Locating Leaves

Identifying Early-Printed Fragments in the Turnbull Collections

Abstract

This article is a revised version of a 2017 public lecture delivered at the National Library of New Zealand. The article explores the incredible complexity, tenacity, and background knowledge needed to seek out the history behind leaves, which are fragments of old manuscripts or print. The author employs a detective-like approach to identifying the origin of several such items held at the Alexander Turnbull Library, also discussing items held at the Dunedin City Library and the University of Melbourne. Digitised copies, for example, were used to identify texts. The author expresses eagerness around the increasing digitisation of ancient leaves and early-printed works, and the increasing sophistication of image content analysis software which will supply missing clues to further leaf identification.   Metadata reused from the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa under a CC BY 4.0 license.