Exhibition and conference

Part of the exhibition

So it's been 3 days since the last update. I've been extremely busy because of 3 days of exhibition and a conference. Plus working in the evenings to earn something to pay for the exhibition and conference. Nothing is for free and yes ... I have to work to earn money like all the rest of you do, in order to pay for other things.

The exhibition presented a sample of 15th century incunabulae (earliest western printed books) that our library holds. It's an interesting collection ... and precious too. It was a time of experimenting with block printing, different types of fonts, different types of paper and binding, and especially of covers to preserve the printed work. It was a time when knowledge became available to more people, cost of books became cheaper, education more universal.

Dr. Rivali explaining an exhibit

We had many visitors ... mostly scholars rather than common folk. I guess the topic was too specialized. On Wednesday afternoon we had an inter-cultural conference on cataloguing of ancient manuscripts. We had invited heads of the Israel national Library, the muslim Khalidi library, the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem and as key speaker the directress of the Royal Library in Madrid. The latter connected with us to deliver her speech via Skype. The audience was small ... because the topic was exceptionally specialized ... on cataloguing. But they were all librarians from other institutes who wanted to learn more.

Dr. Salameh presenting the holdings
of muslim libraries in Jerusalem

It was definitely a success because it was the first time jews, muslims and christians came together and share knowledge on library science. Each presented in brief the treasures their libraries hold ... and it is utterly amazing. And I remarked to Dr. Finkelman, the curator of the Israeli National Library, that we may live just meters apart but we don't know the holdings of each other's libraries. Dr. Finkelman said he hoped this would be a beginning for our communities to collaborate in future projects.  Sow e succeeded in building bridges. The only regret is the absence of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. They never participate in anything ecumenical or inter-cultural. Too bad because they have a huge and precious collection of manuscripts form ancient times.

And the Consuls General of Spain and Italy were also present.

Anyway it's all over. The team from the University of Milan which came to help organize this conference and exhibition returned to Italy this morning. I've slept very little and had worked hard for these 3 days. But there's no time to rest. I must resume school again. Perhaps Sunday would offer me a few hours free to sleep.