The crowning moment of the process of safeguarding the collections was the complete restoration of the rarest and, simultaneously, the most severely damaged printed materials and manuscripts. Apart from in Książnica Cieszyńska, where over the previous two decades around 140 bound volumes and several hundred archival manuscript items had undergone complete restoration, none of the remaining institutions in the project had been able to carry out the renovation of their own collections. Thus, it comes as no surprise that among the total of 144 items whose renovation was financed from the project budget, some 112 belonged to Książnica’s partners.
The largest number of items to undergo renovation, some 62, belonged to the collections of the Tschammer Library and Archives. 39 items were selected from the Cieszyn Branch of the State Archives, 8 from the Library and Archives of the Brothers Hospitallers and 3 from the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia. Książnica carried out the restoration of 10 of its printed works and manuscripts in its own workshop. The remaining 22 items were restored in specialist workshops, following outsourcing of the contracts. The restoration of printed works and manuscripts belonging to the Lutheran Parish, the Order of the Brothers Hospitallers and the Museum of Cieszyn Silesia were also outsourced. The State Archives benefited in this way from the work of restoration workshops operating in an archive network and employed by means of an auxiliary enterprise.
The items selected for restoration were all chosen by a committee, comprising restorers and librarians or archivists, who took into consideration both the historical value of the works, their research significance and the nature of the damage, in particular its severity and the speed with decay was proceeding.
The use of these criteria meant that among the items selected for renovation, manuscripts linked to the history of Cieszyn Silesia were first in line, followed by pre-1801 imprints, which were either unique or published in exceptional editions. The renovation work itself proceeded according to detailed programmes put together by experts, and the inspection of each object following renovation was carried out by a committee of experts who evaluated the quality of the work.
