It's amazing what you find in library books.

Auckland Libraries staff have made a remarkable discovery: a manuscript that is more than 1,200 years old.

Fragments of the centuries-old manuscript were found sewn into some of Auckland Libraries' oldest books, a late-15th Century bible held in the Sir George Grey Special Collection.The discovery, which has already been covered by the NZ Herald, was made while cataloguing incunabula (books printed before 1501), as library staff examined a large and striking four-volume Latin bible presented to the library in 1913. Further investigations by Emeritus Professor Alexandra Barratt (Waikato University) uncovered more fragments in three of the four volumes.

This is certainly one of the better things that has been found between the pages of the books in the library collections (which is a subject for a whole other blog post and makes even the children at schools we visit cringe). But to read the rest of the story about the manuscript, go to the news page on our website.