We in the conservation department are excited to share that many of the volumes in the Bank of North America collection are now available to researchers. Over three hundred volumes and boxes are now finished, covered in sleeves for their further protection, and labeled.

Upon the completion of this huge percentage of the collection (almost half!), we made the decision to move the volumes to their permanent home in our newly renovated second floor vault so that they can now be accessed by public researchers.

Please enjoy these images of our department moving the collection into our second floor vault. For an appreciation of the stark contrast between the new home and the former, compare these to earlier images found here. We are so pleased that the collection will now be kept in a vault large enough to accomodate it safely. 

Roughly half of the books found in this first batch are incredibly large spring back structures, many of which were still in stable condition and only required a thorough cleaning and mending of torn folios. 

Now that these are complete, we project conservation technicians are hard at work on the volumes in the worst state of disrepair, all of which have to be completely rebound (see Sun Young Kang’s previous post detailing the process).

As we complete a sizable quantity of books, we will move them to the 2nd floor vault in batches to join their counterparts in their availability to the public.

Our project archivist Sarah Newhouse has prepared a finding aid for researchers interested in the volumes now available; it is attached to this post for your perusal.