One of my passions is miniatures. I love how delicate they are, how engineered and practical they can be. I specially love miniature books. For almost two decades, I have had the privilege of working with the miniature books from the General Collections at the Library of Congress. In my capacity as Collections Officer, I have been able to propose and implement measures to improve security, preservation, and access of the miniature books for future generations. Learn more about the history of miniature books and see some example from the Library's impressive collection.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to work for the Library of Congress? Each year the Library selects a group of promising early-career library professionals to gain meaningful experience in diverse library service areas such as Archives and Special Collections, Collection Preservation, and Reference and Instruction to name a few! Last year …
This is a guest post by Clifton (Cliff) Fulwood, Head, Processing and Preparation Section in the Preservation Services Division. When library books are re-bound, a durable cover material called buckram is often used. Libraries have been using this material for well over 75 years, but due to a variety of changes in both libraries and commercial bindery supply lines this material is now in short supply.
This is a guest post by Amanda Felicijan, a Digital Library Technician in the Reformatting Projects Section of the Preservation Services Division. She writes about pinning and linking, a small, but vital, part of the process by which books in the collections are tracked.
In this blog, I present the Collections Management Division or CMD, one of the largest divisions in the Library of Congress and part of the Preservation Directorate. Here are some highlights of what we do, starting with the mission. CMD is responsible for the safekeeping of the Library’s collections through inventory control, storage, and delivery …
The Preservation Services Division uses a wide array of specialized software in order to preserve born-digital collections, most of which originally arrived at the Library of Congress on external media such as floppy disks, optical disks, and hard drives. By using this software, staff are able to find and preserve millions of files that are otherwise trapped on older media.
Our previous blog A Cool Collective Success! Preserving Collections Offsite presented the general details about the Library of Congress offsite storage facility at Fort Meade, MD. Check it out! In this blog, I share our excitement about the opening of our newest storage location at Fort Meade, Module #6, and the many actions taken in …
This is a guest post by Jennifer Lewis, a Preservation Specialist in the Conservation Division who specializes in stabilization, collection housing, and large-scale projects. Have you wondered what the Library was like when the buildings were nearly empty during the first months of the pandemic? During the Library’s extended closure beginning in March 2020, a team …
“So Many Islands: Stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian, and Pacific Oceans” is a collection of stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. It was edited by Nicolas Laughlin with Nailah Folami Imoja with an introduction by Marlon James, winner of the Man Booker Prize. It was published in 2018 by Peekash …
