The following is a guest post from Lillian Williams, 2024 Junior Fellow in the Preservation Services Division. Before I came to the Library of Congress, I excitedly told many people about my upcoming internship and the Unfurling the Reel Deal: A Journey Through Microfilm History project. I got the same two questions each time: …
On Friday, March 8th, staff from each division of the Preservation Directorate were invited onstage at Washington, D.C.’s comic convention, Awesome Con, to speak about their work at the Library as part of the convention’s Science Fair. This is their story.
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.
The staff of the Processing and Preparation Section have a high standard for the bound items that leave their doors. As part of that pursuit of perfection, they pick up on certain bits of language, both foreign and computer programming. This is the first post of a series on that pursuit.
Register to join us at the Library of Congress on September 13th from 10 am - 4 pm. Speakers will address the history of the Irish manuscripts, complementary research projects in which they are involved, and the results of the analytical techniques involved in the research. As Inks&Skins is a collaboration between heritage science and humanities, the importance of a visualization platform to share the results with humanities scholars will also be discussed.
My summer at the Library was spent capturing data from colored pigments in order to build a reference database. Using a high-tech portable FTIR instrument, I prepared samples and collected infrared readings from 50 pigments in the Library’s collection using three of the portable instrument’s attachments. I compiled 150 measurements in order to create the database’s foundation.
How exactly does the coolest stuff in the world make its way from hundreds of countries all over the world into the hands of patrons of the largest library in the world? 2023 Junior Fellow Kathleen Senn describes her experience working in the Preservation Services Division on Inventory Review Protocols for International Collection Materials.