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Special Collections and Archives is honored to be included in the North Carolina Preservation Consortium’s list of North Carolina’s Most Endangered Artifacts. You may have already ready about the “discovery” of our Philomathesian Banner in Wake Forest Magazine. You can read more about the history of the banner and the plans for conservation as well as... Continue reading “Wake Forest’s Endangered Artifact” ›
I had to write about this. This book, with a lengthy title: The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants: … with their descriptions in English and French. To which is prefixed, a new and correct map of the countries; with observations... Continue reading “Preservation of the Catesby” ›
For the past few months, I’ve been preserving a collection of letters written during the American Civil War. These letters are all written by Major John W. Cameron, and were written during April and May of 1862. All the letters were sent from Goldsboro, NC by Major Cameron. These letters are what I believe to... Continue reading “Preserving the Jonathan W. Cameron Civil War letters” ›
I recently began work on repairing an important book in our special collections, and thought I’d share the process of preservation. The book is loaded down with a long French title, but is known as Diderot’s “Tree of Knowledge.” The “Tree of Knowledge” was an attempt to represent the structure of knowledge graphically and was... Continue reading “Preserving Diderot’s “Tree of Knowledge”” ›
I recently brought a group of old theater posters, which are about one hundred years old, out of the flat files they’d been stored in. These posters are part of the Clarence Herbert New Collection (http://wakespace.lib.wfu.edu/xmlui/handle/10339/28053). I knew we had these posters, but had not seen them or handled them. I was prompted to look... Continue reading “Thanhouser Theater Posters from the C. H. New Collection” ›
A few weeks back, I was happy to begin some work on Special Collections materials in Preservation. I grabbed a few likely suspects off the shelf and opened one: this was a thick volume of bound magazines entitled Reel Life: A Weekly Magazine of Kinetic Drama and Literature. This project by Mr. Clarence Herbert New... Continue reading “Reel Life – restored” ›
A story within a story, three members of the Special Collections and Archives team recount the discovery, preservation, and access of an exciting and well-traveled gem from the collection. We hope readers will enjoy the story and keep the relevance and enduring nature of the “Lebanon Greys” alive for at least another century! Vicki: It... Continue reading “A Civil War Gem found in the Archives (by Vicki, Craig and Rebecca)” ›
This is Preservation Week. April 24-30 is designated by the American Library Association as Preservation Week. The idea of having Preservation Week is to call attention to the value and care for our cultural resources. Many institutions have crumbling collections with no plan or resources to care for them. The week gives everyone an opportunity... Continue reading “Preservation Week” ›
In October, I excitedly accepted dozens of posters from the Gertrude Hoffman Collection. These turn of the last century posters were wonderful and also brittle after being folded inside a trunk for many years. I’ve finally seen a light at the end of this tunnel and delivered 4 encapsulated posters to the closed stacks today.... Continue reading “Hoffman posters….the preservation of” ›
Last fall, we uncovered a cache of posters in a trunk. I blogged about this material in our Special Collections blog in October. Gertrude Hoffman (1880-1955) was a dancer in the early 20th century who traveled internationally with her troupe of dancers called The Hoffman Girls. Gertrude Hoffman was married to Max Hoffman (1875-1963), a... Continue reading “Preservation of the Gertrude Hoffman posters” ›