We had two startling events happen here in McKeldin Library this summer. For a quick background, we collect data on a regular basis of the moisture content of books and the relative humidity on the shelves. In an older building like McKeldin Library, this is especially important during the humid months. We usually collect data … Continue reading Adventures in Environmental Monitoring
The Preservation Department is going through some changes right now. We are very excited about this one! Our new GA joined us in early August, and we asked her to write a short introduction to UMD and the Preservation department. Welcome, Sarah! Hello everyone! My name is Sarah Hesler and I am the new Graduate … Continue reading Introducing: Our New Graduate Assistant, Sarah!
Yesterday, we assisted the Preservation course in the iSchool with their “wet salvage” class. We filled tubs with water and library materials (all withdrawn or discarded) so that students could get some hands-on experience salvaging wet materials! With a little practical experience under their belts, they will be better prepared to face a real-life water-based … Continue reading Wet Salvage Demonstration
The majority of our time during the fall semester was taken up with conserving the Bakers' Journal for in-house digitization. This was a large-scale, "all hands on deck" type of project where we mended, noted the dates and issues, and foldered (in mylar for stability) and interleaved (with phototex where we wrote the date and … Continue reading Bakers’ Journal
We recently completed our "mid-sized" project for this year's digitization prep, the first part of the Brooke Family Archive! We were given the first eight boxes of series 1, comprising of day books and previously-separated news clippings. The majority of our work was in mending tears in the day books (below you can see before … Continue reading Brooke Family Archive
We haven't posted in a while, but that's because we have been working hard to finish a couple of projects! In October and November, the Preservation department worked to clean, flatten, mend, rehouse, and ship off posters from the UMD Prange Collection. Here is a close-up of one of our mended posters. On the left … Continue reading Prange Posters & Godowsky
Welcome to the University of Maryland - College Park Library Preservation Department. We are located in the basement of McKeldin Library and we preserve, mend, repair and take care of the books, manuscripts, serials, and objects in the College Park libraries' collections. We will be posting updates, and pictures of our ongoing projects, so watch … Continue reading Welcome
One of our ongoing projects has been to mend and repair copies of The Trades Unionist newspaper prior to it being digitized. To date we have completed three quarters of the repair project and are finishing the last quarter now. Here are some of the pictures of the mending and repair work we have been … Continue reading The Trades Unionist
University of Maryland - Preservation Department 