“The use of gloves in handling historic collections is a question that arises frequently, and certainly divides opinion. In 2013, we published the gloves are off, a blog that outlined our rationale for no longer requiring the wearing of gloves during document handling, something we follow today. Ten years on, we thought it would be useful to outline our approach again.

We received a large response to the change in practice in 2013. Commenters recognising the importance of our historic collections were concerned that by dispensing with gloves, we were putting documents at unnecessary risk. As custodians of more than 1,000 years of history, preservation is at the forefront of what we do. However, preservation is all about balancing risk and so we took this decision based on several things…”