A new report, Exhibiting the Written Word, makes the excellent point that “there has been little reflection on the challenges of displaying the written word and how such displays differ from the display of art and museum artefacts”. The report outlines the challenges e.g. book formats were not (usually) created to be shown in glass cases, displaying a single page freezes something that was meant to be read as a sequence. Created by an AHRC-funded project involving the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, the report brings together insights and examples from librarians, academic staff and other interested people which will help us get over these challenges and create better exhibitions with our written words.
The Special Collections Handbook 