Archives Survey

We were part of the RRLC Conservation/Preservation Project and last week we had a visit from John F. Dean, former director of the Department of Preservation at Cornell.  He spent about four hours with me, asking and answering questions, looking at the collections and environment and making suggestions.  He was so helpful, I felt like I got a great class in archives in a few hours.

That was Thursday and he had a report to us on Monday!  He praised the colleges’ support of the archives, the enthusiasm of our student workers, and the value of some of our rare books.  He also had recommendations we will be able to use to convince the administration of our need for equipment to log the temperature and relative humidity, a HEPA filter vacuum cleaner, and water alarms.

We also need to shelve the rare books by size and he gave suggestions.  He got me interested in learning more about rare book librarianship, so I’ve started scoping out resources.

I’m also rethinking the amount of time and materials we are putting into some collections that have been sitting here forever.  More thoughts on that soon.