Conservation

Celebrating Founders Day by Conserving Early Duke History

Written by Meg Brown, Special Collections Conservator and Exhibits Coordinator

Founders Day at Duke University has been celebrated since 1901 and marks a day to honor our benefactors and our University’s history. Duke University was originally formed when the Union Institute Society’s 1839 constitution established a body with responsibility for the oversight of the affairs of Union Institute Academy of Randolph County, North Carolina. The Board of Trustees was legally recognized in 1841 by an act of the North Carolina General Assembly incorporating Union Institute Academy as a private school for boys. A digital version of this constitution can be seen online.

Duke documents after treatment

In honor of Founders Day, Conservation Services would like to share a few early founder’s documents that have received treatment recently. These documents were sent to conservation after many years of sharing them with the Duke community–just in time to retain their original character as artifacts even though some of them are still very fragile.

These bound manuscript volumes include account records, meeting minutes, and signatures of many of Duke’s founding fathers including the Constitution of Union Institute Academy (bound with the Union Institute Academy Minutes and Accounts, 1839-1853), and the first three volumes of the minutes of Trinity College (June 19, 1860-June 12, 1879; June 9, 1880-June 10, 1891 and September 19, 1891-February 19, 1900.)

The pictures here show some “before treatment” images, with broken sewing, missing spines and torn up-bindings; the “after treatment” images show how they can now be safely used by our community for years to come. More images from this project can be found in our photo essay on Flickr.

 

Before Treatment (Left) and After Treatment (Right)

Union Institute 1839-before

Union Institute 1839-after

Trinity minutes 1880-1891 Before

Trinity minutes 1880-1891 After

Trinity minutes 1860-1879 Before

Trinity minutes 1860-1879 After

Trinity-BOD-minutes-1891-1900 Before

Trinity-BOD-minutes-1891-1900 After
Boxing Day, Collaboration

Doris Duke Memorabilia: How Do I Box That?

Written by Jennifer Blomberg, Senior Conservation Technician

Sometimes you just never know what will come through the lab for boxing. These items from the Doris Duke Archives were recently sent to us for custom enclosures. Boxing a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, a football, and weathervane can present obvious challenges due to their unusual shapes and dimensions.  To read more about the provenance of these materials, please see the Rubenstein Library’s blog post.

Goals for Housing

The main goals for creating these housings were to protect the fragile materials while providing easy access for researchers. They had to fit the unusual shape and dimensions of the materials, keep them from shifting inside the box, and allow them to be shelved easily with other archival materials. Designing and fabricating these boxes offered a real challenge.

Creating the Enclosures

I made “telescoping” boxes for the baseball bat and weathervane. This type of box consists of a bottom tray that fits the object, and a separate lid that fits over the bottom tray. The football got a standard drop-spine or “clamshell” box. Each tray was lined with Volara foam to provide cushioning for the object.

Overall, I am content with the final enclosures and believe that they achieve the goals that we sought out to accomplish. These will provide supportive and protective enclosures, while also making them available and accessible to researchers.

Louisville Slugger baseball bat.
Football inscribed to Doris Duke.
Duke weathervane.

 

 

Digital Production Center, Exhibits, Preservation

Last Chance To See “What’s Missing From Your Video History”

This week will be your last opportunity to see our exhibit “What’s Missing From Your Video History” sponsored by the Preservation Department and the Digital Scholarship and Production Services.

Audio-visual materials’ rapid deterioration (relative to print media), its wide adoption for commercial and personal use, and the range of formats and playback equipment that rose and fell around analog videotape, have profound implications for preserving those pieces of our 20th century history that were captured on videotape.

The exhibit is on Perkins Lower Level 1, outside the Digital Production Center, near room 023. Open during library hours.

 

1091 Project, Conservation, Rubenstein Renovation

1091 Project: Today In The Lab

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We have been so busy with renovation projects that we forgot that today was a scheduled 1091 post. Instead of a long, thoughtful expose on a current conservation topic, Melissa and I will share some images of what is happening in our labs today. Think of it as a glimpse behind the scenes.

Parks Library and Preservation Underground will be back next month with another riveting 1091 post. Thanks as always for reading, and be sure to click over to Parks Library Preservation to see what is happening in their lab today.

Clockwise from upper left: large phase boxes drying under bricks, ledger bindings being rehoused, the lab (everyone’s at lunch!), making four-flap boxes, Lilly Current Lit books getting CoLibri covers.

Bonus pic: Look what showed up in my mailbox! A wonderful, home-made pop-up note to thank me for some consultation I did for someone whose cat damaged some of their papers.

Can I use the word “squeeeee!” in a professional post?

 

Collaboration, Quick Pic

Quick Pic: This Week In Conservation (we’re on Instagram!)

This week Duke Libraries joined Instagram! We will be posting along with our colleagues from across departments to show you the inner (and outer) workings of the library.

Our pics will be linked to the Library’s Flickr page and to the DUL Twitter account as well.

If you are an Instagram user, search for Duke University Libraries and follow us. If for some reason you cannot find it, search for #conservation, #rubensteinlibrary, or #perkinslibrary.

Conservation, Rubenstein Renovation

Ledger Finds: Mechanical Bindings

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Written by Erin Hammeke, Special Collections Conservator

Some of my favorite bindings in the ledger collection are the mechanical bindings. These bindings are feats of engineering, with metal components and moving parts! They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and styles.

