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Still life with saguaro flower and paste.

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It’s very hard to work out your paste and video it at the same time!

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Whoa. What a difference! Same publisher/printer/year/everything. Same library binding. Same library building, even. Very, very different results. The copy on the bottom is very, very brittle and brown. The copy on the top has paper that is still nicely flexible and white.  It’s possible the copy on the bottom was kept in a big city, […]

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Splat!

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All these leaves and flowers were found pressed between the pages of one of our herbals, from Special Collections. 

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ConserveThis! Archive

Scenes from the life of a library conservator

This book was brought to us last Friday. Somebody found it, soaking-wet, outside the bathroom on Thursday night. This is definitely one we’ll be ordering a straight-up replacement for, rather than trying to fix. Please note the fly.

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Ghost soldier. From “The American portrait gallery : with biographical sketches of presidents, statesmen, military and naval heroes, clergymen, authors, poets” by Lillian C. Buttre, [1877-1880].

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Pressed leaves found in-between the pages of a herbal.

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Tape removal using a wood-burning tool. 

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I’m currently working on repairing this Victorian book of floral symbolism, and realized that a couple of the plates were loose and not in the right place. Unfortunately there was no paginated “List of Illustrations”, and the titles on the plates didn’t match up with the flowers listed in the table of contents. So what […]