For the past 10 years, a team of conservators and conservation technicians at the Weissman Preservation Center have been treating Italian stationery bindings from Baker Library at Harvard Business School. These books are part of the Business Records of the Barberini and Colonna Families, 1630-1818. Conservation treatment projects stabilize objects for use and longevity, but they also commonly produce research into the production or materials used. Once an item has been treated, items are often digitized to make them more accessible to researchers everywhere without the need to travel, but also to reduce the need to handle the original object. In addition to traditional digitization, a few of the Barberini volumes were imaged in three dimensions, which allows the researcher to virtually hold the book in their hands and look at it from all sides.
A stationery binding set up for photogrammetry.
From a preservation perspective, 3D imaging offers an exciting opportunity for researchers to explore the materiality of rare books while protecting the book from the stresses of handling. In the SmartStage® video above, rare book conservator, Katherine Beaty, takes us inside an Italian stationery binding belonging to the Barberini family, and shows us how they were made and used.
Read more about these bindings and the research Katherine Beaty did while working to preserve this collection.
One of the 3D scans of a Barberini binding in SketchFab.
Using a process called photogrammetry, photographers from Harvard Library’s Imaging Services department assemble a single 3D model from hundreds of high-resolution images. Imaging Services continues to digitally capture items in the vast library collections for viewing virtually in 3D. Take a closer look at the 3D Barberini books!
Rare book conservator Katherine Beaty standing on the SmartStage® filming a video about stationery bindings.
This project has been a years-long collaborative effort with Preservation Services, Baker Library, Imaging Services, Digital Scholarship, and the Visualization Research Laboratory, and we are thrilled with the results of all of our work!
