A XVI Century Travel Diary as an Introduction to the Practices of Rescue and Recovery of Water Damaged Books
Published 2021-12-28
Keywords
- archeology of books,
- waterlogged books,
- XVI century binding,
- shipwrecked,
- book conservation
- rescue and retrival ...More
Copyright (c) 2021 Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH)

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Abstract
This piece covers the actions taken for the care of waterlogged books in two different historical contexts. The first, found in the travel diary of friar
Bartolomé De las Casas, when in the XVI century he left Salamanca (Spain) for Ciudad Real, in Chiapas (New Spain), as written by friar Tomás de la Torre. It describes in detail the trip and the rescue and recovery of the books that were shipwrecked with the Dominicans in the Bahía de Términos. The second context includes the rescue and recovery work carried out in Florence in 1966, after they suffered a great flood. The objectives and the rescue actions carried out in these two events are analyzed and compared, as well how their actions were determined by the types of bindings of the recovered books. The question of determining the historical value of De la Torre’s manuscript as the first document currently known that records the steps followed for the rescue and recovery of flooded books in Mexico is established.
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References
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