August 11, 2025: “Sarah Reidell is starting her 10th year as head of the Penn Libraries’ Steven Miller Conservation Laboratory, which she helped launch in 2016. Today, she leads and manages a team of five conservators and technicians who care for the nearly 8 million objects in the Libraries physical collections. ” https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/meet-penn-libraries-collection-conservation-director-Sarah-Reidell
2024: AIC Annual Meeting program: “Advancing Conservation Techniques Through Deep Learning of Optical Coherence Tomography Images For Classifying Kozo-Fibered Papers”
https://sched.co/1WeZ5 — it was great to collaborate with engineering and computer science researchers from Penn State Abington and the New Jersey Institute of Technology on this project to use AI and machine learning in conservation.
November 2, 2023: From the American Institute for Conservation & Foundation for Advancement in Conservation @conservators Instagram: “We asked conservators how they got into conservation and what keeps them in conservation. @sarahreidell of @upennlib answers. #AskAConservator”
#AskAConservator Day is now an annual international effort held in early November to commemorate the 1966 Florence Floods and to increase awareness of conservation and the cultural heritage community for the public on numerous social media platforms. I proposed and supported the development of #AskAConservatorDay during my time as AIC Publications Chair. 2023 marks the 5th year of #AskAConservator day and I’m pleased to see it grow every year and to reach new audiences. See AIC YouTube playlist.
April 2023: The National Convening of the NEH-FAIC Held In Trust project took place on April 28, 2023 in Washington, DC, at the Library of Congress. I contributed to the Field Investment, Infrastructure, and Sector Health section by leading the subcommittee that explored financial sustainability, influence, and capacity of individual cultural heritage preservation practitioners. A summary of our work is embodied in the second goal, to increase professional data collection. An excerpt:
Field Investment, Infrastructure, and Sector Health Summary
GOAL #2: Increase professional data collection
There is a clear need for the field to engage lobbying professionals and commission
data-driven research to align with other major service organizations such as Americans
for the Arts and the American Library Association. The need for more detailed and
accurate data is referenced in several other HIT reports, including but not limited to
“Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” and “Education, Professional
Development, and Leadership.” We must, for example, gather, share, and promote data
that will allow us to better understand our profession’s demographic, experiential, and
financial profiles. Such systematic and longitudinal data collection will also allow us to
create demographic and economic benchmarks.
Without timely, high-impact data and a strategy to mechanize it effectively, the field
loses agency in the national conversation about heritage, its value, and preservation.
The Foundation for Advancement in Conservation (FAIC) has an opportunity to
embrace an even greater national leadership role to strengthen the impact and
influence of the cultural heritage preservation profession through strong public/private
partnerships and greater investment and visibility. Fostering greater connections with an
established national think tank should be investigated.
Held in Trust: Transforming Cultural Heritage Conservation for a More Resilient Future (2023), p.123
September 22, 2021:
Anyone who enters the Moelis Grand Reading Room in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center is immediately confronted by an arresting sight: a 19-foot by 35-foot wool and silk mural that takes up one full wall of the large, light-filled study space. Two additional murals hang on other walls in the reading room. Created by Dutch artist and sustainability activist Claudy Jongstra, Fields of Transformation is softly toned in grays, creams, browns, and blues, its organic, abstract lines and whorls reminiscent of wispy clouds or water gently lapping on a beach. But according to Sarah Reidell, the Penn Libraries’ Margy E. Meyerson Head of Conservation, the mural does more than evoke the natural world: it is intimately and continuously affected by it. “Seasonally, we’ve seen changes. It expands. It gets heavier [in the summer]. Then it contracts when it’s less humid in the winter months.”
“Our spaces move and breathe. We just don’t notice it as much,” she points out. “The monumental size of this artwork means we notice it a lot more.”
Read more about how Conservation cares for Penn’s collections here: https://www.library.upenn.edu/blogs/libraries-news/conserving-claudy-jongstras-fields-transformation
September 21, 2022: From @upennlib Instagram:
May 2022: Election results are in and I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve as the AIC Board Director for Communications for the next three years!
May 2022: I’m honored to receive the 2022 American Institute for Conservation President’s Award and to be recognized by AIC President Suzanne Davis for “exceptional work to foster communications and timely research in AIC, including [her] work as lead developer of the association’s COVID-19 pulse survey.”
