We would never attempt a conservation treatment on an item unless it was absolutely necessary. The GPB as it is now is not accessible to readers or a traditional digitisation system. In other words, the item is left to naturally deteriorate without having the chance to gain any information about its content. Luckily, not all of the surface is so badly damaged though.
We will concentrate on the areas that were not so extensively affected by fire and water. We will try to flatten the shrunken parchment and folded areas enough to allow the digitisation of the page. We will limit as much as possible our intervention to only the areas that can withstand some moisture.
We obviously will avoid the parts of parchment where the deterioration is in a such advanced stage where, at present, no conservation treatment available will improve its poor state.
The type of digitization process that this document will undergo doesn’t require a complete flat surface but only enough to be able to recognise the letters. This digitisation process will “virtually” flatten the pages and enable us to read the content. With this achievement, we would then be able to restrict the access to the book and so limit future handling of it, which could also cause further damage.