The Library of Parliament is digitizing its rare copy of James John Audobon’s Birds of America, one of the world’s most expensive books with a value of more than $10 million.

The original copy of the book, which consists of 435 full-colour plates measuring 70 centimetres by one metre, collected into 17 different volumes, is physically the largest item in the Library of Parliament collection. It’s one of just three known sets containing both all of Audobon’s original prints as well as seven composite prints he completed later on to make corrections.

The book’s preservation and documentation is important for several reasons including both its financial and historical value, Sonia Bebbington, director of knowledge management and preservation at the Library of Parliament, told Yahoo Canada News.

View photos Photo from Canada’s Library of Parliament More

The last known sale of a similar copy of Birds of America was done by Christie’s in 2011 and fetched more than $11.7 million and the current value of the Library of Parliament’s set is considered to be more than $10 million, Bebbington said. It was purchased by Canada in 1857, meaning it has been in Canada longer than the country itself has existed.

And this is not the only copy of Birds of America that Parliament has ever owned, Bebbington said. Two copies purchased directly from Audobon in the 1840s, when the government was still housed in Kingston, were lost along with 24,000 other books when Parliament was burned in Montreal in 1849.

The book is valuable financially, and in its own right as a beautiful artifact, but also because of what it tells us about the aims of Parliament at the time, Bebbington said. Repeated attempts were made to repurchase Birds of America after the government’s two copies were lost, she says, and when it was reacquired it was a significant item in the Library of Parliament’s collection.

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“That tells us what the collection was supposed to be about, and it really was about providing access to parliamentarians about natural history and all kinds of things that go beyond just legislative content,” Bebbington said. “It’s also important to place [Birds of America] in the context of our collection. It’s not just a beautiful thing that we have. It really tells us something about what were the aims of the collection at that time.”

The plates have now all been photographed and scanned digitally in order to both help preserve the book, which is currently in good condition, and to allow wider access to its materials. Having the images available in digital format also allows researchers to access them when Centre Block closes in 2018 for renovations, which will require the library materials to move offsite.

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