UCLA Library has very rich collections of Armenian materials, including many scrolls. We have had several down to the lab for treatment and yesterday, we had a really informative visit with two of our local experts.
Tamar Boyadjian (left) received her PhD from UCLA and is now working with the Library as a CLIR Fellow. Tamar is a great resource for us on Western and Eastern paleography and codicology, and we’re excited to have her work on some of our significant collections of Armenian materials.
Nora Avetyan (right) is a cataloger with a special expertise in Armenian and Near-Eastern languages. She’s been spending part of her time processing and describing these materials in support of some of the Library’s new projects focusing on ephemera collections and expanding access to materials outside the traditional published record.
The scrolls all require some treatment. Almost every one requires flattening and in several cases, the materials used to splice together the sections of the scroll are failing. We also have at least one major conservation project in the offing for this collection:
You might have seen our earlier entry about pigment analysis of this scroll and if you have 400MB of bandwidth to spare, you can see a high definition video of the entire scroll, front and back.