Community Corner

Preservation Fair Helps Maintain Family Treasures this Saturday

This event will give you all the tools you need to keep your heirlooms healthy.

Just about everyone has a family treasure that has been passed down from generation to generation—but not everyone knows how to preserve it.

This Saturday, the Preservation Fair and its organizers are working to change that with a full day of events dedicated to educating residents about how to preserve their own family’s historical documents and heirlooms.

Co-sponsored by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, the fair is held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Carnegie Library Music Hall.

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Miriam Meislik of , a curator at the Archives Service Center at Pitt, helped to organize the event. Preserving family treasures is the main goal for the day, while is the keynote speaker. Other events include a handmade paper making workshop by Alice Mentzer, a teacher at

As an archival professional, Meislik said the fair builds off of emails that come into their inboxes all year about how to preserve different items.

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“It’s a way to reach a broad segment of the population and everyone has something in their house that they do not know what to do with,” Meislik said. “They don’t know how to display it, or there is a problem—and they want it to last.”

Charlotte Tancin of Wilkins Township works at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation and also helped to organize the local fair.

“A lot of us that work in libraries and archives learn how to take care of paper and film, but the general public doesn’t always know that stuff,” Tancin said. “Everyone has those things they have been passing down through their families—photographs, home movies, heirlooms—and people don’t always know how to take care of them.”

Oftentimes, those family treasures end up in a hot attic or a damp basement, leaving them exposed to temperatures or moist air that can damage them. The Preservation Fair will show ways those problems can be fixed.

“This is a great opportunity for the library community to share what they know by bringing in preservation professionals to talk about that,” Tancin said.

Alexis Macklin of the Heinz History Center is presenting “Preservation and Digitization: Trends, Techniques and Reality,” while other workshops include ways to preserve books, paintings and prints, storing antique wedding dresses, framing techniques and more. Participants also can bring a family heirloom to the event and get the best advice on how to take care of it.

Meislik said she is looking forward to hear Sebak speak at the event.

“He is a big lover of archives and a big user of archives in his local documentaries and current TV show, so he has a thing for wanting to make sure these items are preserved,” she said. “I am also looking forward to spending time with people and helping them understand what we do as archivists and curators—it goes a long way.”

The Preservation Fair is free after paying for museum admission. For more information, visit http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~presfair/.


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