For a decade, upwards of 50-70 people have crowded into the Special Collections & Archives room of the Bowdoin Library in Maine each month to take part in an unusual tradition: watching a single page being turned in a book. 

It’s not just any book, though. One of only 120 copies of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America is believed to still exist. Originally published in the 1800s, this masterpiece contains 435 large-scale, hand-drawn and painted birds in their natural habitats. 

Turning only a single page of the book was originally intended to protect it from light exposure, but it has since turned into a wholesome community-building ritual. After the page gets turned, the library might hand off encased specimens of the new bird in the spotlight for........

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