Volume 23, Number 4
1999

People

• Patricia M. Battin was presented with a National Humanities Medal by President Clinton September 29. She was honored for her "exemplary public service by organizing and leading a national campaign to save millions of brittle books in America's libraries and archives." Others honored on the same occasion were Garrison Keillor and Steven Spielberg.
• Dr. Derek J. Priest, formerly Senior Lecturer in the Department of Paper Science at UMIST and chair of the Institute of Paper Conservation from 1993 to 1997, has retired, but he continues to be professionally active. He is secretary of the UK National Paper Museum Trust, an external supervisor for a research project at Camberwell, and has written an excellent review of John Balston's book, The Whatmans and Wove (Velin) Paper; Its Invention and Development in the West, published in IPH (International Paper History), Heft 2, 1999; also in Paper Conservation News for June.
• Christopher Clarkson gave a two-day seminar August 2-3 for the conservation staff at Harvard University, on the early history of books and their value as cultural artifacts. On the day following the seminar, he gave a workshop on simple techniques of mending, patching, and repairing over text using fish skin, according to the October 1999 Harvard University Library Notes.
• Sherelyn Ogden, who served for the last two years as Director of Field Services at the Upper Midwest Conservation Association (in Minneapolis), has been appointed as the new Head of Conservation at the Minnesota Historical Society.
• Henry "Hank" Mollenhauer, formerly with the Warren Paper Co., has been appointed marketing director of Sappi Fine Paper plc. Sappi is the South African paper company that bought Warren several years ago.
• Mirjam M. Foot, Director of Collections and Preservation at the British Library, retired earlier this year. Helen Forde, of the Public Records Office, summarizes her career and accomplishments in the NPO Journal for October 1999 on p. 11. (NPO is the National Preservation Office.)
• John McIntyre retired in September from his job as Head of Preservation of the National Library of Scotland. Like many others in library preservation, he began as a bookbinder; in fact, he served an apprenticeship in the University of Manchester and had a professional career in bookbinding before going into preservation.
• Andrew Robb has been promoted to the position of senior photograph conservator at the Library of Congress.
• Eugene Ostroff, former curator of photography at the National Museum of American History, died in August 1999. He had retired in 1994 after 34 years with the Smithsonian Institution.