Similar to the way museums are required to preserve works of art and sculpture, libraries are facing increasing challenges with physical collection media. Despite the best preventive storage practices, paper deteriorates, photographs fade, and audio and visual media degrade and lose fidelity over time. Like museums, libraries are stewards of information as well as hubs Read More …
“The dog ate my homework.” It really happens! Dogs and cats also occasionally eat books . . . or at least gnaw on them. Well-intentioned library patrons and book collectors sometimes attempt repair of pet and other damage to books with the most immediate solution at home: pressure-sensitive tapes such as magic, electrical, and duck Read More …
Take some time out to watch amateur films from the Emory University, Rose Library, and Oxford College vaults while learning how to care for your own home movies. The Emory Libraries’ Preservation Office is hosting the University’s first Home Movie Day at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. Click here to register. The event Read More …
April 25 through May 1 is Preservation Week. An initiative of the American Library Association-Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALA-ALCTS), Preservation Week is a time when institutions across the country highlight at-risk collections and share knowledge about the work of caring for these collections and making them accessible. At Emory Libraries, activities currently underway or recently completed by Preservation and Digitization Services include: annual updating of emergency preparedness and disaster response documents for all Emory University Libraries and the Library Service Center removing Read More …
The staff of the Emory Libraries Conservation Lab is working remotely right now, but we still need to keep track of the environmental conditions in our important library collections spaces. During COVID-19 social distancing and remote work conditions, we no longer have direct access to our onsite data loggers, so we had to find creative Read More …
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 …
