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Title A name given to the resource Moses, Akbari, McCallum in Blantyre, Scotland Description An account of the resource Three people standing outside in the sun infront of a building Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 20 June 2025 IIIF Item Metadata UUID f8b1d491-798a-4f1c-a642-830e7432fb36 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/d5d58b17bc37cb1df8fa9be7d4db453f.jpg 78f05296a5022e3a4c2a4e042cd47826 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 McCallum, Nicholas, and Moses gathered at the Global Cultural Assembly, Humboldt Forum Description An account of the resource Three people sitting in a semi circle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 18 June 2025 IIIF Item Metadata UUID 9a0a5a84-53c0-45f7-813d-6fad6cc2f023 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/4dffc3c1a3762f2e30b223346dbdfd15.JPG b597f78ecaca08abce967b0a34e2d8b2 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 Bidur Bhattarai filming a video on traditional care practices Subject The topic of the resource Bidur Bhattarai filming a video on traditional care practices for Nepalese books at Kwā Bāhā (Golden Temple), Patan, Nepal. Description An account of the resource A man points a camera at a manuscript infront of another man sitting. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG IIIF Item Metadata UUID e7532c63-c635-4a36-8fd6-98164ac38c00 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/315ab901d3128e6eca5d794655dd248e.jpeg 0a423373d41cbdb965a5a333c793ba49 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 Eyob Derillo and videographer Chris Monette filming part of the video series on traditional care practices Subject The topic of the resource Ethiopian manuscript scholar Eyob Derillo (British Library) and videographer Chris Monette filming part of the video series on traditional care practices, with Ethiopian manuscripts at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, U. Toronto (Fisher Library). Description An account of the resource A man stands behind a table looking at a open manuscript while another man points a camera on a tripod at the manuscript . Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG IIIF Item Metadata UUID ca3dccc4-7bc1-4c82-bc84-22a15ec86b96 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/0c5a4f679ba95f31b6ecdcbfecdd95a5.jpg bd9475979d01acf07ab3b29b346c5d1b 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 McLeod and Monette discuss filming Subject The topic of the resource McLeod and Monette discuss filming (with S. Akabari and Susan Heald), at NMAI CRC. Description An account of the resource Four people stand around a table with two wampum belts. A bright filming light is pointed towards them in the top right corner. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG IIIF Item Metadata UUID 80d0d7b3-0c53-4341-9295-95a895e345d2 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/e6973636db7cae3c50eec41de0773740.jpeg ecf367dd326359647c071b2dfbc773b0 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 Monette filming wampum belts at NMAI Subject The topic of the resource Monette filming wampum belts at NMAI Description An account of the resource Monette filming wampum belts at NMAI. Monette points a camera on a tripod at a display case with five wampum belts. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPEG IIIF Item Metadata UUID 64a04b2f-3e91-497d-bba1-8b8f673980b2 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/860f43171d5b37a411f04a2111a78067.jpeg 4c10138281ce8c78639e08c7969a67ac 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 McLeod at NMAI Cultural Resource Center (CRC) Subject The topic of the resource McLeod speaking about wampum care practices at NMAI Cultural Resource Center (CRC), near Washington DC. Description An account of the resource McLeod speaking about wampum care practices at NMAI Cultural Resource Center (CRC), near Washington DC. McLeod stands behind a table with a wampum belt while filmmaker Chris Monette stands across the table holding a camera. IIIF Item Metadata UUID 3def3a4b-265c-4dfa-b66f-551e4b20fd42 https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/6b3d9a187fcaa9ea8dcd6f92d617860a.jpeg 1adfcd08b14e577662eab028d4474c4c 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 Conservator and curator Amanda McLeod (Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation) filming traditional care of wampum belts Subject The topic of the resource Amanda McLeod with filmmaker Chris Monette Description An account of the resource Conservator and curator Amanda McLeod (Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation) filming traditional care of wampum belts at National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Cultural Resource Center, near Washington DC, with filmmaker Chris Monette. