Old books as a gift
Senior research officer of the Rare Book Department of the Grodno Historical and Archaeological Museum, Oksana Danilevich, has become a witness to an unusual replenishment of one of the museum collections. The person simply put the books on the table and said, “If their condition allows them to be used in the museum, just take them.”
Ms. Danilevich noted that the exhibits were in far from satisfactory condition: dirty, dusty, without title pages and disassembled into separate booklets. However, there were no doubts that these are truly rare editions. “I’d like to say thank you to the person who didn’t thrown away these books and hasn’t sold them. All the items are now in quarantine. They will get into our collections after we’re sure that they aren’t infected with fungus, mildew or woodworm.”
Museum employees will then have a difficult task: they will have to determine the author, year of publication, place of release and even the number of books. However, judging by the prints and paper we can already say that they were released in the 18th century and they include dictionaries, e.g., the German-Latin, as well as Church books on the old Polish language.
By Katerina Charovskaya
