Announcements, Conservation

Great Expectations and Saying Farewell (For Now)

1 Comment

jenniferJennifer Blomberg, senior conservation technician, is leaving Duke today to become the Head of the Collections Management Branch in the Division of Archives and Records in the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

Jennifer started in conservation in February 2011. While working at Duke she completed her Masters of Library and Information Science with a specialization in Archives, Preservation and Records Management from the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences.

Her many accomplishments include organizing and streamlining our supply inventories and ordering processes, serving as our registrar for special collections materials coming to and leaving the lab (no small feat!), and most recently helping update the library’s disaster plan.

She has cleaned 1,622 items of mold, spent 260 hours installing exhibits, made 149 exhibit cradles for weird things like crocodile skulls and herbarium specimens, and repaired or made enclosures for over 9,000 items from special collections.

Jennifer is our resident specialist in making enclosures for NBO’s, non-booklike objects from the collections. Some of the items she has boxed include a gravestone, death mask, giant papier-mâché puppet, weathervane and World War II Japanese ceremonial swords.

We are sad to see her go, yet excited to see Jennifer start her professional career as a preservation librarian. Congratulations Jennifer, we will miss you and wish you all the best in your new job.

Boxing Day, Rubenstein Renovation

Finishing A Three-Year Long Project: Priceless!

1 Comment

papyri afterLong time readers will remember that almost three years ago we embarked on a project to rehouse our papyri collection. It began with an idea and a prototype in 2010. When the renovation project was announced, we had to begin in earnest. That was in February 2012. This week we labeled the boxes and I’m calling the project done!* You can see more images from this project on Flickr.

This project was particularly interesting for the lab, it was the first real collaborative, large-scale boxing project that we attempted. Everyone in the lab helped with different stages of boxing.

  • Grace imaged the papyri for the labels
  • Tedd made the labels
  • Jennifer managed the supplies
  • Jennifer cut down pieces of board and Volara foam before boxing day (or we had our students to do it)
  • Everyone in the lab assembled the packets on boxing day
  • Jennifer and Beth met with Rubenstein Technical Services and Research Services staff to discuss how we would label the boxes
  • Jennifer made labels for the new boxes, and she and I put on the new labels this week.

It really was a team effort, and I am so proud of the Conservation staff for getting it done on time and on budget. They look great, and by all accounts Rubenstein staff have used them with great success.

I gave a tip at this year’s AIC Book and Paper Group Tip Session on this project. The presentation, housing instructions and picture label instructions are all available online.

*We have some data clean up to do, but that will be done shortly. “Close enough for conservation,” as my chemistry teacher used to say.

Conservation

New Equipment In Lab!

We got a new toy camera for our microscope this month. The last one didn’t really work well, something to do with the adapter ring and our Nikon. This one, a Canon, is designed to work with our particular scope and came with the correct adapter and software. We can now easily make documentation images of friable media, mold spores…you name it. Here are some sample test shots I took ten minutes after setting it up.

test image 2_blog resized
From an antiphonal dated 1690. It appears that some sort of “white out” was used to obscure a wrong note. Without testing it is hard to tell what exactly the white substance is or when it may have been applied.
test image 3_blog resized
From the same antiphonal. Some sort of fiber embedded in the paper.

We still need to learn how to tweak the depth of field and optimize the exposure set points. But already this camera is far superior to our old set up. Having the ability to take close-up images is important in order to identify areas of damage and to document before- and after-treatment conditions. We look forward to using it as an integral part of our treatment protocol.

Conservation, What's In The Lab

What’s In The Lab: Revolutionary War Medicine

Written by Grace White, Special Collections Conservator

I recently had the pleasure of treating a group of the Philip Turner Papers from the History of Medicine collection held in the Rubenstein Library.  Philip Turner was a Surgeon General for the Continental Army during the American Revolution, and this particular bundle of papers contained military hospital returns for 1778.  The 30 papers record soldiers’ injuries and illnesses such as dysentery, fever, scurvy, rheumatism, inoculations for smallpox and occasional battle wounds.

21 before after

The papers had been crudely stitched together with thread, making it nearly impossible to lift and read any one page.  The bundle had also been folded and creased, and there was evidence of water damage with stains, mold and many tears and losses.

I removed and saved the thread and began my treatment of the individual papers.  I surface cleaned them all to remove dirt and loose mold spores, and then I washed them with water and solvents to kill any remaining mold and to reduce staining and acidity.  Finally I mended and flattened the papers and housed them in a folder.  They are much safer for researchers to use now, and their visual appearance is also much improved.  These kinds of projects are so rewarding.

before and after

As a side note, one interesting discovery I made was that several of the papers are watermarked with a crowned “GR” for George Rex, the king of Great Britain and Ireland.  Using imported British paper was probably not uncommon in the colonies, but the Georgian watermark is an irony for papers of the revolutionary army.

GR watermark

Conservation

Phreno Charts And Conservation

1 Comment

I wanted to show off a beautiful repair that Mary completed recently. I saw this on the “ready for quality control” shelf and just fell in love with her repair.

