Clays, gemstones, corrosion products, poisons, plants, and more – green pigments used in books and manuscripts over the centuries have some surprising origins!
Learn about the Library of Congress’ book detectives. This team of Collection Specialists works within the Collections Management Division (CMD) to find the requested items that have gone missing from their shelf location.
A Preservation technician talks about his time as part of the Space and Emergency Management Survey, aka the Stacks Survey, of the Library’s ever growing collection. Sometimes spending time away from your desk can help remind you of how important your job can be.
Two large architectural models by Paul Rudolph were selected as part of a large loan that will be on display September 2024. The models were in extremely poor condition, broken, water- damaged, and covered in a thick layer of dust and debris. A team of five5 technicians and the objects conservator worked to get the models back into stable and displayable condition.
The following is a guest post by Lauren Quackenbush, Librarian-in-Residence, Preservation Division. The Librarian-in-Residence (LIR) program was created in 2018 for newly graduated librarian students to gain invaluable experience at the Library of Congress. LIRs are assigned throughout the Library, this year’s 2023 cohort consisted of 5 recent graduates. As the LIR in Preservation, I …
The Manuscript Map of the Dagua River Region, created in 1764, depicts a remote gold mining frontier in today’s Colombia. Art historian Juliet Wiersema and preservation scientist Meghan Hill will share results from their collaborative analysis which unearthed stories about African resilience, resistance, adaptation, entrepreneurship, and survival within the Spanish empire. A scientific examination of this map further draws back the curtain on how this large watercolor map was assembled using pigments and paper from across the empire.
Though the binding staff at the Library no longer binds items on site, they do conduct a thorough review of each item once it returns from the commercial bindery. This peer-review system provides complete accountability and quality assurance for over 2,000 items each week.
Preservation Librarian Jon Sweitzer-Lamme describes how the Library of Congress tracks down, identifies, preserves, and sometimes replaces its aging items using library knowledge, ingenuity, and digital resources.
Read along to see how four members of the Conservation Division at the Library of Congress deployed to Vermont attached to a FEMA response to the massive summer flooding in the state. These four subject matter experts received and conducted on-the-ground training with FEMA and performed outreach and demonstrations to the people of Vermont.