Maritime Museum - Bartlett Library
The Bartlett Library at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth contains over 14,000 maritime related books. This includes Lloyds’ Shipping Registers - some 200-300 volumes dating back to around 1790.
There is also a large collection of Falmouth ledgers, account books and records of shipping movements to and from port, most are late 19th century books, leather bound and in a sorry state externally but internally in excellent condition with copper plate handwriting.
Our Heritage Volunteers began working for the library in 2003 and meet most Mondays to repair the books, ledgers, registers and magazines.
The team has been given expert guidance and training by Caroline Bendix the Conservator for the project.
The books are cleaned. Torn pages and weak spines are repaired using flour and water paste and Japanese papers of varying thickness. Special techniques are used to clean and preserve the covers. Some fragile books are protected by placing them in made-to-measure boxes.
A member society of the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies