My average work day as an assistant conservator for Emory Libraries is spent primarily at the bench, performing conservation treatment on special collections materials. So, what have these first weeks of working from home looked like for me? I brought home my work laptop and completed several crash courses on using Zoom and working remotely. Read More …
Voices From the Other Side is a student-curated exhibition of artists’ books and writings from Rose Library’s Phillips State Prison Book Project Records on view now on Level 1 of the Robert W. Woodruff Library. Many of these artists’ books were created by students in Bill Taft’s creative non-fiction classes, taught under the auspices of Read More …
The Oratio in die Omnium Sanctorum is a series of sermons written for All Saint’s Day by Thomas de Capitaneis. From the Pitts Theology Library incunabula collection, it is a small pamphlet printed in 1483 with simple paper covers. The pamphlet appears to have been partially submerged in liquid and allowed to dry. As the Read More …
In April, the Preservation Office of Emory Libraries received photographic items to be treated for mold from the African American Collection of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library. These photographs included sixteen studio prints, four tintypes, three ambrotypes, and two larger convex photographs. Mold covered the images due to moisture Read More …
In 1990, the Emory Libraries Conservation Lab occupied a modest footprint of space. It was one-third the size of our current lab, which limited the treatment possibilities. Eight years later, construction of a larger lab expanded the overall space and the conservation work. After twenty years, our lab has been updated and refreshed again. Conservation Read More …
Emory Libraries recently acquired the Kōṭikalapūḍi Vīrarāghavakavi (1663-1712) manuscript. The online edition of this book is in the public domain, not protected by copyright, and has been made available by Emory University. The text is a work of poetry based on the Udyoga Parva of a Telugu Mahabharata by Kotikalapudi Viraraghavakavi (1663-1712). The Mahabharata is Read More …
The Integrated Pest Management for Cultural Institutions workshop was held last November at the Michael C. Carlos Museum on the Emory campus. Seven presenters offered various perspectives on pest prevention, monitoring, and remediation. Two important things to remember regarding pests and how to manage them: keeping all pests out of a building is an unrealistic Read More …
The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library’s treasured Nuremberg Chronicle (first edition, 1493) received conservation treatment prior to traveling to Pitts Theology Library for the exhibition, The Materiality of Devotion: From Manuscript to Print (opening December 17). This lavishly-illustrated book, which purports to be a history of the world from creation to Read More …
While conducting conservation treatment of particularly damaged rare books and other special collections materials, I sometimes imagine the adventures and misadventures which might have brought a page (and perhaps its reader) to such a state. Is that water damage and sandy residue evidence of a shipwreck? Is this dried, pressed leaf from one of the Read More …
Emory Libraries Preservation Office is responsible for monitoring the environmental conditions (temperature, relative humidity, and light levels) of all libraries on campus. We currently use data loggers to monitor in twenty-seven permanent locations throughout campus: fifteen in the Rose Library, one in the Schatten Gallery, six in the Health Sciences Library, three in the Pitts Read More …
