National Library provides help with ancient documents

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National Library provides help with ancient documents

If you’ve got any ancient documents collecting dust at your house that seem to contain important material, the National Library of Korea is the place to go.

The library, in Seocho District, southern Seoul, announced recently that it will be providing a free consulting service program for old documents that are kept by individuals.

Ancient documents more often than not are kept at people’s homes without verification of the content they contain. Even if the owners have some idea about what they are about, when they wish to find out their value, there are few places that are readily accessible.

In response to this situation, the National Library of Korea has introduced the new service to provide appropriate consulting on documents such as ancient publications, literature and maps.

More information about the service can be found at the official website of National Library, www.nl.go.kr.

Those who wish to use this service should first make an appointment through the website. Then, they should visit the Old Books Management Room, which is located on the sixth floor of the main building.

The consultation service invites professionals in various fields, such as bibliography, paleography, geography and others, who can give clearer answers about the content, author and published date of old documents.

Besides the consultation service, the library also offers preservation, digitalization and a storage facility for the documents upon request.

Preservation of ancient documents is something that the library is highly invested in recently.

“The National Library of Korea has the largest archive of old documents that amount to up to 270,000,” the library said through a press release. “They include the famous ‘Donguibogam [a book about Eastern medicine]’ and other publications.”

Since 2013, the library has been working on discovering valuable ancient documents kept by individuals, cataloging and preserving them.

BY KIM HYE-JUN
[estyle@joongang.co.kr]
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