New Leaf, the organisation set up to preserve and digitise the books at the National Library, today benefited from 5 students from Deloitte, to help with their book cleaning efforts. The team were joined by 2 other young volunteers and together they cleaned over 300 books in just one morning.
“In our first year we raised over 40,000 euro to purchase specialist machinery to further equip the restoration lab and we secured sponsorship from the Institute of Maltese Culture to restore the 28 volumes of the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, dating from 1751 by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert,” said Suzanne Rose, secretary of New Leaf, “but now we need to concentrate on preparing the books for the specialists to assess and bring back to life.
Now we need people’s time. We are asking for just 4 hours a week – on Wednesday’s between 9am and 1pm and interested parties should visit our site or contact us on 99891722.
New Leaf aims to:
- Preserve books at The National Library with specialists and equipment
- Convert the National Library’s hand written library cards to a database
- Organise book cleaning training and volunteers
- Find volunteers to convert the out-dated cassette based audio books to MP3
- Publicise the need for volunteers to man desk duties within the lending libraries
- Promote the use of the National and Public libraries
