Archives and White Gloves Myth

After The Great British Bake off featured The John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester, the inevitable tweets about white gloves appeared:

The answer is, no! The standard Google images of people handling manuscripts don't help either

So, I was pleased to see the University of Reading's clear, informative post on the subject - here

And the National Archives blog post - here

You can also watch a video from the British Library on how best to handle manuscripts without white gloves - here

Fran Baker, one of our contributors to The Boundaries of the Literary Archive collection works at The John Ryland's Library. Fran's chapter discusses Dickens' editorial influence on the manuscripts of Elizabeth Gaskell which can be found at the library. Fran's posts for the John Ryland's Library blog can be found - here