Laura McNulty

Iron Gall Ink Workshop

Julie Biggs & Basia Nosek

Julie Biggs, Senior Paper Conservator, held a workshop focused on the history, preparation, chemistry, degredation, examination, and treatment of iron gall ink for Basia Nosek (Buffalo State College, 2021), the Advanced Paper Conservation Intern, and myself. Julie gave her lectures virtually via Zoom and the in-person sections focused on examining, testing for free iron ions and solubility, and documenting different qualities of the ink. Julie and other conservators at LC have made great strides in furthering the field's understanding of iron gall ink and have led the way in improving how we treat it. It was fantastic to learn from Julie and to (finally) work with Basia. (Image courtesy of Basia Nosek.)

Hopkinson Treatment

Katherine Kelly & Susan Peckham

After many years, the treatment of an 18th century music manuscript written by Francis Hopkinson was coming to a close. I was able to help senior conservators, Katherine Kelly and Susan Peckham, with sizing the final pages of the manuscript. The pages were vat-sized in a 0.75% solution of gelatin in deionized water. This was a great learning opportunity as I had never done this sort of treatment before and helped me to feel more comfortable when I got to this step in the treatment of Torat Moshe. (Image courtesy of Susan Peckham.)

Collections Recovery

Andrew Robb & Dan Paterson

A small leak in storage affected a small number of books which were removed and brought to the Collections Recovery Room (seen in image at left) to be dried. After drying for a few days, Andrew Robb, Head of Special Format Conservation Section, Dan Paterson, Senior Rare Book Conservator, and I checked the books to determine which books required more time to dry and which were ready to be returned to storage. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Atlas Survey

Katherine Kelly

Katherine Kelly, Senior Book Conservator, is surveying atlases that were treated since the 1980s in order to capture data about how atlases have been treated at the Library of Congress. This information will be included in a future publication authored by Katherine. Katherine invited me to look at atlases with her and I learned a lot of guards, compensation stubs, and the multiple ways of attaching maps to guards. I was also working on an atlas model with Katherine during this time, so looking at real examples was a great companion activity to working on the model. One of the highlights was seeing the handwritten titling information on rebound Mercator atlas (see image at left).