Touching really old books with your bare hands

Some of the books I looked at in the Biblioteca Nacional were part of the fondo reservado.

Where in the other collections, I was allowed to look at three books at a time, this collection only allowed me to use one. I was lucky in that they let me in there without a special ID.

Already nervous about oils from my hands or tearing pages from books over 100 years old, I noticed that another one of the library patrons had a glove with which he used to turn pages. That will make a person feel pretty freaky. Perhaps I’ll get gloves for my next visit to an archive.

Below is a picture of a book I was looking at. It says it has a section on carving and table service, which would be awesome, but it wasn’t in there. I did find some interesting notes - someone was using this as a recipe book.