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource JPG IIIF Item Metadata UUID 4e8ba254-0c36-49d2-b307-3f3b78316c6e https://hiddenstories.library.utoronto.ca/files/original/7e297254350ad4d53bc55d7cea3a8bbf.pdf f32165bbd9df84994ac05bfaa08ddbe5 PDF Text Text NEWSLETTER - WINTER 2025 Table of Contents WELCOME 1. EVENTS Toronto Symposium - Manuscript Cultures Across Africa and Asia Hebrew Print Workshop at UofT Massey College Indigenous Language and History Symposium Buddhist Prayer Flag Printing Workshop 2. LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS Presentation on Indigenous Books Élodie Dupey García on Polychromy in Nahua Art and Books Lectures on Global Judaica 3. PUBLICATIONS New Article on Stewardship and Indigenous Collections Rethinking the Medieval Canon on Indigenous Lands New Publications on Jewish Books Encountering Belongings with Ritual Power Greetings to friends of the Hidden Stories project — and happy 2025. We’re excited to update you on our work at the Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book project and to share news on the research and knowledge-sharing activities of many collaborators over the last half year and more. Highlights include groundbreaking new work by Zulfikar Hirji on the books of coastal East Africa, by Eyob Derillo on Ethiopic scrolls, by Noam Sienna on Jewish printing, and by Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia on Sikkim prayer flag printing, among many others. In the letter we describe sharing stories from Munsee-Delaware wampum at the fourth annual Munsee Language and History Symposium and some new directions in our book science research. It is a difficult and wildly unpredictable time: even as we write, 4. RESEARCH UPDATES the threatened trade war has begun between Canada and the New Research on Illuminated Qur’ans in Coastal Kenya USA, the two countries that host this project. The work we do Nepali Books - Research and Preservation with communities and collaborators around the world to surface Eyob Derillo - Research on Ethiopic Amulet Scrolls beautiful and compelling stories from old books and to care for A Kashmiri Birchbark Codex at the University of Toronto the knowledge that past and present peoples have deemed most Updates from the Gandhari Manuscript Project, Pakistan precious – this seems to us more important than ever. 5. TEAM UPDATES We send our warmest wishes along with these updates, Introducing Hidden Stories Doctoral Fellows: Kara Ma and Sloane Geddes Andrews Hub in Book Science at the Fisher Rare Book Library 6. UPCOMING Cultural Heritage Imaging & Innovation Conference - March 25-28 Care and Conservation of Manuscripts Seminar - April 11 Footprints Hebrew Paleography Seminar - June 9-10 ‘Jewish Print Culture - NEH Summer Course, June 15-27 Rare Book Libraries Conference, June 26 Hidden Stories co-PIs: Alexandra Gillespie (University of Toronto) Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) Sian Meikle (University of Toronto Libraries) �EVENTS Toronto Symposium - Manuscript Cultures Across Africa and Asia On 13 September 2024, Massey College’s Robertson Davies Library (University of Toronto) and the Hidden Stories project co-hosted “Manuscript Cultures Across Africa & Asia,” a symposium on non-Western manuscripts. Over 40 attendees from the University of Toronto community explored the manuscript book’s diverse history, from the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls to 16th-century Nepalese hybrid print-manuscripts. The event highlighted research on manuscript cultures beyond Europe and non-Indigenous North America. Speakers included Hidden Stories Global Judaica postdoctoral fellow Noam Sienna, doctoral fellow Sloane Geddes, and research associate Hagos Abrha Abay, who chaired the session on African manuscripts. Hebrew Print Workshop at UofT Massey College In September 2024, Noam Sienna, in collaboration with the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, and the Book History & Print Culture Program, organized a “Print Your Own Rosh Hashanah Cards” workshop at Massey College’s Bibliography Room. The hands-on event drew dozens of students, faculty, and staff, who learned about Jewish printing history in Europe and North America, including Massey College’s rare Hebrew/Yiddish type