The Friends of CSNTM newsletter reports that the the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscript (CSNTM) has received a donation that allows them to purchase their own The Traveller’s Conservation Copy Stand. The stand is the best availabe tool to protect the manuscripts as they are photographed. With the copy stand the CSNTM will apparently be able to cut costs for the average manuscript photography with one third (appr. $1000). The newsletter also reports that photography expeditions to the Bavarian State Library in Munich, Germany and to the Byzantine Museum in Athens, Greece are on the schedule. I understand that the CSNTM staff already has some experience working with the The Traveller’s Conservation Copy Stand. In this report from June by Daniel Wallace you can see the copy stand in action in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library; a.k.a. the BSB) where the CSNTM staff took up the challenge to photograph the oversized majuscule Gregory-Aland 0142. They had then been able to borrow the tool from the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung.
The Traveller’s Conservation Copy Stand was first developed by a team of the Conservation Department of the University Library Graz (read more here). From 2006 the department is linked to a cross-department research center, VESTIGIA, at the University of Graz. For more information see the webpage of VESTIGIA Manuscript Research Centre of the Graz University.