Jessica Bitely, Director of Preservation Services at the Northeast Document Conservation Center will discuss the importance and cultural value of preserving local history collections. Her presentation will touch on some of the basic preservation methods in the field.

Then Bekah Karelis, Project Manager at Wheeling Heritage, will then discuss the LaBelle Collection. Wheeling National Heritage Area purchased a small part of Wheeling’s history at the auction that took place on the grounds of the former LaBelle cut nail plant including all of the paper contents of LaBelle’s office building for just $5! Wheeling Heritage just recently discovered that they were awarded the Museums for America grant offered through the Institute of Museums and Library Sciences to clean and catalog many of the items that came from the plant.

Finally, Jon-Erik Gilot, Director of Archives & Records at the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, will discuss the Eddie Martin Collection in the diocesan archives. Martin, who worked for noted Wheeling photographers George Kossuth and Charles Gruber before operating as an independent photographer, spent fifty years documenting the people, places, and events that defined Wheeling during the mid-20th century.