The title is “Improved Phreno-Chart” by Br. C. Townsend (1859). The book needed a reback. Mary toned a piece of cotton to match the color of the original cover, then she took some sandpaper to the cotton to rough it up to mimic the wear on the original cloth. She did a really lovely job making the new spine blend into the original cloth.

phrenology1

What makes the book even more fun is the content. The book is a meant to be a workbook for an individual to fill out. In this case, Charles Miller was tested on February 9, 1864.

phrenology2

The text is filled with scores. I’m not sure what they mean, but it is really interesting to see a working document like this in the general collections.

phrenology3

1091 Project

1091 Project: Conservation By The Numbers

1091 graphicThis month on the 1091 Project we are talking statistics. We collect conservation statistics based on the ARL Preservation Statistics.* These are divided into three levels: Level 1 conservation projects take less than 15 minutes to complete; Level 2 projects take 15 minutes to 2 hours; and Level 3 projects take more than 2 hours to finish.

*ARL Preservation Statistics are no longer collected, but there is a new effort to revise and collect preservation statistics through ALA-PARS. This new system may change what kind of data we collect in the future.

Fiscal Year 2012-2013 Statistics

Last year 20,547 library items came through Conservation. The numbers break down in this way:

2,010 books repaired
2,186 pamphlets bound
638 flat paper repairs
13,383 protective enclosures (includes 2,971 CoLibri book jackets)
2,287 items recovered from mold/water
114 exhibit mounts (70 hours of installation support)

61% of the work came from special collections
39% of the work came from the circulating collections

51.9% were Level 1 projects
48% were Level 2 projects
A small number were Level 3 projects

Total production was about the same as last year, but we did additional work for the renovation project that is not reflected in the above numbers.

Renovation Statistics

Regular readers know we did a lot of work last year to help move our special collections to swing space in preparation for the renovation of the 1928 stacks where the Rubenstein Library is located. Most of this work centered around making enclosures for fragile materials.

graph1

64% of the enclosures were envelopes, 10% were four-flap boxes, and the remaining were a variety of enclosures with some mold removal thrown in for good measure.

We also provided training for Rubenstein Library staff and students who did a lot of enveloping; we conducted several collection condition surveys to determine enclosure needs and estimate supply budgets; we hired and trained several conservation student assistants to help make enclosures and envelope fragile materials; and we helped with the security shifts during the actual move of the collections.

Recognizing Trends

The most interesting thing to me about collecting statistics is tracking trends over time. You can easily see how big projects, changes in staffing and shifting priorities can effect your department.

graph2

I use these statistics to plan short and long term goals, develop new initiatives, and to make sure we have the right staff and skill sets to meet changing demands.

Let’s see what data Parks Library Preservation collects and how they use their data to inform departmental priorities.

Conservation, Quick Pic

Quick Pic: What Is She Doing Under There?

2 Comments

Changing the board shear blades

Today was board-shear maintenance day! It takes two of us to change out the blades on the shear. That’s me under the shear, and Jennifer on the right.

The arm-blade is easily removed. The base-blade has bolts holding the screws on, so they need to be loosened from underneath. Once the blades are changed we replace the clamp and check to see that it cuts square. I also put some new lithium grease on the catch basin gears while I was down there.

It’s always great to put a sharp blade on the shear. It cuts “like butter” and makes a wonderful “swishing” sound.

Note to self: don’t wear black pants on blade-changing day; and closed-toe shoes are probably a better footwear choice.

1091 Project, Conservation

1091 Project: Track All The Things!

 

1091 graphic

This month on the 1091 Project we look at how we track materials that come to the lab. It’s important to know what is here both for project management as well as for staff who may be looking for an item.

We track items from both general collections and special collections. We use different methods depending on where the materials are coming from.

General Collections

We use our integrated library system, ALEPH, to track materials from the general (circulating) collections. When books come to the lab we scan the bar code and change the “item process status” (IPS) to “PV.” A preservation status shows up in both the staff view as well as the online catalog. We have other IPS code for materials we send for commercial binding (BD), commercial boxing (PB), reformatting (PR) and disaster recovery (PX).

aleph
When the item process status is changed to PV, the item record displays as either “preservation” or “being repaired.”

Special Collections

We have an ALEPH-IPS for special collections (PS) as well. Now that we have implemented AEON in the Rubenstein Library reading room, we have been using the AEON workflow function to indicate when items come to the lab.

We still use an Excel-based lab log to keep track of special collections items as they come and go from the lab. Our database has more information than what we is in AEON including who is working on the project and how many treatment hours the project took.

lab log
The lab log is an Excel spreadsheet with a unique identification number, call number, bar code and other information.

It’s a belt-and-suspenders workflow but there is no perfect software/system yet that tracks everything we need to track. There are some products for the museum world that come close, and a couple others that are more library-based in the works, but nothing has yet risen to the top in terms of cost/benefit. If you are interested in a discussion of these systems, see the write up on the Conservators Converse from this year’s session at the AIC annual meeting.

Vault Inventory Day

At least twice a year we hold a vault inventory day where we compare our lab log and AEON with what is in our vault. Today happens to be that day!

Photo 1(6)
Checking the lab log against the physical objects in the vault.

We are working through our spreadsheet making sure that what the lab log says is here is actually physically here. Inventories always bring up something, whether it is an item that was returned but not noted in the lab log, or a project that has stalled and needs to get back on the front burner. We take this time to resolve discrepancies so that we know the lab log is correct.

If you work in a lab, what system do you have in place to track materials? Parks Library has their own system, be sure to check out their 1091 post.

 

Duke University Libraries Preservation