On April 30th, in honor of Preservation Week, the Smithsonian Libraries hosted an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) question and answer session with our book conservator, Katie Wagner. The conversation primarily took place on our Tumblr page, from 12-2pm. Katie answered about 30 questions, related mostly to book care and treatment, the Libraries and our collections and careers in conservation.
Category: The Fix (Preservation)
This post was written by Vanessa Haight Smith, head of Preservation Services.
When repairing older books, the Smithsonian Libraries conservators occasionally uncover evidence of recycling by the original bookbinders. Paper from damaged and discarded volumes was frequently used when binding new books. Why use a new, clean sheet of paper when a leftover scrap would work just as well?
Each year archives, libraries, museums, and arts and historic preservation organizations set aside May 1 to participate in MayDay, an initiative created by Heritage Preservation to protect cultural heritage from disasters. Organizations are encouraged to do one thing for emergency preparedness. This year, the Libraries would like to share with you the content of our Emergency Response Kits.
We field a lot of questions in the Book Conservation Lab about caring for personal collections. In the spirit of Preservation Week here are some answers to some of our Frequently Asked Questions. If you have additional questions we have a live “Ask Our Book Conservator Anything” April 30th from 12-2 PM!
On April 30th, in celebration of Preservation Week , the Smithsonian Libraries will host a question and answer session with our book conservator, Katie Wagner. Do you have a question about how to care for your own books or how we care for ours at the Smithsonian? Now is your chance to ask our expert!
This year, The Smithsonian Libraries (SIL) was given a monetary award by the Smithsonian Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF) to re-house 558 folio volumes of special materials collections housed at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Library (CHMDL). These items were identified as requiring housing/re-housing by contract book conservators who conducted the CCPF funded condition survey of more than 4000 items at CHMDL in 2011-2012.
Last year, the Smithsonian began a partnership with Gale, part of Cengage Learning, to digitize content, package it, and make it available through libraries around the world. Gale debuted the first of these products with digital versions of the Smithsonian magazine and Air & Space magazine’s archive. The Smithsonian Libraries is excited to be a part of the second group of products, Smithsonian Collections Online: World’s Fairs & Expositions: Visions Of Tomorrow and Smithsonian Collections Online: Trade Literature & The Merchandising of Industry. Assessment of the items and scanning is already well underway. Get an inside look at what goes on behind the scenes with William Bennett, contract conservator for the project!