Our colleagues from Libraries and Archives were such a huge hit in their Behind the Scenes event, we've invited them back for another!

This time, we're taking inspiration from one of THE most iconic of medieval buildings - Durham Cathedral. We'll get a taste of the Cathedral's medieval archive – one of the most comprehensive surviving today, take a look at the late medieval development of the printed word (incunabula) and examine some of the techniques and issues associated with conserving such records of the medieval word.

Incunabula (books printed before 1500) are objects of continued fascination and desire. The first century of printing by movable type in Western Europe saw major social, religious, and economic transformations and the earliest printed books often are valuable witnesses to those changes. However, there was also a lot of continuity and the arrival of the printing press was not as disruptive as some scholars have argued. In this session, using examples of Durham University’s rich holdings of incunabula, we’ll explore this tension.