Welcome Katie Wagner!

The Preservation Department is pleased to welcome our new conservator Katie Wagner, who joined us October 25th.

Katie, a native of D.C. and long-time resident of Alexandria, Virginia, has been involved with bookbinding and book conservation for 20 years. Inspired by a bookbinding class offered by the Smithsonian Resident Associates Program in 1990, she continued conservation studies for many years with Tom Albro, former Head of Conservation at the Library of Congress. She worked as a Senior Conservation Technician for Georgetown Law Library for 5 years during which time she received her MLS from the University of Maryland. Most recently Katie has managed her own business, Moonlight Bindery in Alexandria, since 2004. It was here that she was able to combine her talents of creative fine binding and rare book conservation treatments, qualifications that make her such an asset for working on the Libraries' collections.

In addition to her conservation studies, Katie was a student of Art History at Mount Holyoke College. She continued graduate studies in Germany where Katie met her husband, Eric, at Oktoberfest in Munich. Eric lived so close to the Alsatian border that Katie can boast that she’s had a foot planted in both France and Germany at the same time. She successfully wooed Eric back to the US where they are happily raising two children.

A woman of varied experiences, Katie is skilled at volleyball, collects fountain pens, has met Dr. Jonas Salk (creator of the polio vaccine), and lives to tell the tale of her house actually exploding.

—Vanessa Haight Smith