There are Millions of books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, and broadsides that have been published since the invention of printing more than 500 years ago. Only a small portion of these books, however, would be considered "rare" by specialists. Books that achieve a degree of rarity have more demand than the supply which is there in the market for such books. Unfortunately, till date there are no easy formulas for determining rarity. One can find antique and rare books for himself at any place like well-ordered private libraries to attics, basements, garage sales, and increasingly on Internet bookseller and auction sites.
Some of the ways in which one can take care of his old books are given below:-
* The first way to preserve the antique books is by shelving books in their individual dust jackets to keep dust and grime away. In order to keep these precious books in the proper shapes one must keep them lined up properly in the vertical position.
* To ensure extra life for your books you must pack them snugly, either upright (preferred) or flat, in a small custom-made archival box. The box should be made of high-quality, acid-free, alkaline-buffered materials.
* It is recommended to keep all the books in a cool area, away from high humidity, which encourages mold growth and invites insects. A cool, air-conditioned space, free of sunlight and ultraviolet sources, is the most suitable place to keep your books.
* It is very important to handle these books carefully because they are more likely to get damaged easily. Read the book with clean hands, and support the covers when propping books open. Do not lay books flat on a surface - try bookmarks instead.
* One should also take some steps at regular intervals to preserve his old texts for this it is suggested to clean books occasionally by holding them closed and gently dusting the tops and edges with a feather duster.
* In case your antique book is leather-bound, keep them away from low-humidity conditions as well as high humidity, to keep the leather from drying out and cracking.
* The antique books, that have been exposed to flood water are fragile, very likely to mold, and difficult to dry successfully. They may be a health hazard, in order to handle with books in such a condition it is advisable to wear waterproof gloves.
RESTORING THE DAMAGED BOOKS
In case the covers of a book are damaged it is certain that the text, which it is meant to protect, will suffer unless action is taken to repair or re-bind the book. All the Antique and rare books have had their life extended for hundreds of years by the prompt attention of experienced hands. Nowadays we have a loads of methods in which we can conserve and restore the old books.
Italian National Research Council (CNR) have developed two modern techniques, with the objective of designing and developing computerized tools to retrieve and restore textual information contained in ancient documents, accessed as digital images. The first technique in this regard is LAperLA. LAperLA, concerns old printed books, while the second, carried out in the framework of a CNR special project that aims at preserving our cultural heritage, regards old manuscripts. These projects aim at implementing an integrated system that improves the quality of the images and, at the same time, activates optical character recognition (OCR) functions. There are three CNR Institutes which are involved in this activity: the Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale (ILC-Pisa), the Istituto di Elaborazione della Informazione (IEI-Pisa) and the Istituto di Applicazioni del Calcolo (IAC-Rome).
The process of restoration begins by converting the text of these old books into digital form. By this it is possible to operate on the graphic characteristics of the document at various levels. The image is then segmented automatically, identifying and separating those zones containing illustrations, graphs, musical scores, formulae, drawings, etc. Then the objects are virtually detached from textual zones that only contain alphanumeric characters.
The part of the image which contains written text is enhanced when necessary using the procedures described above, are then processed by a system for segmentation and interpretation developed by ILC. For each word-zone, which can be identified by means of a preliminary phase which roughly segments the page, a finer segmentation is performed which locates each single character within a word or a numeral. After this step each character is normalized, varying its size and orientation. At the end, the characters are recognized and classified. The number of neurons that are needed is depends upon the number of characters which are present in the alphabet under consideration, and to the resolution used to acquire the documents. The goal is therefore to implement a neural module whose size permits effective simulations on normal-performance machines, possibly assisted by accelerated parallel cards.
Each rare book has a unique history and it has to be treated keeping that history in mind. It is hard, therefore, to give accurate quotations without examining the books in person. Usually, the usual price for repairing a leather binding needing a new spine comes to around £70 and for repairing a large family Bible £120. With the coming up of more and more new insurance companies, one can transfer his burden for the damage of his rare book with an insurance company in exchange of a very nominal charge.
PRICING OF BOOK
The price of an antique and rare book depends upon many factors. The factors that play an important role in fixing up the price of an antique book are condition of the book, popularity of the author, scarcity or rarity of the printing, availability, and much more. Nowadays the method of pricing of these rare books have changed to a considerable extent, with the advent and popularity of the Internet many of the old pricing methods are no longer valid. What was once a rare book now can be found in abundance on-line.
Some of the examples of the antique and rare books are:-
Petrus De Crescentis
Rare Strasbourg Imprint The Horblit Copy
Galileo Comes To The New World Published In Lima
Allegory Of Commerce: The Glory Of Antwerp In Contemporary Color
With A Brilliant Mannerist Title
Street Of Adventure
A Christmas Carol In Superb Cosway-Style Binding
The Five Senses
The Marauder
Babar The Elephant By Jean De Brunhoff
Ice Axe Signed Author: Edmund Hillary
Senerade In E-Flatsauthor: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Thus in the end we can say that Antique and Rare books are ancient books which have a very high demand and the supply of which is more or less constant. These books are a very important source of information for all of us and some of them even have their effect on the way of looking at things by an individual.
Article officially purchased from FUTURETECH.