The St. Catherine's monastery holds one of the most important collections of Byzantine and other early manuscripts, consisting of 3307 volumes. Most of them retain their original or early binding structures, few of which have not been studied in any detail. Camberwell College of Arts started a detailed survey of the condition of the manuscripts in 2001. Information about the book-binding structures and the condition in which they are preserved is stored in a database. In this paper we describe the principles of the database design, focusing on the need for constant updating of the database structure. We discuss the use and interpretation of drawings which allow recording of complex elements of book-binding. We also describe a fast, semi-automatic way for transferring our data from paper to the database. We finally examine the potential use of a global standard for Byzantine book-bindings and the possibility of an object-oriented database structure.
Athanasios Velios, Nicholas Pickwoad, "The Database of the St. Catherine's Library Conservation Project in Sinai, Egypt" in Proc. IS&T Archiving 2005, 2005, pp 73 - 78, https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2168-3204.2005.2.1.art00015