collection. Participants printed their own cards featuring a Yiddish poem from a circa 1920 Rosh Hashanah card by Hayyim and Esther Goldberg in Warsaw. Indigenous Language and History Symposium The fourth annual Munsee Language and History Symposium, October 31 to November 2, 2024, was hosted at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University Library (PUL), and Princeton Public Library. The meeting centred on wampum, with a session on its role in treaty obligations, and a visit from a Munsee-Delaware Nation belt housed at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Cared for by community member Jacob Dolson until 1907, the belt was acquired for the museum by anthropologist Mark Harrington: Dolson ensured by written agreement that Munsee-Delaware could access the belt when needed, and this agreement formed the basis for its visit over a century later. Co-PI Suzanne Conklin Akbari worked with Munsee-Delaware member Ian McCallum and AMNH to bring the belt to Princeton, where, as an ancestor—unseen by community for nearly 125 years—it was welcomed with fire, smudging, feasting, prayers, and song. Munsee-Delaware members gather around a Munsee-Delaware Nation wampum belt: (front row) Rose Snake, Carmen and Amanda Dolson, Crystal Flewelling; (upper row) Ian McCallum, Chief Roger Thomas, George Stonefish (Eelunaapeewi Lahkeewiit), Georgia-Louise Charbonneau, Julie Rae Tucker, Johnaya Dolson, Jackie Thomas, Ross Albert. 2 �Other sessions included a visit to PUL to examine land transfer documents and books reflecting settler-Indigenous interactions in Lunaapahkiing (or Lenapehokink: presentday New Jersey, southern New York, eastern Pennsylvania, and northern Delaware). Munsee-Delaware elder John Nicholas shared ancestral knowledge of wampum, recalling that their community once had so many wampum belts that sharing all their stories— including histories of the belts’ relations and treaty agreements—took nine days and nights. Sessions on Lunaape Belongings explored communities’ connections to items in North American and European museums and a roundtable provided updates on Lunaape language reclamation, including efforts by both Munsee and Unami speakers as well as the ongoing development of an online Munsee dictionary. See the full program and info on and recordings of past symposia on the IAS Lunaape page. Buddhist Prayer Flag Printing Workshop In October 2024, Hidden Stories team member Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia led two prayer flag printing workshops in his home region of Sikkim for students and teachers at Melli School, young Buddhist monks at Pemayangtse Monastery, and local woodblock carvers. The workshops aim to revive traditional knowledge of Buddhist prayer flags, used in funerary sites, monasteries, shrines, and homes across the Himalayas. For generations, prayer flags Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Eelunaapeewi Lahkeewiit) and Julie Rae Tucker (Munsee-Delaware Nation) with Lunaape books at Princeton Public Library. were printed with biodegradable materials designed to degrade naturally. However, in the past 40 years, synthetic fabrics and toxic inks have replaced traditional methods. Students printed their own prayer flags with sustainable materials, learning about Indigenous knowledge, sustainability, language reclamation, and human-environment relationships. Young Buddhist monks at Pemayangtse Monastery, Sikkim, printing prayer flags. Students and teachers at the Melli School, Sikkim, with Hidden Stories team member Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia (third from left), sharing their prayer flags. 3 �LECTURES & CONVERSATIONS Presentation on Indigenous Books Hidden Stories collaborators Ian McCallum (Munsee-Delaware Nation/ OISE, University of Toronto), Melissa Moreton, and Suzanne Conklin Akbari gave a virtual presentation on “Beaverskin and Birchbark: Community-led Research on Indigenous Books from Turtle Island” to the Belgian-Dutch Bookbindings Society (BelgischNederlands Boekbandengenootschap) and the Consortium for European Research Libraries (CERL) on 17 January. Printed in Basel in 1645, a copy of Buxtorf’s Hebrew Lexicon traveled to the Americas, where preacher David Brainerd (d. 1747) used it for sermon-writing among Lunaape communities in present-day New Jersey. When the book broke in the 1740s, Lunaape women likely repaired it with a brain-tanned, painted beaverskin overcover, which preserved it to this day. Now in PUL’s Special Collections, the book is visited annually by Munsee-Delaware community members in an ongoing process