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

Ask a Conservator Day: A Conversation with Kate Morrison Danzis

Posted by: Lily Tyndall

This Friday, November 3 is Ask a Conservator Day. This is an annual event organized by the American Institute for Conservation that allows conservators to share their work and their role in cultural heritage preservation with the public. Here is an interview with Kate Morrison Danzis, a preservation specialist in the Conservation Division of the Library of Congress.

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

Preservation Intern Profile: Gabrielle Alongi

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

This is a joint post by Aaron Chaletzky and Gabrielle Alongi. This past June, the Preservation Services Division (PSD) took on a new Preservation Intern: Gabrielle Alongi. Gabrielle is currently enrolled in the Information Sciences program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She comes to PSD with an interest in digital library and management work, …

At-risk General Collection books. Photo Credit: Ronald J. Murray

2022 Librarian in Residence Reflection

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

This is a guest post by Brandi Marulli, 2022 Librarian in Residence, Preservation Directorate. Support of the next generation of librarians and leaders is an integral part of the mission of The Library of Congress, with a multitude of people of all ages and backgrounds serving in 80 different programs. The Internship and Fellowship Programs …

Copying selected files onto an external hard drive. Photo credit: Amanda May

Portable and Complex – Preserving Born-Digital Data on Laptops

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

This is a guest post written by Amanda May, Digital Projects Specialist in the Preservation Services Division. Her work includes managing digital files for the division, recovering data from removable media in Library collections, and providing consultation and services for born-digital collections data. Born-digital preservation work most often begins with a physical object – a …

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

Working at Scale: The Firehose of Data

Posted by: Aaron D. Chaletzky

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world with over 173 million cataloged items. For the past decade, digitization of this enormous collection has increased exponentially. The Preservation Services Division (PSD) is responsible for a huge portion of this effort, managing contracts for the digitization of millions of pages of books, newspapers, and microfilm frames each year. All of this imaging results in a lot of data, hundreds of millions of files, and this is how we manage that data.