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112 results

An Unusual Support
by Susi Barbarossa Susi Barbarossa is a Senior Conservation Technician for Special Collections. She builds and creates exhibit supports for many of the items on display in Houghton Library.   Our team not only performs conservation treatment on Harvard...
A folded out map on a custom support mount.

Digital Accessioning Wins, Fails and Dragon Tales: Part 2
In Part 1 of this story , we left off with DAP (Digital Accessioning Program) having been burned by the dual-headed dragon known as Degralescence, and further whapped by it’s moldy tail, leaving degraded disks damaged and a new mold problem to face...
Photo of mold on a disk, with an inset image of what that mold looks like zoomed in with a pocket microscope, where viewers can see the webby-looking hyphae.

Digital Accessioning Wins, Fails and Dragon Tales: Part 1
This is a long due post about the Digital Accessions Program (DAP), the new service DPS started building in spring of 2024 and has finally been able to launch (check out our wiki for more). DAP is a central service that works with our library partners to...
A drawing of the 2 headed dragon Degralescence, copied from Michael Casey's 2017 presentation, see notes for citation.

Experiments in sustainable digital humanities projects
From January to April 2025, Digital Preservation Services partnered with Harvard University IT (HUIT) Arts and Humanities Research Computing on a pilot to reduce the resource load for maintaining Harvard’s digital humanities projects. The four-month...
A screenshot of the Hearing Modernity site before it was maintained by DARTH staff. The domain is expired, and there are styling errors, a broken image, and a disconnected audio plug-in.

When bad things happen to good books
Sent through the laundry. Torn by paper-clips. Eaten by insects. Bitten by a dog. Dog-eared to death. These are just some of the ways that books can be damaged, as seen on a recent afternoon at the Weissman Preservation Center. Students in “Texts in...
A woman sewing a book on a sewing frame with students watching her progress.

2025 World Digital Preservation Day: Why Preserve?
World Digital Preservation Day is an annual event sponsored by the Digital Preservation Coalition to bring international attention to the critical challenges and opportunities of digital preservation stewardship. The theme of this year’s celebration is...
World Digital Preservation Day, 6 November 2025

Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of Digital Preservation
This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Digital Preservation Repository. The DRS is Harvard Library’s centrally-supported platform for long-term preservation of Harvard’s deep, broad, and unique digital collections. These materials span all genres and...
Buddhist Nun Kneeling at Altar

The Ounce: An Antidote to Oops! Careful Handling Training

Using a book as a croquet wicket may be fun but is not good for the binding. Careful handling of library materials is an important part of preservation; helping to prevent damage for current and future researchers. In-person handling training has always...
Farcical print of a group of people in Victorian dress playing croquet using books as wickets

The Ounce: Spring Pests Have Sprung
Welcome to The Ounce, an occasional missive for Harvard Library colleagues from Preventive Programs in HL Preservation Services. Spring has sprung and with it an increase in pests. With this uptick in activity, Preservation usually receives the following...