Summary
The Saint Catherine's Monastery Library Conservation Project is working in a library of 3307 manuscripts that has belonged to the same institution for over a millennium and a half and which has, through the circumstances of its history and location, preserved the largest collection of early Byzantine/Greek-style bindings to have survived, with complex layers of repair and use. This has prompted an archaeological approach to the preservation of the collection, in which recording the structures and materials of the books and their condition must be completed before any interventive action is taken. For the project to work it has been essential to understand not only the unusually dry environmental conditions of Sinai but also the complicated relationship between the fathers and their library and to establish an effective working relationship with them. All are agreed on the measures needed to prevent future damage, and major programmes are in train to renovate the library building, box over 2000 of the manuscripts and integrate the conservation project with a separate programme to digitize the manuscripts. The construction of a new conservation workshop is planned, and an international advisory panel of scholars has been convened to advise on both the digitization and the conservation projects.
