Whether the work flows from the demands of exhibitions and loans, digitization projects, new acquisitions, emergency management, or overarching institutional preservation goals, conservation activities fall under three main categories: surveying, rehousing, and treatment/research.
Surveys
Survey of Pre-1801 Books from the Law Library of Congress
Conservators conduct surveys of collections to gather information necessary to prepare for treatment, rehousing, moves, and other activities that may occur on a large scale. For the Law Library's pre-1801 books, Conservation developed a survey model that enabled only two staff members working part-time on the project to efficiently and accurately gather information about the collections, from which housing and treatment projects for over 10,000 books could be planned.
Preserving Herblock
After half a century in a damp Georgetown rowhouse basement, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Herbert Block's 14,400 original political drawings and 50,000 rough sketches came to the Library. It took conservators more than five years to clean, treat, and custom house the drawings and sketches, which may be seen on rotating exhibit in the Library's Herblock Gallery.
Rehousing
Stabilization and Rehousing of a Scrapbook from the Veterans History Project
In preparation for digitization, Norman Schatell's graphic personal narrative of his naval enlistment in World War II was stabilized and rehoused.
Housing of Globes for Long-term Storage
The Library’s Geography & Map Division holds one of the world's largest collection of globes. Conservation staff developed a standardized housing solution for over 300 globes differing in material composition, construction, size, and weight in preparation for moving the globes to the Library's optimized storage facility in Fort Meade, Maryland.
Housing Unusual Collection Items
To celebrate the Library’s Bicentennial, in 2000 Congress conceived the Local Legacies Project to document the creative arts, crafts, and customs found across the United States. Congress members and their constituents sent the Library's American Folklife Center thousands of objects, including clothing, toys, buttons, food, and other items unusual for library collections. The range of items required various innovative, but efficient, housing solutions to serve the dual needs of preservation and access.
Treatment
Conservation Treatment of Seven Engraved Music Motets
The multiple preservation problems of seven allegorical engravings of music motets required a range of treatment techniques, including testing, cleaning, backing removal, humidification, washing, light bleaching, re-sizing, drying and flattening, lining, mending, infilling, hinging, matting, and boxing.
Conservation Treatment of a Rare Historic Wall Plaque
A case study of conservation decision-making to balance stabilization of a deteriorated object with respect for the object’s history and material culture.
Conservation Treatment of an Iranian-Kurdish Ketubbah
An example of how a relatively simple treatment often still requires sophisticated decision-making.
Conservation Treatment of a Rare Victorian Photograph Album
The conservation story behind one of the Library's serendipitous finds -- a misaddressed work of art that languished in poor environmental conditions of the U.S. Postal Service Dead Letters Office for decades.
Bach to Baseball Cards
Bach to Baseball Cards celebrates 200 years of preservation at the Library of Congress. It aims to illustrate the creative preservation solutions that have been used at the Library to preserve and protect the Library's rich, diverse collections for future generations.