of shared learning. Watch the lecture here. Élodie Dupey García on Polychromy in Nahua Art and Books Hidden Stories collaborator Élodie Dupey García (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) presented a paper, “Polychromy in Nahua Art: An Exploration from Indigenous Categories and Aesthetics” at the XXIX European Maya Conference held in October 2024 in Perugia, Italy. Comparing Nahua uses of colour in pre-Hispanic books and other artistic pieces, Dupey García’s paper “emphasized that a common thread of Nahua art is a keen interest in creating polychrome works, where the abundance of colors is a key element to convert these cultural creations into pieces animated by the vital essence (tonalli) that gives life to human beings and to the gods, according to Nahua thought.” Élodie Dupey García presents at the XXIX European Maya Conference. Lectures on Global Judaica In September 2024, Noam Sienna participated virtually in a conference on “Jewish Material Culture in the Islamic World” dedicated to the memories of Natalie Zemon Davis and James K. McConica at the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, presenting a paper on “The Material Culture of Jewish Books in North Africa: Scribes, Artists, and Patrons.” Sienna also participated in the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium (Sept. 26-28), on the topic “Communities of Print: Authors, Readers, and Printers in the Early Modern World.” In November, Sienna presented at a workshop at San Francisco Theological Seminary on the topic “Mediterranean Intersections: Politics, Trade, Material Culture, Religion, and Ideas in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.” His paper, entitled “‘To Replace That Which Has Been Destroyed’: Sephardi Printing in the Wake of Exile,” was a micro-historical study of the Ibn Nahmias press in Constantinople (14931530). He was also a guest speaker at Kenyon College (Ohio), delivering a public lecture, “A Millennium Sienna speaking at Kenyon College of Jewish Book Art, From the Middle Ages to Today.” 4 �PUBLICATIONS New Article on Stewardship and Indigenous Collections Akbari, Moreton, and Ian McCallum, with Princeton University Librarian Anu Vedantham, co-authored “Huluniixsuwaakan: The Role of the Library in Munsee-Delaware Language Revitalization” in an Library Trends journal issue on Indigenous Librarianship. The article explores relationship-building with Munsee-Delaware members at Princeton University Library, rooted in the annual Munsee Language & History Symposium. It highlights collaborative efforts to improve collection descriptions and access while providing recommendations on how academic libraries can foster relationships with Indigenous communities and implement best practices. Essay on Rethinking the Medieval Canon on Indigenous Lands Akbari recently published an essay titled “Exile, Diaspora, and Sovereignty: Rethinking the Medieval Canon on Indigenous Lands” in English Literary History. The article shows how the tension between individual and community, exile and diaspora, solitariness and relationality found in medieval writers such as Dante and Chaucer looks very different when viewed in light of work by Indigenous creators such as Lenape Delaware scholar and activist Joanne Barker. New Publications on Jewish Books Sienna’s essay, “Tzena u-Re’ena (Go Out and See): The World of Jewish Books,” appears in a newly published collection, Early Modern Jewish Civilization: Unity and Diversity in a Diasporic Society (ed. David Graizbord). Sienna’s monograph, Jewish Books in North Africa: From the Early Modern to Modern Worlds, will be published by Indiana University Press in June 2025. Essay on Encountering Belongings with Ritual Power Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia and Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa’s recently published a blog post for the MAA, The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. The piece discusses the potential hazards to staff, visitors, and Indigenous people engaging with cultural belongings containing ritual powers, in collections located far from the belonging’s home and outside of its community of origin. 