I am looking forward to attending this course , Islamic Codicology, to be held at Cambridge University next Monday, 3 September. I have enrolled for this course since last year and had been looking forward to it since. This is the quickest and the fastest way for a naive manuscript collector like me to understand and know more about ancient islamic manuscripts.
This is a 1 week course - lectures & hands-on - will be guided by prominent experts. Some might wonder what is codicology. Below is a definition from wikipedia :
"Codicology (from Latin cōdex, genitive cōdicis, "notebook, book"; and Greek -λογία, -logia) is the study of books as physical objects, especially manuscripts written on parchment (or paper) in codex form. It is often referred to as 'the archaeology of the book', concerning itself with the materials (parchment, sometimes referred to as membrane or vellum, paper, pigments, inks and so on), and techniques used to make books, including their binding."
Below link is the details of this course :
http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/training/2012CodicologyShortCourse.html