Tosti collection

Hi everyone!
I have been to the Boston Public Library print stacks to work with the Tosti collection about three times so far. I have a pretty clear workflow: I take a wrapped volume from the shelf, open it, and flip through the volume, comparing the prints that appear in the volume with the nineteenth-century catalog. Basically, I am checking to see if the prints that should be in the volume are there, and if anything unexpected appears. Then I go back through the bound volume and create a condition report for each print, checking the prints to see if there is any damage and making recommendations, such as minor cleaning.  The bound volumes are labeled alphanumerically, so there is a clear order that I use to go through the volumes (I started with volume A.2.1, moved to A.3.1, etc.).

I have no idea what a volume will look like before I open its brown paper wrapping. Some of them are so big I can't lift them by myself--I just reached the first one that I could carry through the print stacks by myself. The last volume I worked on had several pages tipped-in to the book. I had an exciting moment on Thursday when I realized that a series of prints in the Tosti collection is the same as a series held by the British Museum--talk about copy cataloging! It's an exciting project in that I never know what's going to happen, but that also creates challenges. For instance, I opened a volume on Thursday which had mold in it. Luckily, it doesn't hold the threat of propagating!

Right now, the goal is to just continue with the workflow I've been doing. I wanted to shout out a thanks to Brett and Aaron in the print stacks, who have answered a lot of my questions and been really helpful!