5 �RESEARCH UPDATES New Research on Illuminated Qur’ans in Coastal Kenya In September 2024, Hidden Stories collaborator Zulfikar Hirji conducted field research on the Kenyan islands of Mombasa, Lamu, and Pate, focusing on illuminated Qur’an manuscripts produced between c.1750-1850 on Pate Island. Working with local museum curators, conservationists, scholars, and manuscript custodians, Hirji identified manuscripts that belong to a unique corpus of Swahili manuscripts with distinctive decorative and calligraphic styles. These were primarily made on Northern Italian paper and bound in blind-stamped leather covers. These manuscripts challenge ideas about Swahili manuscript production, suggesting that it predated the Omani Bu Saidi dynasty’s dominance and possibly the expulsion of Mombasa, Fort Jesus Museum Conservation Lab with conservation technicians Mohemed Buya, Aisha Fadhili Ali, and Kennedy Jilloh. Photo: Z. Hirji, September 2024. the Portuguese in 1729. Hirji’s research in Kenya has added 25 manuscripts to the 15 he described in his 2023 article “A Corpus of Illuminated Qur’āns from Coastal East Africa,” research which is also highlighted a Smarthistory video on “A Qur’an Manuscript from Coastal East Africa.” Some are digitized and conserved; others urgently require preservation. Hirji gathered ethnographic data on the manuscripts’ owners and the traditional methods of production. He recently shared his fundings at the Sorbonne, as part of the ANR-funded project “Calligraphies at the Frontiers of the Islamicate World.” His talk, titled “Styling the Script: Calligraphy and Illumination in Eastern African Qur’an Manuscripts,” was presented in collaboration with Sana Mirza (Library of Congress), who discussed Qur’an manuscripts from Harar, Ethiopia. Nepali Books - Research and Preservation The Hidden Stories project supports work on the preservation and research of manuscripts in Kathmandu, Nepal, carried out by collaborator Bidur Bhattarai and his team, in conjunction with the “Preserving the Written Cultural Heritage of Nepal” project at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC, Hamburg, Germany). Bhattarai’s team trains local Nepali archival technicians from Kathmandu, and is centered at the Āśā Saphūkuthī (Āśā Archives, ASK). ASK holds over 9,000 Buddhist and Hindu books—pothi-style manuscripts on paper and birchbark, rolled and flat palmleaf manuscripts, and single-leaf documents—dating between the 15th and the 20th centuries and containing works on poetics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, and ritual, in Sanskrit, Nepali, Newari, and Maithili. Among the items preserved there are a Buddhist Singhalese palm-leaf manuscript and a large Kuṇḍalinī Yogapuruṣa fold book. The latter is featured in a CSMC video series, in Nepali with English subtitles, that aims to share knowledge with local and international audiences. Over the last two years, the team has preserved a total of almost 1,000 paper manuscripts, over 60 rolled palm-leaf artefacts, and approximately 3,350 paper documents. Items are carefully cleaned, wrapped in archival, locally produced Lokta paper and/or unbleached muslin and housed in custommade archival boxes. Over 700 manuscripts and almost 300 paper documents have been digitized and made available to the community. The preservation project’s funding ended in December 2024, but the team hopes to find support to continue caring for and preserving Nepalese cultural heritage with local practitioners. The preservation team at the Āśā Saphūkuthī carries out careful cleaning of a large Kuṇḍalinī Yogapuruṣa fold book from a local collection in Kathmandu, Nepal. 6 �Eyob Derillo - Research on Ethiopic Amulet Scrolls In October 2024, Hidden Stories collaborator Eyob Derillo (SOAS, University of London) visited the collection of over 500 Ethiopic amulet scrolls housed at Princeton University Library, the largest collection outside of Ethiopia. Derillo examined and read the scrolls written in Ge’ez and Amharic, studied the iconography, and investigated their provenance. The scrolls, crafted for individuals’ healing, to support conception, and aid childbirth, can be worn as amulets, placed on the body, or kept under a bed, based on the technique prescribed by the däbtära (ደብተራ). For more on these scrolls, watch the video on Ethiopic books and scrolls by Derillo. Eyob Derillo working with amulet scrolls in the collection of the Princeton UL. A Kashmiri Birchbark Codex at the University of Toronto Since 2024 Hidden Stories has been collaborating with Rebekah Bedard, Distinctive Collections Librarian, and Kate MacDonald, Director of the John W. Graham Library at the University of Toronto, to recontextualize, conserve, and digitize a rare Sanskrit birchbark codex. One of the few known Śāradā script birchbark codices in North America, it was likely donated to the Graham Library by Professor Samuel A.B. Mercer, a 20th-century Egyptologist and Dean of Theology, but remained uncatalogued for