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Posted by: Bobbi Hinton
Clays, gemstones, corrosion products, poisons, plants, and more – green pigments used in books and manuscripts over the centuries have some surprising origins!
Posted in: Collections Care, Heritage Science, Music, Pigments, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections
Posted by: Bobbi Hinton
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 …
Posted in: Care and Handling, Collections Care, Collections Management, Conservation, Events & Outreach, Heritage Science, Internships, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections, Reformatting, Tangible Media
Posted by: Bobbi Hinton
The Inks and Skins collaboration studies material aspects of medieval Gaelic manuscripts, fusing scientific analysis with codicology and linguistic study. These manuscripts contain a wealth of tales and poetry, historical, legal, and scientific writing from medieval Ireland. The manuscripts themselves, their creation, and their survival each have their own tales to tell.
Posted in: Collections Care, Conservation, Events & Outreach, Fragments, Heritage Science, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections
Posted by: Lily Tyndall
Read all about GCCS intern Mary Lawrence's summer at the Library of Congress, and the preservation treatments and practices she experienced.
Posted in: Care and Handling, Collections Care, Conservation, Internships, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections, Uncategorized
Posted by: Chloe Genter
Senior Rare Book Conservator John Bertonaschi will write about the efforts made to repair some of the wear and tear suffered by the Decretum Gratiani manuscript over the past 700 years.
Posted in: Care and Handling, Collections Care, Conservation, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections, Uncategorized
Posted by: Bobbi Hinton
Smudges on pages aren't always a bad thing. Cultural Historian Bénédicte Miyamoto and preservation scientists at The Library of Congress analyze dirty books to learn more about their prior owners.
Posted in: Heritage Science, Pigments, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections
Posted by: Lily Tyndall
Margaret Armstrong (1867-1944) was one of the most successful book design artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She designed more than three hundred covers, mostly for Scribner during a period beginning in the 1870s that has been called the Golden Age of Book Design.
Posted in: Rare Books and Special Collections
Posted by: Chloe Genter
On April 13th and 14th, the Library hosted From Jikji to Gutenberg, the Scholarly Colloquium, a meeting of scholars, historians, conservators, and librarians from seven countries. The colloquium is part of a scholarly effort to promote understanding and awareness in the West about early printing with moveable type in Korea that pre-dates Gutenberg’s famous Bible. Jikji is the abbreviated title of the world’s oldest extant book made with moveable type, printed in Cheongju, Korea in 1377, preceding the Gutenberg Bible by 77 years.
Posted in: Conservation, Events & Outreach, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections
Posted by: Chloe Genter
Senior Rare Book Conservator John Bertonaschi will be describing the manuscript and what we know of its history and provenance.
Posted in: Care and Handling, Conservation, Preservation, Rare Books and Special Collections