Day Five - May 24, 2024

 


I spent the first half of the day working on my processing plan. I talked with supervisor Morgan about 

some of the documents I found that contained possibly identifiable information. She said it’s fine since we 

know the guy is deceased, including the stack of IDs we got with the collection. I don’t know yet if I want to 

keep all of them. I think the passports and work IDs make interesting artifacts but I’m not sure if they would 

all be worthwhile. There is some information on other living relatives but I guess we’ll cross that bridge 

when we get there. Even with all the stuff I’ve set aside, there is a lot of physical material that will need to 

be transferred to better containers.

The second half of the day was at the UNT preservation center. I don’t know why when I pictured the 

re-humidifying process I thought of like a steam-room for books. Or like a cross between a dishwasher and 

an oven. The actual process was more like a spray paint gun that sprayed a special non-water re-hydrating 

solution. It sounds really bizarre that way but that’s how the head preservationist put it. There were a lot of 

interesting and very specific machines in preservation, like several for cutting, a few for humidifying the air,

 some for de-humidifying the air, etc. Overall, There were a lot of interesting things in the preservation 

building. A lot of really cool collections, although most of the ones we saw were in boxes. I also saw the 

collection my supervisors told me I was supposed to have first. The one they found a dead bird in. It was 

only a single box, which kind of surprised me. I wish I could look through it but from what I understand it 

won’t be safe for a few weeks at least. 

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