Kairouan Manuscript Project Starts 2022 Training in Collection Care and Management

24 March 2022

Photo: Wadie Missaoui

NLPCPM staff and course interpreter Jouda Zayati participating in a course discussion.

The Kairouan Manuscript Project (KMP) has started its 2022 Training in Collection Care and Management. It is supported by two new partners: the School of History, Archaeology, and Religion at Cardiff University and the Old Books New Science Lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga

On 8 February 2022, the Kairouan Manuscript Project (KMP) began its 2022 training programme for the staff of the National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts (NLPCPM) in Raqqada, Kairouan, Tunisia — a division of the National Heritage Institute — and other Tunisian heritage professionals.

Over ten weeks, Jane Henderson, secretary general of the International Institute for Conservation and professor of conservation at Cardiff University, and Phil Parkes, reader in conservation at Cardiff University, will teach the first course of the programme — Managing the Archive, Library, and Museum Environment — online. Jouda Zayati, an MA candidate in translation and interpretation at the University of Carthage who specialises in heritage-related terminology, will provide English-Arabic interpretation onsite.

The course has been made possible through the support of two new KMP partners: the School of History, Archaeology, and Religion at Cardiff University and the Old Books New Science Lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Cardiff University has made a generous in-kind contribution to the teaching costs of the course instructors, and the Old Books New Science Lab at the University of Toronto Mississauga has made a generous donation of collection care-related equipment and materials to support the KMP’s courses on preventive conservation and the implementation of environmental monitoring and integrated pest management programmes in Kairouan.