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Category: Preservation

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

Book Cloth Coverings: When Demand Exceeds Supply

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

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.

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

Software for Born-Digital Preservation

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

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.

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

Kilobytes of Cultural Heritage: Preserving Collections on Floppy Disks

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

This is a guest post written by Amanda May, Digital Conversion Specialist in the Preservation Services Division. Her work includes recovering data from removable media in Library collections and providing consultation and services for born-digital collections data. Of the hundreds of thousands of removable media items in the Library’s collections, the vast majority are optical …

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

Preservation Intern Profile: Sarah Lundy

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

This is a joint post by Aaron Chaletzky and Sarah Lundy. This past May, the Preservation Services Division (PSD) took on a new Preservation Intern: Sarah Lundy. Sarah is currently enrolled the Masters of Science in Information program (MSI) in the School of Information (UMSI) at the University of Michigan (UMich). She comes to PSD …

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

At-Risk: Preserving Access Through Reformatting

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

What does the Library do when certain collection items are so worn they cannot be served for fear of further damage? What actions can be taken to prevent the loss of content from the eventual failure of certain technology? How about migrating content from one preservation technology to another, more usable and accessible one? In …