decades due to its fragility. Hidden Stories PhD Fellow Sloane Geddes has identified it as a 16th-century copy of Yājñavalkyadharmaśāstranibandha, a commentary on dharma by the 12th-century Aparārka. With Geddes’s assistance, the library successfully applied for conservation support from the Canadian Conservation Institute. Before conservation, the team conducted carbon dating of a fragment and microCT scanning to create a 3D record of the manuscript in its current state. Updates from the Gandhari Manuscript Project, Pakistan Hidden Stories continues to work with the University of Sydney, Australia to amplify the Gandhari Manuscript Project (GMP), an initiative to conserve, photograph, study, and publish the Gandhari Birchbark codex awaiting microCT scanning by Grasselli’s Geomechanics Group, University of Toronto. Photo: Jessica Lockhart. birchbark manuscript collection held at the Islamabad Museum, Pakistan. Conservators Vania Assis (EXPM) and Mary French (Boston Public Library), overseen by Mark Allon (Sydney), were able to conserve 17 of the 38 unconserved Buddhist scrolls at the Islamabad Museum during an initial visit in summer 2024. In December 2024, Jason Neelis and Mark Allon ran a three-day workshop at the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations, QAU, Islamabad, entitled “Early Buddhist Manuscripts and Inscriptions from Pakistan,” offering a scholarly introduction to manuscripts and inscriptions written in the Gandhari and Sanskrit languages and Kharosthi and Brahmi scripts. Allon’s recent article, “The Gandhari Buddhist Manuscript Collection at the Islamabad Museum, Pakistan” Transactions of the International Conference of Eastern Studies (国際東方学者会議紀要 第六十八冊) 68 (2024): 25-49, offers a fuller account of the project’s goals and activities. 7 �TEAM UPDATES Introducing Hidden Stories Doctoral Fellows: Kara Ma and Sloane Geddes Kara Ma is a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Studies whose doctoral project considers the collecting history of over 8,000 Chinese objects in the Bishop William C. White Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Ma explores Bishop White’s role within the network of collecting, studying, and displaying of Chinese objects in the early 20th century. Her research builds on years of curatorial experience at the ROM: she was recently appointed Chinese Art Research Specialist and Chinese Object Study Workshop Program Manager at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. She is co-curator of Education for Troubled Times: The Life and Legacy of James G. Endicott (1898–1993), an exhibit currently at the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library at U of T. In Hidden Stories, Ma has been providing particular support for our work on provenance. Kara Ma Sloane Geddes is a PhD candidate in the Department for the Study of Religion and a specialist in medieval Sanskrit poetry. Her doctoral research centres on Śivasvāmin’s Kapphiṇābhyudaya (The Rise of Kapphiṇa), a 9th-century court epic from Kashmir, and she has a secondary research interest in the history and provenance of Kashmiri manuscripts. Readers may remember Geddes’ role in identifying a birchbark manuscript at Williams College as books of Jagaddhara’s Bālabodhinī, and associating detached fragments with their places in the text, enabling conservator Mary French (now Boston Public Library) to restore many of them. Geddes is currently working with the Graham Library at U of T to recontextualize and identify a Sanskrit birchbark manuscript in their collections. We welcome Kara and Sloane as doctoral fellows to the Hidden Stories team! Sloane Geddes Andrews Hub in Book Science at the Fisher Rare Book Library On October 15, 2024, a celebration was held honouring a gift of 1 million CAD by Mark Andrews to support the growth of book science at the U of T’s Fisher Library. The Andrews gift is separate from but was inspired by Mellon’s support of book science through the Book and the Silk Roads and Hidden Stories projects. Andrews research is being led by Stephanie Lahey (Andrews Postdoctoral Fellow in Book Science) and David Fernández (Head, Rare Books and Special Collections), in collaboration with the team in Rare Books and Special Collections. From September to November 2024, the OBNS Lab partnered with the Cultural Heritage Imaging, Preservation, and Research Lab at RIT co-directed by Juilee Decker (Museum Studies), Roger L. Easton, Jr. and David Messinger (Imaging Science) to borrow a portable, low-barrier multispectral imaging apparatus known as MISHA. Using MISHA, a team led by Lahey, including PhDs Alexandra Atiya and Azure Pham with support from Sana Hashim and Ryan Siu (UTM), embedded within the Fisher Library to image a broad range of manuscripts, documents, and fragments. In November 2024, the OBNS team and UofT’s Fisher Library made Canadian headlines for identifying a dried flower in a letter from the Somme battlefield of the First World War (see also CBC radio interview with Hidden Stories’ Jessica Lockhart). 