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Category: Collections Care

Close-up view of two hands carefully at work on an aged, yellowing manuscript with handwriting

Take that you filthy red rot!

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

Libraries are beautiful, filthy places. The dirt you encounter here is more than just the dust you would expect in any building, it is the dust of decay. It is the whisper of tired books becoming brittle and disintegrating, microfilm breathing its last gasp, newspapers shriveling into nothingness, leather dissolving into powder. Of all of these ingredients, red rot is probably the most pervasive dust you would come across.

Close-up view of two hands carefully at work on an aged, yellowing manuscript with handwriting

Care and Handling Training: an Important Preservation Step

Posted by: Beatriz Haspo

During this summer, the Collections Management Division (CMD) embarked on a marathon of in-person care and handling training sessions for staff and contracts to illustrate the importance of following best practices when managing the materials throughout daily activities in order to preserve and prevent damages to the collections.

Close-up view of two hands carefully at work on an aged, yellowing manuscript with handwriting

Analyzing Paper Deterioration: The Experiences of Two Interns Working on the Ongoing ANC Project

Posted by: Tana Villafana

This is a guest post by Kimberly Chancellor and Heidi Vance, two Junior Fellow summer interns in the Preservation Research and Testing Division. Kimberly is a recent graduate from Texas A&M University where she earned her BS in Anthropology. Heidi is a current paper conservation graduate student at Northumbria University.  This summer we had the …

Close-up view of two hands carefully at work on an aged, yellowing manuscript with handwriting

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) – The Scent of Our Collections and the Things That Hold Them

Posted by: Tana Villafana

This is a guest post written by Dr. Eric Monroe, Head of the Scientific Laboratory Section of the Preservation Research and Testing Division. One of his research interests involves examining the impact and consequences of volatile compounds and odors in the Library.   The presence of odors throughout the Library of Congress is hardly a …