Dr. Barger has worked in the field of conservation for over forty years in various capacities as a conservation scientist, an educator both on the university level and for professional development for non-conservators, and as a field services consultant to small museums and archives.
She completed an interdisciplinary PhD in materials science, chemistry, and history of technology in 1982 with her pioneering work on the material properties of the daguerreotype. From 1984 - 1986, she was the first Mellon Fellow in Preservation Science at the Library of Congress, Research and Testing Laboratory. For over 25 years she was an educator - at Johns Hopkins University (Department of Materials Science and Engineering) and later, at the University of New Mexico (Department of Earth and Planetary Science). Her academic research has usually been centered on fundamental problems of aging in art materials as varied as photographs and paper to more eclectic areas like adobe plasters.
She served as the manager of the Small Museum Development Project of the Museum of New Mexico and as the director of Museum Development Associates, both organizations aimed at improving the infrastructure of small museums in New Mexico. She has also served the conservation field as one of the initial members of PMG, as an officer in CIPP, in the CAP program as an assessor, and in outreach activities for other local and regional conservation organizations. She served as the Coordinator for the Connecting to Collections Care Program of the FAIC from 2014 until her retirement in November 2019. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a bagpiper and a large cat.