Preservation Training Workshops

FAIN: PG-51371-11

Amherst College (Amherst, MA 01002-2372)
Thomas Michael Kelly (Project Director: May 2010 to December 2012)

Preservation workshops to train Frost Library staff to better care for the college's collections of rare books, literary manuscripts, artifacts, and natural history collections, including the papers of William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, for whom the library is named. The workshop would also be attended by staff from the Center for Russian Culture, the Mead Art Museum, and the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Archives & Special Collections (ASC) of the Frost Library of Amherst College seeks a $5,810 Preservation Assistance Grant from the NEH. Funding will pay for three preservation training workshops to be held at Amherst College. A previous NEH Preservation Assistance grant supported a collection survey by a consultant from the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) in February 2010. The consultant strongly recommended we invest in preservation training. Three specific training areas were identified: storage techniques for archival materials, care of photographs, and preservation of scrapbooks (see attached executive summary of the consultant’s report). As a small facility without any professional conservators on staff, the Frost Library of Amherst College lacks any in-house preservation expertise. There are currently seven employees in the department, only three of whom are professionals. Everyone in the Archives will benefit from this training.