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Printed in small editions of a few hundred each, it is imperative that the surviving copies of these works be preserved complete with their individual features (bindings, handwritten entries) as a cultural heritage of international European significance. After more than 500 turbulent years, this naturally means that many of these books have to undergo extensive restoration.  

Today, at the turn of the 3rd millennium, the preservation of this knowledge is at risk; many of the particularly important books are under acute threat of disintegration, the consequence of which would be the irretrievable loss of their contents. There is, however, a realistic hope that a unique combination of traditional and high-tech conservation methods can be used to avert this threat. 

Among the books which the three libraries are having restored by specialists are such influential works as the “Summa Theologica” of Thomas of Aquinas and the Schedel world chronicle. The fact that copies of many of the selected works are in stock in more than one library underlines their pan-European importance.