Curious about our conservators’ favorite books or trickiest treatments? While they’ve had to step away from the bench during the pandemic, our Preservation Services staff have been hard at work more »
Tag: book conservation
The Smithsonian Libraries would like to welcome Daniel Viltsek as the newest book conservator in the Preservation Department. Daniel has been hired to perform conservation treatments for items included in more »
There is a unique joy in watching a video or reading a news story with images of a librarian handling a rare book. Rare books, unlike many museum objects, are more »
In the Book Conservation Lab we sometimes treat books requiring intricate repairs. In November, Kaigara Danmen Zuan printed in Kyoto in 1913 and authored by Yoichiro Hirase came to us for repair work. It was recently adopted through an Adopt-a-Book event hosted at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. The book itself is from that museum’s library.
Hirase was a prominent malacologist (mollusk scientist) in Japan who collected over 3,500 seashells, 1,000 of which were new discoveries at the time. The idea for this book came from his experimentation with cutting shells at different angles producing cross sections that, when inked, produced interesting stamps.
April 23rd-29th is Preservation Week! What is Preservation Week? It is an initiative started by the American Library Association (ALA) after the Heritage Health Index Survey reported in 2005 that more »
In conservation we use the term “full treatment” to describe when a book requires dis-binding the textblock, washing the pages, performing paper repair, re-sewing the sections, and replacing the boards and cover. In other words, it has received the maximum level of conservation care. As part of our Adopt-a-Book program, John Hill’s 1782 A History of Animals, from The Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History, arrived in the Book Conservation Lab in a condition that warranted full treatment.ion that warranted full treatment.
The Smithsonian Libraries was recently gifted the flipbook Eagles in Flight. A flipbook is a grouping of still images of movement that when quickly “flipped” give the illusion of actual movement. more »