Preserving a National Treasure

As many of our regular readers know the Library partnered with Readex Corporation to digitize the U. S. Congressional Serial Set.  The project was completed in 2013 and Deborah Howe, John Cocklin, and I created a book to celebrate the partnership.  The basis of the book was a slide show Deborah created for a presentation in the early years of the project.  We took her slides, added some other photos and created a story book which painted a broad picture of the process and acknowledged the staff at Readex and Dartmouth who had been involved.  The book was printed, bound, and given to Readex as a memento of our collaboration.

Our small gift was warmly received.  My counterpart, Carol Forsythe, asked if Readex could make an e-pub version and we gladly shared our files.  In this blog post, Preserving a National Treasure: A Partnership with the Dartmouth College Library, Carol describes the origin of our partnership and links to the e-pub.

Barb Sagraves, Head, Preservation Services 

Great Teams Make Great Products!

A celebration was recently held in Chester, Vermont to commemorate the successful completion of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set Digitization Project.  This marked the end of a very productive ten-year collaboration with Readex Corporation and Dartmouth College Library to conserve and digitize almost 16,000 volumes. 

At the celebration Carol Forsythe, Team Readex Project Manager, noted significant statistics: 
15,739 volumes were reviewed and conserved by Dartmouth’s Preservation Services for a total of 11,935,564 pages scanned at Readex.  The Serial Set (1789-1995) included 370,205 separate government publications and 74,495 maps.  The project grew in scope to include:

• The American State Papers
• Senate Executive Journals
• House and Senate Journals

The success of this monumental venture was due to the diligence of those assigned directly to the project as well as those who provided logistical and other support throughout the library.  Or as was written on the cake, “Great Teams Make Great Products!” 


Barb Sagraves

Head, Preservation Services

Personnel Announcement

I am delighted to announce that Elizabeth Rideout, Project Technician, has been named the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, MA.  Elizabeth will start her one-year appointment at the nationally known conservation center this June. 

Elizabeth has been a member of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set/ NewsBank Project Team since 2011.  She has been the lead technician for the last eighteen months and has been instrumental in keeping track and accounting for all the returning volumes as the project comes to a close.  Elizabeth has also been active in the Book Arts Program, leading workshops on a variety of book binding methods.

Elizabeth’s last day is Friday, May 31, co-incidentally, the official closing date of the eight year project.  This is a fabulous opportunity for Elizabeth and we wish her well on her next adventure.

The Final Countdown

Now in the homestretch of the U. S. Congressional Serial Set Project the Readex/Dartmouth team is working through some end-of-project tasks. With only a few weeks of the project remaining, our end date being May 31st, it is time to check through the collection to discover volumes with missing labels, and compile a list of volumes that remain missing. Over the years of processing incoming and outgoing Serial Set volumes it has been standard procedure to take note of any missing volumes and make a note in a spreadsheet which lists the entire set. Early in the project each volume was assigned a barcode which is also indicated on this master list.

After reading all the number labels of Serial Set volumes in the stacks, a list of approximately 400 numbers was typed and printed. In an effort to match existing labels on early volumes the numbers were printed on taupe colored Moriki tissue and consolidated with a klucel-G solution to prevent fading.

One by one each new label will be glued to its' corresponding volume.

Finally, when the approximately 100 remaining volumes are returned from scanning, they will be repaired as needed, checked for labels, and returned to the stacks. Farewell my dear Serial Set!

By Elizabeth Rideout