A darkened edge or missing patch of colour can make an old page feel close to its readers. It is tempting to turn that feeling into a story about a favourite passage. Start instead with the location and description of the trace.
The Getty’s exhibition text Touching the Past discusses books as handled objects, including clasps, tabs, protective coverings, and marks left by use. It offers a broader context for asking how a page was encountered physically.
For your own notes, identify whether you are reading a conservator’s account or interpreting a photograph. Those are different kinds of access. A photograph may show discolouration without revealing its material cause or when it occurred.
Describe the distribution
Instead of writing “many readers loved this image,” write where the visible change appears: along an edge, across an image, or in a small isolated area. Then check whether the museum supplies an explanation. Record that explanation with its source and any qualifying language.
Compare nearby pages only when comparable images are available. Different lighting or cropping can make one page seem unusually worn.
There is no need to handle a fragile original to do this exercise, and a digital impression is not a conservation diagnosis. The useful result is a focused question for a catalogue or specialist study: what does the documented condition suggest about this particular object’s use?