Preservation Services Outreach Team (PSOT)
A cross-unit team, representative of Preservation Services, plans and facilitates events that promote preservation concepts to Harvard students, researchers, and faculty.
PSOT Demos
Below is a brief description of current demonstrations offered on behalf of PSOT. Please contact Preservation Programs and Outreach for more information.
Asian Bindings
Using traditional techniques and materials, students can create their own fukuro-toji: the iconic Japanese book. A hands-on experience of Asian art and culture they can carry with them!
Atlas Structures and Exploding Maps
Folded maps within a book can be challenging to work with, both as a user of the map and as a conservator of the book. We will look at different folded map structures within a book, what advantages and disadvantages the different folds offer, and how to best handle them. Then, with a few simple folds, we will make our own exploding pocket maps using maps from the Harvard Map Collection!
Handle with Care
Build your confidence in handling primary sources in a special collections reading room. Learn how to identify fragile items, set up a rare book on foam wedges, open a mystery box, and use fragile manuscripts and photographs safely. Think you know it already? Take our interactive tutorial on 10 Tips for Reading Room Success!
Legacy AV
Do you have audiocassettes, motion picture film, videotape, or other audiovisual materials in your collections, but aren’t quite sure exactly what formats they are or how to preserve them? This demo addresses your AV-related questions and concerns with an eye-catching and informative display of the wide variety of AV formats commonly found in Harvard collections, with a few more colorful and unusual formats thrown in just for fun. This demo can be customized to suit a particular focus or interest and can include an entertaining and educational quiz on the history of AV formats and/or a further reading and resource list.
Media Analysis
Learning to look closely at objects, manuscripts and prints whether through a simple pocket microscope, UV light, via professional equipment that enables advanced imaging techniques, or with just one's eyes makes the historical accessible. One can glean provenance, authenticity, amount of degradation and materials used through time which allows us to assess the item's need for future preservation. Being able to discern engravings, block prints and giclée prints (high resolution ink-jet reproductions) as well as noticing the differences between a copy and an original are just some of the ways we can interact with the history of a piece.
Of Mice and PEMs
Uncontrolled temperature and humidity can cause irreversible damage to library collections. Test your understanding of applied chemistry, physics, and biology to reduce this deterioration.
Save Your Digital Life!
Be your own digital archivist! Discover how Harvard Library ensures the preservation of over 80 million historically significant digitized and born-digital files. Learn about the ongoing risks to your own content, and do a self-assessment of how well you preserve your personal digital history. Walk away with helpful tips on how to safeguard your photos, tweets, term papers and more.
Sew Your Own Pamphlet
Consisting of a few or several pages sewn within a paper cover, a pamphlet is history's version of the modern blog post. Utilized from the Reformation on it's been an affordable way to disseminate ideas and facts whether fake or not. Easily printed and affordable, pamphlets provided poets, politicians, activists and muckrakers a platform to change public sentiment whether through art or hearsay or outright fabrication, a power not unlike political blogs or even twitter today.
When Bad Things Happen to Good Books
Nobody, except maybe a hungry puppy, intends to damage a book. But when we focus on getting information out of a book, we tend to forget that it is a physical object that can be fragile. In the Preservation Services of Harvard Library, our job is to both prevent and repair this damage, so that current and future scholars can continue to use these books and other library collections. Libraries need your help, though, by doing some things and by not doing others. Let’s see if you can figure out what they are.
Managing Digital Images
In this digital age, we create an ever increasing amount of digital images that can feel overwhelming to maintain. Come learn some best practices, tips, and tools for organizing, describing, and backing up your digital images. We'll help you assess your current practices and digital imaging knowledge and you'll walk away with some next steps to creating a solid long-term back up plan!
Exhibition Mounts
Exhibiting items - flat, bound or 3-D - is a wonderful way to engage students and the public with your collections. But how to display them safely? You can learn how to make book cradles and other supports in a fun hands-on workshop!
Protective Enclosures
No description yet available.
Photo Preservation
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Sewing a Book
No description yet available.
Leather Tooling
No description yet available.
Imaging Techniques
No description yet available.
Technical Analysis
No description yet available.