8 �UPCOMING EVENTS Cultural Heritage Imaging & Innovation Conference - March 25-28 (Dubrovnik) Alex Gillespie and Jessica Lockhart will present a paper, “Good to MISHA: Building Relationships and Imagining a Collaborative Book Science Lab in Toronto,” at a plenary session of the Cultural Heritage Imaging & Innovation Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia (March 25-28). The paper gives an account of our experiences in borrowing a MISHA at the University of Toronto in Fall 2024, reflecting on the relationship- and infrastructure-building necessary to create a hub for book science that can serve a larger research community. Care and Conservation of Manuscripts Seminar - April 11 (Copenhagen) The Hidden Stories team will present a panel on “Traditional Care Practices for Manuscripts” at the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts Seminar in Copenhagen (April 9-11, 2025). The panel, organized by Melissa Moreton, presents ongoing work on traditional care in the Ethiopic, Sikh, Newa Hindu-Buddhist, Indigenous, and Mesoamerican traditions by Hidden Stories collaborators Eyob Derillo (SOAS, University of London), Jasdip Singh Dhillon (Pothi Seva; Oxford Conservation Consortium), Bidur Bhattarai (independent scholar), Amanda McLeod (Sagkeeng Anicinabe Nation; independent curator and conservator), and Giselle Simón (University of Iowa). The panel forms part of Hidden Stories’ expanding video series devoted to traditional care. Forthcoming videos include care of wampum in Indigenous North America and traditional care practices for Newari Buddhist texts in Nepal. Footprints Hebrew Paleography Seminar - June 9-10 (Toronto) The UofT’s Fisher Library, in cooperation with the Footprints: Jewish Books through Time and Place project, will host “Paleography and Provenance in Printed Hebraica” — a two-day workshop in Toronto (June 9-10, 2025) devoted to the study of early modern Hebrew paleography, especially as it appears in the margins of early printed books. Part of the Fisher Summer Seminar series, the workshop will be taught by Hebrew paleography experts including Noam Sienna, who will teach Mizrahi paleography. Jewish Print Culture - NEH Summer Course, June 15-27 (New York) Sienna will be teaching a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, “Between Memory and the Archive: Jewish Print Culture,” in New York City. His workshops (“The Early Modern Jewish Print House” and “Manuscript and Print in the Sephardi World”) form part of an intensive two-week program that combines academic presentations on Jewish print culture, journalism, and publishing; special collection visits to rare Judaica collections in libraries and archives in New York City; and hands-on letterpress work at the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection in Rochester, New York. Rare Book Libraries Conference, June 26 (Yale U., New Haven, CT) Hidden Stories collaborators Moreton and Amanda McLeod (Sagkeeng First Nation/ Independent Curator and Conservator), and associate Grant Hurley (Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto) will present a panel on “Knowledge-Sharing and Community Collaboration: Centering the More-Than-Human Relation in Libraries and Archives” at the Rare Book and Manuscript Section (RBMS) of the American Libraries Association conference taking place at Yale University (New Haven) June 24-27, 2025. This panel highlights their work on knowledge-sharing projects at American and Canadian libraries that aim to benefit the communities— and their more-than-human relations—whose belongings they hold. Visit our digital hub for more on the project, Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book Credits: Melissa Moreton, Jessica Lockhart, Alexandra Gillespie, Noam Sienna, Chana Algarvio, Élodie Dupey García, Bidur Bhattarai Banner image: Detail of hand letterpress-printed card by Noam Sienna, produced at community print workshop at University of Toronto Massey College’s Bibliography Room. 9 Designer: Azure Pham � IIIF Item Metadata UUID 3c05a750-b278-469b-a4ef-2fa6fbf817f5 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 #4 Winter