September 2021: Abstract call! “Viz for the Conservation Whiz: Data Tools Symposium” pre-session panel, looking for data-driven tools & approaches to conservation & preservation projects to share in case studies & lightning rounds at 50th AIC Meeting in Los Angeles May 2022 https://twitter.com/sarahreidell/status/1441185144598007811 
April 2020: Our conservation lab uses Vivak PETG sheeting for exhibit cradles and mounts. In April 2020 I volunteered to contribute our stock and to participate in the campus-wide “Project SHIELDS” effort at Penn to fabricate 20,000 face shields and support medical first-responders at Penn health centers. “Rapid response to COVID-19 puts the power of innovation to the test” https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/rapid-response-covid-19-puts-power-innovation-test
September 2019: Penn Libraries hosted the NEH-IPI event series “Identification and Preservation of Inkjet Prints in Museums, Libraries, and Archives”. Images below from a “water disaster exercise” to compare creation process and media with water damage. More info about the events here: https://www.library.upenn.edu/about/exhibits-events/inkjet-prints
June 2019: “Textured Fills: Replicating Leather Surfaces With Acrylic Media And Reusable Silicone Rubber Molds” at the 11th Interim Meeting of the ICOM-CC Leather and Related Materials Working Group
June 2018: I’ve been busy these last few months working with the amazing and supportive Penn Libraries administration to build the conservation program and create three new permanent positions — keep an eye out for who joins us later this summer as Conservation Librarian and Senior Conservation Technicians!
September 2017: Another fantastic precoated adhesives workshop. My favorite part of teaching isn’t just the hands-on, it’s the broader perspective of understanding the choices available to us and knowing how to apply that knowledge in treatments. Thanks to the second FAIC cohort and the Indiana Historical Society for making it such a success!
Fun with paste!! I’m at @wintermuse teaching a workshop on #precoated aka #remoistenable aka #reactivated materials and working with paper and objects students @wudpac@wudpac@wudpac2018@wudpac2020
Check it out! My upcoming Sept 2017 FAIC course at the Indiana Historical Society “The Use and Creation of Pre-Coated Repairs” is open for registration — http://www.conservation-us.org/courses/professional-development-courses/current-courses/the-use-creation-of-pre-coated-repairs See you in Indy!
March 2017: Follow @kislakcenter on Instagram for more great images of Penn’s extensive Sanskrit, Hindu, and Buddhist materials
January 2017: Updated tips for making textured repairs:
#todayinthelab @upennlib #KislakCenter we made a flexible silicone mold of a surrogate leather with a nice calf grain that can replicate the original surface of many collection items, then book technician Valeria Kremser spread the mixture of pigmented acrylic media on the mold and added a thin backing support of handmade mulberry-fibered paper. Tomorrow we’ll pull the textured paper from the mold and check our results! https://instagram.com/p/BPn8Gc6hJ44/
— Sarah Reidell (@sarahreidell) January 23, 2017
August 2016: I have news! 😊 Full job announcement and profile in the University of Pennsylvania Almanac. August 30, 2016, Volume 63, No. 03
August 2016: #todayinthelab Colleagues from the @UCLAGettyCons NARA @archivespres Mellon Advisory Group exploring the future of library conservation education visited our new Steven Miller Conservation Lab @upennlib Kislak Center for Special Collections. From left: Nancy Turner (Getty), Cathleen Baker (UMich, retired), Ellen Pearlstein (UCLA), and Doris Hamburg (NARA, retired).
August 2016: It’s official! I recently started a new position at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries as the first Margy E. Meyerson Head of Conservation in mid-July. From 08/11/2026 Penn Today: Penn Libraries’ new conservation lab preserves precious rare collections
May 2016: I’m a Fellow!
February 2016: oobleckian!
The Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works: The Use and Creation of Pre-Coated Repair Materials
February 24 – 26, 2016
Fort Worth, Texas
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Instructor: Sarah ReidellMore information: http://www.conservation-us.org/education/education/current-courses/the-use-creation-of-pre-coated-repair-materials#.VmW_KF88KnM
Click here for more information on past workshops
SARAH REIDELL 