Treasures at Risk
 
Damaged daguerreotype portrait Daguerreotype of Edith Emerson Forbes
ca. 1850
From the papers of Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Manuscripts Department, Houghton Library)

Visual collections among Harvard's libraries include an estimated 4 million images. This portrait is one of the nearly 4,000 daguerreotypes housed in 14 repositories throughout the University. The result of a direct-positive photographic process, daguerreotypes are unique, having no accompanying negatives. Preservation of the original images therefore assumes special significance.

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