Playing Our Part: A Special Collections Library

Material science, book and paper history, hand skills, passive climate controls, custom designed book supports, outreach, and risk management are all key attributes of the Folger conservation team’s experience. The conservators are also expected to contribute in many more areas, as varied expertise and innovative approaches are vital to a successful research institution in the 21st century. Along with discussion of conservation work being carried out at the Folger, Ms Mesmer will present the Folger’s 2016 First Folio tour, which was curated to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

The 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare was the first edition to group his plays into comedies, histories, and tragedies, and includes the famous Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare. More importantly, the First Folio preserved 18 of Shakespeare's plays that had never before been printed, including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. The Folger Library houses the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, including 260,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts that date back as far as the late 13th century.
 
Besides the talk on 8th November, Renate Mesmer will also host a workshop on Paper restoration for specialists working in this field. This workshop on pulp-fills and other paper-based book and art conservation tips will take place in the HKU Preservation Centre from 6th to 8th November. Participants include conservators from the Sun Yat-sen University, M+ as well as staff from the University of Hong Kong.
 
Goethe-Institut Hongkong has been organizing a series of workshops on paper restoration in Hong Kong and Guangzhou in the past decade. One of the output is a Glossary on Paper Conservation in six languages (German, English, Chinese, Korean, Mongolian and Japanese). The Glossary is an essential tool for specialists to find relevant restoration terms in their own language. It is now available as iBook for iPad and Mac.
 
Free download available at:
https://www.goethe.de/ins/cn/en/sta/hon/bib/glossarpapier.html
 
About Renate Mesmer
Renate Mesmer is currently the Head of Conservation at the Folger Shakespeare Library. She is a book and paper conservator with more than twenty years of experience in the field. Previously Ms Mesmer worked as a conservator at the University Library in Mannheim, the Speyer State Archives in Germany, and the Centro del bel libro in Ascona, Switzerland. Her apprentice training began in Germany at the age of 16, where she earned her Meister in bookbinding from the Palatine Chamber of Skilled Crafts.