bestgear wrote: ↑Sun Jul 04, 2021 6:20 pm

Good thread

Got this old beat-up Remington Heroism still hanging around and with what’s going on with the BSA these days, this one just might be waiting a moment before becoming a museum piece. As-found and as-is condition
I have some books I was given by a family friend that ended up getting a ton of books from a neighbor who wanted to get rid of them (and they had actually been saved from the trash by her). Every single one is north of a century old, and some are north of two centuries old. Among them is a set of 19th-century theological books originally belonging to William Harcourt, a prominent British Minister of Parliament who had given them to the widow of a good friend of his in the early 1800s as per an inscription on the flyleaf in the first of the series (Michaelis' On the Laws of Moses).
I said to myself "These should be in a museum". Heck, I think this is the only surviving set in a private collection. I had originally planned to donate them to a college or museum, but I was afraid of what they'd do with them. I did NOT want them sold or destroyed. I know they are probably quite valuable, but I will not ever sell them, and the conditions I'd make to any institution that I loaned or donated them to is that they could not be sold. However, the problem I have is that I'm afraid something would happen to them out of my control even here.
The problem I've got is preserving print ain't like preserving knives--it's a lot more complex. I currently have them in a small bookcase by themselves, and as I understand, that's not the ideal way to store them. I need to talk to a conservator, but we don't have any of them around here, and the tiny museum we have in town really doesn't do all that stuff. The nearest conservator for books is in Greensboro, NC.