The General Supervisor of the King Abdulaziz Public Library, Mr. Faisal bin Abdulrahman bin Muammar, inaugurated this morning, Tuesday, at the library’s headquarters, the center for the restoration of manuscripts, documents, photos, rare books, maps, magazines, newspapers, and soon coins, coins and other heritage and historical materials, and protecting them from damage and erosion. and maintenance of the various historical materials held by the library.
It supervises the restoration center and a group of Saudi women specialists work in the restoration of old materials, and in the field of documents and manuscripts, through the use of modern equipment working in this field. In turn, it includes several departments, namely the treatment and sterilization department, the manual restoration and documentation department, the automated restoration and lamination department, and the sewing and binding department.
In these departments, high-quality devices are available, such as: an ozone sterilization room, a cabin for suctioning asphyxiating and toxic gases, an automatic restoration device, a lamination device, a laser scissors device, in addition to treatment tables, lighting panels, irons, and manual presses. Receiving the material to be restored, until it is delivered in the correct way, in specialized preservation boxes, to protect it from harmful environmental factors in the future.
The center provides sterilization, restoration and binding services for historical sources, including manuscripts, documents, films, and photographs, as well as microfilm and digital preservation services.
The King Abdulaziz Public Library has cataloged and archived its private collections digitally, as this makes it easier to recall the material and determine its technical condition, by examining and recording the status of documents and materials that need restoration, and then entering them into the laboratory and performing dry cleaning to remove plankton, dust and fungi, and filling the holes with a specialized material. It has a paper-like color and complete frayed parts.
The rare collections in the library constitute an important aspect of preserving the Arab and Islamic heritage, as the rare books in the library amount to 32,625 books, rare documents 123,680, manuscripts 7,620, photos 8100, maps 617, coins and coins 8100, and these rare collections need permanent follow-up, maintenance and sterilization in order to preserve them with quality High.
