Adopt A Banned Book!

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (first edition).
For adoption: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (first edition).

I’m always late in honoring the American Library Association’s Banned Book Week. I’d like to say it is because I believe in celebrating banned and challenged books all year ’round, which I do, but really it’s just been so busy here that it completely took me by surprise.

So, in honor of Banned Books Week and brilliant writers everywhere who write about difficult truths (or just plain human truths), we have placed a few frequently challenged titles on our Adopt-a-Book page. Adopt the conservation of a banned book today (better late than never)!

Upcoming NCPC Conference: Significant Preservation: Inventories and Assessments for Strategic Planning

From the NCPC Press release:

Significant Preservation: Inventories and Assessments for Strategic Planning

North Carolina Preservation Consortium Annual Conference
William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
November 7, 2014

Inventories and assessments of heritage collections and sites are vital for meaningful strategic planning that conveys the importance of allocating scarce resources for preservation programs. Establishing the significance of tangible heritage to the communities we serve is essential for prioritizing conservation, storage, exhibition, and emergency planning decisions to protect cultural treasures for present and future generations. This conference will help you influence organizational, political, and community leaders who have the authority to improve preservation funding. Register today for a valuable learning experience with state, national, and international preservation leaders.

Keynote Speakers

Veronica Bullock is the Co-founder and Director of Significance International. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Prehistory/Archaeology from the Australian National University and a master’s degree in Applied Science (Materials Conservation) from the University of Western Sydney. Her fellowship at the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property explored how significance assessments and risk assessments are taught in graduate conservation programs in Australia, Canada, the United States, and several countries in Europe. Ms. Bullock will provide an overview of the Significance Assessment methodology developed by the Collections Council of Australia.

Lisa Ackerman is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the World Monuments Fund and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute. She holds a BA from Middlebury College, an MS in historic preservation from the Pratt Institute, and an MBA from New York University. Her professional service has included membership on the boards of the Historic House Trust of New York City, New York Preservation Archive Project, St. Ann Center for Restoration and the Arts, Partners for Sacred Places, Neighborhood Preservation Center, and the U.S. National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites. Ms. Ackerman will present an introduction to the Arches heritage inventory and management system.

Dr. Paul R. Green is a Cultural Resources Specialist for the U.S. Air Force Civil Engineer Center, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Old Dominion University, and a modern Monuments Man. He holds a BS from Marshall University, MA from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a PhD in Anthropology (Archaeology) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Green is a member of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Historical/Cultural Advisory Group and the International Military Cultural Resources Working Group. He will address the challenges and importance of prioritizing global heritage collections and sites for the protection of cultural property during war and armed conflicts.

Lightening Session Speakers

Martha Battle Jackson is Chief Curator for North Carolina Historic Sites. She will provide an overview of the Museum Assessment Program (MAP) for Collection Stewardship sponsored by the American Alliance of Museums.

Andrea Gabriel is Outreach & Development Coordinator for the North Carolina State Archives. She will present an introduction to the Traveling Archivist Program (TAP) administered by the North Carolina Office of Archives & History.

David Goist is a painting conservator in private practice. He will give an overview of the Conservation Assessment Program (CAP) sponsored by Heritage Preservation.

 

For more information on the conference schedule, registration, scholarships, etc., see the NCPC events page.

 

 

 

 

Quick Pic: Track All The Paper!

Tracking repair papers that we have ordered.
Tracking repair papers that we have ordered.

Erin came up with a great idea to track the repair papers that we order. Each time we order a new paper she snips a small sample piece and attaches it to this grid that she created. There is room in the description area to list the vendor, the item number from their catalog, the price and when and how much we ordered it.

This has helped a great deal especially in re-ordering paper that we may not order on a regular basis. It’s also fun to see these all together to get an idea of the color ranges and weights of the repair tissues we have. It provides more information than a spreadsheet alone could provide. It’s a good thing!

 

 

FY 2014 By The Numbers

It’s annual report writing time! Since we shared our stats in the past years, I thought we would write again this year as well. I love statistics, probably a little too much.

A year in a tweet.
A year in a tweet.

