November 14, 2019 (Thursday), 9:30-2:00pm:

Hours completed: 4

Total hours completed: 20

Today, I got to work with the “Heritage Edition” of the Saint John’s Bible. The Saint John’s Bible is the first complete hand-illuminated and handwritten bible in English undertaken in 500 years. While the original lives at St. John’s University in Minnesota (my alma mater), the artist had also commissioned 299 high-quality facsimiles to be created for use. A couple on the university’s board of directors has loaned their copy of the Heritage Edition to the university, and it currently lives in the Rare Books Room on display. The Rare Books Room rotates the illuminations on display every week, thus I received training on how to handle the bible (cleanly washed hands, no gloves, and turning only small sections of pages at a time), what procedures are undertaken when selecting an illumination, and how to give a guided tour to visitors on it (2 hours). Then, Dave and I modified the website to reflect the changed illumination (1 hour).

Finally, I worked on transcribing the first of Fr. Doll’s oral history interviews, beginning the process of setting up what kind of documentation we would want to have, how we wanted to handle naming the speakers and uncertainties in the transcript. (1 hour)