Mary Couts Burnett Library Special Collections General Preservation Assessment and Emergency Preparedness Project

FAIN: PG-263572-19

Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, TX 76129-0001)
Julie Christenson (Project Director: May 2018 to February 2022)

A preservation assessment of nearly 26,000 volumes housed at the Mary Couts Burnett Library’s Special Collections, with materials ranging from a first edition of Imitatio Christi by Thomas à Kempis dating from about 1473 to 21st-century artists’ books.  Highlights of the collection include 254 Shakespeare volumes and first editions of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens; maps, broadsides, books, and manuscripts of Colonial Spanish America dating from the 16th through the 19th centuries; and a first edition of the King James Bible and works representing the revival of interest in Hebrew and Judaism during the Reformation.  In addition, this project would support a full-day disaster-preparedness workshop open to staff members from special collections in the North Texas area.

TCU Special Collections proposes to engage a preservation consultant to conduct their first preservation assessment and disaster-preparedness workshop. The latter will be open to special collections staff in the North Texas area. TCU’s collections are small but diverse. Highlights include the Pavier Quartos (1619), an attempt to issue a collected Shakespeare that predates the First Folio; books and broadsides in Spanish, Latin, Nahuatl, and Quechua that are among the earliest works printed in the New World; and two early twentieth-century Ashkenazi Torah scrolls that serve as poignant reminders of Jewish communities destroyed during WWII. Outcomes include bringing disaster preparedness training to an area with few existing opportunities for in-person instruction, the drafting of disaster plans, providing hands-on experience with disaster response, and the creation of a list of preservation recommendations to inform TCU’s preservation plan.