Each year, the staff of Special Collections choose several items from the Rare Books collection to undergo conservation [1]. We prioritize rare or unique items that we believe are likely to be of broad academic interest and whose condition would otherwise make it difficult for researchers to consult them without causing further damage. The goal Read More

Dear readers, do you ever look up in Mullen Library and notice a blank spot on the wall? Was anything displayed there, if ever? And if there was once something there, what happened to it? Well… The portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, which His Eminence Cardinal Spellman presented to the Catholic University in Read More

Over the past year, Special Collections staff continued tackling conservation challenges that have arisen within the University’s Rare Books collection. Our past conservation projects can be seen in: “Part I”, “Part II”, “Part III”, and Part IV. As in years past, we have continued working alongside Quarto Conservation and have another incunabulum (a book printed Read More

Over the past year, Special Collections staff has continued addressing conservation challenges that arise within the Catholic University’s Rare Books collection. You may see our past blogs on the topic in “Part I”, “Part II”, and “Part III”. As in years past, we have continued working alongside Quarto Conservation and have another surprising sampling of Read More

Beginning last year, Special Collections staff began a process of reviewing Catholic University’s Rare Books collection for works facing conservation issues. With over 65,000 works in the collection, we had to focus on the most immediate concerns. Of particular interest was the manuscripts collection, which holds over 200 one-of-a-kind handwritten texts from the medieval to Read More

On Monday, Feb. 27 at  6:oo PM, Abigail Quandt, Senior Conservator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Walters Art Museum will present “Putting the Pieces Together: The Codicology & Conservation of the Archimedes Palimpsest.”  Ms. Quandt led the 12-year effort to stabilize the Archimedes Codex for the imaging which would reveal the earliest manuscript of Read More