Thanks to @CLIRHC we are in Year 3 of @MmwProject uncovering hidden manuscripts in our collections. But we& #39;re especially excited by Islamic Manuscript Basics: https://kislakcenter.github.io/islamicmss/ ">https://kislakcenter.github.io/islamicms... a great introduction to their material study for non-experts (1/5)

Histories of colonialist collecting practices mean it& #39;s very common for U.S. rare book libraries to have a few Islamic manuscripts that are un-described and under-used. Librarians may not know Perso-Arabic languages and hesitate to promote access to these "unknown" books. (2/5)

But plenty of rare book library workers don& #39;t know medieval German, or Latin, or etc., and yet are often confident programming with (and historically and materially contextualizing) Christian devotional manuscripts or early printed books. (3/5)

This of course reinforces white hegemony and white supremacy. There are a lot of things rare book libraries and rare book library workers can do to interrogate the histories of their collecting practices, but here is one small thing: use your collections. (4/5)

This site, created by Dr. Kelly Tuttle and made possible by the @MmwProject is an accessible and digestible orientation to some frequent features of Islamic manuscripts (from layout to script to binding). It& #39;s great! https://kislakcenter.github.io/islamicmss/ ">https://kislakcenter.github.io/islamicms... (5/5)