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The numen—drawn from religious and anthropological discourse—refers to a spiritual or ineffable quality that certain objects or places seem to possess, commanding responses of wonder, respect, or profound connection. In museums and library exhibitions, books often sit behind glass, closed or partially open, their texts partly or entirely inaccessible. Despite these constraints, expressions of wonder or delight before a book are no less common than before a celebrated work of art, suggesting that encounters with books can exceed the limits of access and legibility. Yet the study of book exhibitions has long been framed around a perceived incompatibility between the exhibition format and the book’s nature as a medium for reading
