It's #WorldTattooDay, so let's take a look at the tats on some of our ink-redible Bodleian colleagues!

Medieval project cataloguer Dr Alison Ray @liber_ray has this fiery phoenix on the pyre. Here it is alongside 13th c. Bestiary MS. Bodl. 764, f. 70r
digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/ecf968…


Alison also has this design inspired by the Ripley Scroll - an extraordinary manuscript, almost six metres long, that gives the recipe for the fabled Philosopher's Stone. Ideal for any immortal-in-the-making.
digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/a77643…

The Obscene Publications Act passed in 1857 prohibited the distribution of materials that 'deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such influences.'

So the Bodleian Libraries created the Φ (Phi) Collection.
#BannedBooksWeek The earliest evidence of the Phi collection - items to be hidden from public view - is found in the minutes of a meeting of the Curators of the Bodleian, 1882.

From 1912, students couldn’t review a book from the Phi collection without prior permission from a tutor.

At the beginning of the first lockdown, we had to quickly rethink how to provide #BodleianReaders with the material they needed.

Colleagues from across @BodCons came together to help support the mediated scanning service to #KeepOxfordReading
#BodSocialTakeover
1/5 The Conservation & Collection Care team delivered our first online training sessions to the Weston Library reading room staff, giving them handling advice for scanning Special Collections.

More than 70,000 items have been scanned so far!
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In October we welcomed the newest member of Conservation & Collection Care @BodCons, Kirstin Norwood - socially distanced and wearing face coverings of course!

Kirstin joined the Book Conservation team.
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#BodSocialTakeover Kirstin has been working closely with our longest serving member of the book team, Andrew Dawson, who started at the Bodleian age 16!

Here’s #howitstartedvshowitsgoing!
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More than meets the eye!

Part of the work of @BodCons is to assess the condition of manuscripts and for this, a microscope is a useful tool to examine painted surfaces in great detail.
#BodSocialTakeover
1/4 Viewing a manuscript through a microscope can reveal artists techniques and the condition of the painted media.

Thanks to the generosity of external donors, currently being examined and conserved in our studio is ‘The Douce Album’...
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The #HelenMuspratt photographic archive was recently gifted to the Libraries. We’re working on its long term storage.

The prints & negatives in the pioneering photographer's collection present a few preservation challenges...

One solution: biscuits!
#BodSocialTakeover
1/4 It’s not Conservation tea time; this tin is full of negatives waiting to be rehoused.

The tin isn’t suitable for long term storage, and the 'negs' will be packaged for freezer storage.

There are thousands of negs to package and not a biscuit in sight!
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Today our Conservation & Collections Care team @BodCons take over the Bodleian Twitter, FB & Insta!

Sharpen your shoe-knives and flex your bonefolders in anticipation of some sneaky peeks into the kind of things we get up to at work!

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#BodSocialTakeover The Library has officially employed conservators since 1965, although repairs & maintenance of books have taken place pretty much since the founding of the Library (more on this later…).

Our work ensures that our collections remain stable & accessible to readers.
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In the 1930s, Hans and Sophie were enthusiastic members of the Hitler Youth.

In 1943 they, along with another student, were executed for treason.

This #VEday we’d like to say a little about the White Rose, and what may have inspired these young people to stand up to Nazism. Die Weiße Rose was a resistance group, which in the early 1940s printed and distributed six leaflets calling for resistance to Nazism and an end to the Second World War.

#HappyBirthdayShakespeare!

Today we share the story of how the Bodleian received, lost, and regained our very own copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio (which you can view at #DigitalBodleian)

Ready for some outrageous fortune? The game is afoot!

digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/Discov…+ We first got our mitts on this copy in 1623 – seven years after the world became bereft of the be-ruffed bard.

Published by #Shakespeare’s pals and peers, the First Folio preserved treasures such as Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Macbeth - which may otherwise have been lost.

The ivory panel set in the binding of the Latin Gospel Lectionary MS. Douce 176 is known as the Douce Ivory. It dates back to the 9th century court of Charlemagne, and was made for the nunnery of Chelles where Charlemagne's sister Gisela was abbess. Let's look at some details... The first of the scenes depicted around the border, in the top left corner, is a carving of Isaiah. He holds a scroll that bears prophecy of Christ, some 700 years before his birth.

About a millennium ago, someone in Cairo compiled a beautifully illustrated book that would take its readers on a journey from planet Earth to the depths of the cosmos. @BodPublishing have just released a book about that book. This thread takes a look at both. يKitāb Gharāʾib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn, or The Book of Curiosities, now resides at the @bodleianlibs. This book's existence, much less it contents, were unknown to us until this manuscript copy resurfaced in 2000.

The Faerie Queene is an epic poem by Edmund Spenser that pleased Elizabeth I so much that she awarded Spenser a lifelong pension of £50 per year. Here's a little thread about it. (The poem weaves many allegories together, including praise for the Tudors and Elizabeth I. Maybe this casts some light on the generous pension.)