As you enter the building’s lobby, the unmistakable smell of paper directs you to halls filled with books.

In the old library of Tirana, as it is known by the locals, it seems as if you enter another world. Walls lined with beautiful, very beautiful books. The covers prove that many eyes have filled the century. They are in French, English, German, Italian. European culture is there. The new Director of the Library, Piro Misha, has engaged all the staff to organize books and create new reading rooms, according to languages, and employees come in and out with masks and white gloves and stacks of books in their hands.

The restoration corner is also located there. It would be redundant to call it a “laboratory”, however, the limited conditions do not prevent Gentiana Bëxolli from working passionately for the restoration of books, a rare craft, which few are embracing. Her approach to this profession was driven mostly by her love for books, but also by her studies.

“I studied at the University of Arts, for painting, and I found the book very close to my artistic profile, besides I also worked in a publishing house as a designer. I have been working here for 4 and a half years,” she says. At first, he started working in bookbinding and over time he learned other processes related to book restoration.

Working as a book restorer in the National Library, where extraordinary values and thousands of books are kept, is almost daring. Restoring a book is a long process with “surprises” along the way.

“After identifying the physical condition of the book, the cleaning process begins. The process of feeding the book, washing if necessary, measuring the weight of the paper, drying them and seeing if they need reinforcements with Japanese paper, pressing the sheet in the press, to continue with the sewing process and placing the covers”, says Gentiana, while in her hands she has another book in the French language that she is restoring.

“The duration of a repair depends on the damage to the book and how much work is opened along the way. It has often happened that while working we encounter other problems”. According to her, the environment in which it is stored, the temperature, the biological and atmospheric processes, the age of the paper, the factors that lead to the damage of a book have a lot of influence… She holds centuries-old books in her hands, so the responsibility is very big. “They are all very important, especially the antiquarians. We work a lot with the book of c. XIX, but also that of the early XX century. From this period we have many periodicals, which also present a high degree of damage due to time and use. We have to be very careful as the paper goes through the process of self-immolation and breaking, so we also reinforce them through Japanese paper or lamination”, adds the restaurateur, who shows us a newspaper from the 1920s, in the process of restoration.

From the way he touches the pages of the book and cleans them, one feels a kind of compassion, but also a responsibility so that they can be passed down to generations. Of course, it is necessary for him to set up a laboratory and introduce a modern technology, to replace processes that are currently carried out manually, such as the lamination process, which is still carried out with iron.

But the winds seem good and the National Library will probably soon have a new laboratory. But in the meantime, Gentiana continues to work among centuries-old books, where stories, characters, languages from different parts of the world come to life.