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BRENDA BERNIER, PRESERVATION SERVICES DIRECTOR AND MALLOY-RABINOWITZ PRESERVATION LIBRARIAN.

Preservation in a Pandemic – and Beyond By Harvard Library Communications Office | October 2020

October 29, 2020

Preservation Services has existed in some form at Harvard Library for over 300 years; its staff work to maintain, protect, and repair library collections, as well as develop and share best practices for preservation and conservation.

2020 has been a tumultuous year globally and at Harvard, as staff transitioned to remote work last spring and some returned to campus over the summer. Preservation Services has seen...

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Pandemic Preservation Projects

September 30, 2020

Preservation Services staff have been working from home on projects ranging from transcription to those using specialized handskills.

Directly and indirectly supporting Harvard’s massive effort to support online research, teaching, and learning spurred by the pandemic, the staff of Harvard Library Preservation Services has been working from home on many different projects over the past few months, some contributing to Library-wide and broader projects, like transcription, and others that are unique to specialties within Preservation Services. Here is a selection of...

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Pep and Nerves and Steady Hands

March 5, 2018
“Are you nervous? This famous tonic helps to calm quivering nerves” reads the title of a 1936 advertising poster. It took steady hands and nerves to repair this collection of posters from the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company. “Men Love Peppy Girls, this famous tonic helps to give you pep and energy!” and “Be on the Job Every Day, Take Lydia E. Pinkham’s Tablets for Discomforts Peculiar to Women” are two additional titles from this wonderful collection recently... Read more about Pep and Nerves and Steady Hands
Comic books bagged and boarded

The Art of Comic Book Conservation

August 30, 2017

Fans of comic books will go to great lengths to keep their collections in top condition—storing comics in clear plastic or vinyl bags, buying an additional copy of an issue (reading one and leaving the other untouched), even sending away comics to be sealed in hard plastic shells. Yet, as Chloe Houseman, an intern in the Weissman Preservation Center’s paper conservation lab, recently explained at a presentation on the preservation of comics, most single-issue comic books were not made to last.

“The evolution of comic books into a collectible phenomenon has been a challenge,”...

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