Due to the renovation and the resultant problems, our productivity is slightly down because we had to close the lab for a month due to the Great Flood of 2013. We had a couple smaller leaks due to the fact we have had no roof on the building next to us, and we have lost two of our rooms. Ahhhh, renovation. All things considered, I think have done remarkably well in keeping up our productivity.

Fiscal Year 2013-2014 Statistics

Last year 17,134 library items came through Conservation. The numbers break down in this way:

1,126 books repaired
2,873 pamphlets bound
533 flat paper repairs
4,755 protective enclosures*
7,817 items recovered from mold/water
86 exhibit mounts (356 hours of exhibit support)

65% of the work came from special collections
35% of the work came from the circulating collections

28% of our total output was creating custom enclosures
46% of our total output was removing mold from manuscripts

68% of non-enclosure work was Level 1 projects [less than 15 minutes]
20% of non-enclosure work was Level 2 projects [15 minutes to 2 hours]
4%  of non-enclosure work was Level 3 projects [over 2 hours]

*CoLibri has declined significantly now that new publisher’s bindings with book jackets come shelf ready with a protective cover.

Of course, not everything we do necessarily results in a tic mark on a stat sheet. We revamped our student job duties to free up more time for our technicians. We added a “Boxing Day” a week to Tedd’s duties to keep up with all the boxing requests from Rubenstein Library. We did a lot of giving back to the conservation community by presenting at AIC, ALA and the Triangle Research Libraries consortium, and three of us developed new workshops. Two were presented for the North Carolina Preservation Consortium, and one for Paper & Book Intensive. We’d love to see other labs tweet out or share their stats.

“Experiment Day”–A New Way to Learn

As you know, we like to stop our production work every now and then to learn something new. In June we sent representatives to both the American Institution for Conservation and the Canadian Association for Conservation annual meetings.

This was the first year we sent someone to the CAC conference. Grace attended and brought back information including an interesting use of  magnets to hang a traveling exhibit of vary large artwork. What she liked most about the CAC conference is that the specialties do not break up into separate sessions like we do at AIC.

Erin shows us Bill Minter's tip on using a screen to tear Japanese tissue.
Erin shows us Bill Minter’s tip on using a screen to dry tear Japanese tissue to use for repairs.

Erin and I discussed the sessions we attended at AIC including the Book and Paper Group Tips Session (always a favorite). Erin had the great idea to have an “Experiment Day” to try some of these tips. She worked with Rachel to get supplies and organize a few of the tips that seemed most useful. Rachel demonstrated a hinging technique she uses that is similar to the one Terry Marsh offered (read by Anisha Gupta) at the tips session. Erin then demonstrated other tips including a dry tear technique presented by Bill Minter, and a technique for relaxing lined artwork presented by Betsy Palmer Eldridge. It was a fun way to bring back information from a conference and experiment a little to see if we can integrate some of these techniques into our workflows.

Rachel demonstrates a hinging technique used for float mats.
Rachel demonstrates a hinging technique used for float mats.

 

1091 Project: 5 Days of Preservation

1091 graphicKevin Driedger, author of Library Preservation 2, had a brilliant idea to ask institutions with preservation and conservation responsibilities to post at least one picture a day this week on the theme, “This is what preservation looks like.” Everyone tagged their posts with #5DaysOfPreservation. Search the hashtag on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and you will see hundreds of images from across the country. He’s also collected the entries on a Tumbler.

For our contributions we divided the post responsibilities between Conservation, Preservation and the Digital Production Center. On Monday, we visited Conservation as they made custom enclosures for some very old pin cushions.

On Tuesday we visited Winston Atkins, Preservation Officer, as he was working on reconciling the just-ended fiscal year budget. As he reminded us, “What we do is administration, after all.” That is one of the hidden secrets of library preservation, we do a lot of paperwork, research, writing, program administration and attend a lot of meetings to gather information to help form our vision for the preservation program’s future.

On Wednesday, we went over to the Digital Production Center to see Zeke digitizing the Duke Chronicle, our campus student newspaper. This digital collection has proved to be one of our most successful projects, and more issues will be available soon.

Thursday we were back in the conservation lab with our student, Wolfgang, who was putting CoLibri (TM) covers on books from our New & Noteworthy collection. These covers protect the publisher’s dust jacket, are non-adhesive and take just a couple minutes to complete.

