‘Meeting the Gutenberg Bible in a Virtual Reading Room’, SHARP In the Classroom

Virtual reading rooms (VRRs) started to become more common during closures due to Covid-19, as institutions increasingly created set-ups to allow for interactions with librarians who can facilitate live, responsive research, in real time, with physical objects. But they have not become embedded in research, teaching, research-led teaching, and public engagement. Much of the discussion about VRRs for research and teaching has focused on more common material, not least because research and teaching with highly valuable, rare, and restricted artefacts has by default been in person. This is especially the case for specialist research and teaching related to their materiality. But this model is exclusionary. It demands the health, personal and professional circumstances, and wealth for travel as well as connections to be granted access, while causing an ecological impact. This call for action explores how VRRs can be used to facilitate participant-directed interactions for advanced teaching and research into materiality of rare artefacts of print heritage, based on virtual object-based teaching with perhaps the most special of all special collections: the Gutenberg Bible.