Gloves are off in battle

Archivists, librarians and information professionals are donning virtual boxing gloves in a battle over whether users of archives should use, err, gloves. Randy Silverman, an archive librarian at the University of Utah has controversially written a paper calling for the practise of donning white gloves to read archives and rare books to be scrapped.

The Guardian newspaper reports that our very own British Library, an institution where white gloves are conspicuous by their absence is of the same opinion.

Along with academic Dr Cathy Baker the two call for an end to the practise, preferring hand washing before handling historic works. Their paper describes the gloves as reducing loss of feeling, which leads to further damage to the works. 

Guardian journalist Jackie Dent carried out some exhaustive research by visiting the BL and practising with and without white gloves on the rare work Paul's Epistles and adding further damage to the rare work.

Archives and rare books have never been so interesting with Google digitisation plans and spats over a pair of gloves, who said a library was a quiet place.