On Thursday we got two more posts from the Digital Production Center. Mike was working on preparing digital files for transfer into the Duke Digital Repository.

And Alex was working on reformatting videotape to preservation standards.

Friday was a flurry of activity. We found Beth and Rachel changing out the board shear blades in the conservation lab.

And finally we visit the not-so-attractive but vitally necessary job of insect monitoring.

Overall I think Kevin’s idea was a huge hit, and we should all do this again. So often preservation and conservation are hidden in basements or offsite, and I sometimes thing that even our own colleague may not know what we do every day. #5DaysOfPreservation demonstrates the wide variety of services we provide for our institutions and how we contribute to the accessibility of our collections. Let’s go see what Parks Library Preservation’s contributions were this week. What did you do post? Put your links in the comments.

 

Quick Pic: Touring Conservation

Yesterday a colleague brought his six-year-old son to Conservation for a tour. We all showed him things were were working on including Star Wars: The Blue Prints. He apparently had such a good experience he wrote about it in his journal. His dad shared a picture of his entry with us, and gave us permission to post the picture. Enjoy!

"July 2 2014 It was cool at Duke we soo [saw] a lot of pepole. We I soo [saw] a Star Ware book. Dad showed a Bat Man comix. Whe soo a leter from George Washington in 1773."
“July 2 2014
It was cool at Duke we soo [saw] a lot of pepole. We I soo [saw] a Star Ware book. Dad showed a Bat Man comix. Whe soo a leter from George Washington in 1773.”

Making Burritos In Conservation

It’s been a while since we talked about the renovation project, mostly because of this. But yesterday I was working on a short video to explain how to make a “burrito” and was reflecting on why and how these came to be.

Our renovation project came at us fast due to a major gift that allowed us to accelerate the renovation schedule. We had just over a year to plan and move the special collections stacks to make way for demolition. That is not a lot of time to move an entire library of rare, valuable and decidedly fragile materials.

The library approached us with a problem. Many of the older flat archival boxes were too large for their contents. Staff were concerned that moving these off site would cause damage when the objects shifted around inside the boxes. Could we come up with a low cost, low tech, fast, anyone-can-do-it solution?

We sat down as a lab to brainstorm ideas. There was no way to pay for and manufacture hundreds of corrugated-board spacers for all of the boxes we needed to move off site. After a lot of thought, we developed “the burrito.”

These are made of  buffered 10-point folder stock and tissue paper. They are non-adhesive, easy to make, fast and just about anyone could make them. We pre-cut the folder stock to the standard box sizes and trained the Rubenstein staff to make the burritos.

These are meant to be a temporary solution. However, I’ve seen some of these boxes come back and I have to say they are working pretty well. They aren’t as sturdy as a corrugated spacer, and some of them aren’t quite the right size for the space they were meant to fill, but for the most part they are doing what they were designed to do. I think it is a solution that works, and could be a good one for small institutions and organizations who may not have a lot of resources, or for anyone faced with a mountain of boxes that need spacers in a hurry.

What do you think? Have you come up with a solution like this that you want to share?

 

Our First Adopt-a-Book Repairs

By Erin Hammeke, Senior Conservator

gulliverDUL recently launched an Adopt-a-Book program and I just completed the conservation treatment of some our first adoptees. Jonathan Swift’s “Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World”, otherwise known as Gulliver’s Travels, was printed in four parts in London from 1726-1727 and our set was bound into two full-leather volumes.

Both volumes had loose or detached boards and had previous leather spine repairs. I secured the attachment of loose boards by using a treatment technique called a board tacket. This repair requires lifting small patches on the spine and inside of the board and reattaching the board with discrete stitches or tackets formed between the text and board with linen thread. I put the lifted patches back down with adhesive and applied small tissue repairs to the joints, end caps, and spines. The two volume set looks better now and is much safer to handle.

Thanks to our anonymous donor for adopting Gulliver! We look forward to seeing more Adopt-a-Book items make their way through the lab.

gulliver bt 2
Gulliver’s Travels before treatment.

Gulliver's Travels before treatment.
Gulliver’s Travels before treatment.

Gulliver's Travels after treatment.
Gulliver’s Travels after treatment.

Gulliver's Travels after treatment.
Gulliver’s Travels after treatment.

Duke University Libraries Preservation