Hidden Stories, Indigenous experience, and recentering the wampum at the 2025 AICCM conference in Brisbane, November 13, 2025. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Juanita Kelly-Mundine IIIF Item Metadata UUID b5bbc336-59ba-4954-bdad-ba909dd99210