This item from the Erwin Mills collection is notable for its size and mechanics. The text is laced through the side and then the yellow straps serve to hold the covers on. A tensioning system, built into the covers, allows the distance between the boards to expand or contract as additional text paper is added or removed. So neat!

This ledger from the Cannon Mill collection has a metal spine piece, as well as corduroy sides – an endearing and favorite covering in 19-20th century ledgers. Many of the mechanical and account book bindings were trademarked and have manufacturing information pasted to the front pastedown, as shown in this item.

 

Conservation, Rubenstein Renovation

Ledger Finds: Long Stitch Bindings

Written By Erin Hammeke, Special Collections Conservator

This will be one of a series of blog posts on some of the neat bindings we’ve discovered in the bound manuscripts. Our Conservation team has been going through the collection of over 6,000 ledgers, item by item, in an effort to prepare them for move to the Library Service Center as a part of the Enabling Project. As we wrap them up, we felt it would be nice to share some of the gems that we come across along the way.

The bound manuscripts derive from a number of different collections. Many of them have personal content, such as scrapbooks, daybooks and diaries. Most of them appear to be business records, account books, and ledgers. Even though this collection as a whole is in poor condition, it has been interesting to see how many bindings have been carefully preserved and repaired by their previous owners during their working life. A number of bindings with deteriorated leather covers have been covered in canvas wrappers, oftentimes with hand-stitching at the turn-ins.

Shown here are two bindings from a batch of about 30 items from the William Clark Grasty Papers(1788-1906). This collection of records documents “three generations of general merchants of Pittsylvania Co., Va. Business interests included a general store, a tavern, a blacksmith shop, a simplified type of banking, and the keeping of a post office.”

These early 19th century bindings are notable because of their simple and beautiful handmade canvas covers. The text pages were sewn in by hand through the covers with a long-stitch sewing style. These items were likely considered essential to this business’s daily workings 200 years ago. Sadly, it is difficult to imagine a business keeping their records in a binding such as this today.

 

1091 Project, Conservation, Training

1091 Project: Master Studies Workshop: Conservation of Transparent Papers

This month on 1091 we take you to Iowa State University Libraries to the home of Parks Library Preservation! In July both Melissa and I had the opportunity to take a master class in conserving transparent paper with Hildegard Homburger, a conservator in private practice in Berlin, Germany.

Presented by the Friends of the American Institute for Conservation and hosted by Iowa State University Libraries Preservation Department, this class brought together a mix of mid-career and advanced paper and book conservators from museums, libraries and private practice. The sessions combined lecture and hands-on instruction and allowed plenty of time for practice and asking questions.

Our instructor, Hildegard
Hildegard Homburger, instructor, demonstrating tear repairs.

Hildegard is an expert at conserving these materials and is a generous instructor. On day one we covered the history and manufacture of transparent papers including its unique chemistry. In the practical session we learned to mend tears and losses with aqueous adhesives and how to humidify, dry and flatten these papers to minimize distortion. I think we are all converts to the hard-soft sandwich! On day two we learned mending with synthetic adhesives, how to dye mending papers and how to line fragile transparent papers with Japanese tissue.

During the sessions Hildegard shared not only tips and techniques, but discussed previous projects and how she would do them differently now compared to several years ago. That very much impressed me. We all continue to learn throughout our careers, and it’s easy to forget that what we know now is a result of years of practice and evolving knowledge. Sharing her experiences, and walking us step-by-step through her thought process helped broaden our understanding of how to approach these papers in particular as well as our work in the larger sense.

I tend to think of transparent papers as being mainly architectural tracings, but artists have used transparent papers for printmaking and drawing, and I have seen similar papers in medical flap books and 19th century copy books. Because of its manufacturing process, transparent paper can be tricky to work with. It is very thin, often brittle, very reactive to moisture, and of course transparent so you don’t want to use repair techniques that would make it opaque. I now feel much more comfortable and capable of working with the transparent papers in our collections.

Workshop1-Day2-19
Beth (left) and Kim Nichols practicing heat set repairs with a variety of synthetic adhesives.

For more images from the workshop check out the Iowa group’s Flickr page.  The Smithsonian also hosted two sessions of this workshop and Nora Lockshin has posted about their sessions. Tahe Zalal attended the second session at Iowa State and posted photos.

Don’t forget to head over to Parks Library Preservation to read about Melissa’s experience. Thanks to Hildegard, AIC, Iowa State University and all the participants for making this a wonderful experience.

 

Boxing Day, Quick Pic, What's In The Lab

Quick Pic: Before There Was Power Point

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audio visual materialsNow ubiquitous, presentations that combined audio, images and text were once revolutionary and cutting edge.

Before we could do it all on a computer, multi-media presentations were put together with a mixture of photographic slides, a script, and audio tapes that contained not only the taped narration but cues to advance the slide tray. The best systems did this automatically with the inclusion of magnetic blips that “talked” to the slide projector to make it advance by itself…it was magic!

We recently got this kit into the lab for boxing. As someone who once created presentations like this, I can tell you Power Point is so much easier to use (some would say too easy…blinking cartoons flying in from stage left, anyone?).

Boxing Day, Conservation, Rubenstein Renovation

Enabling Project: Swirl Books

We are finding many challenges in preparing our materials for the upcoming move. Erin Hammeke, Special Collections Conservator, shares the following find from her work as the project coordinator for the ledger project.

Stock ledger on the shelf.

As part of the enabling project we are working in our ledger collection to prepare these materials for the move. The Mooresville Mill manufactured cotton, wool, and synthetic fabrics in Mooresville, North Carolina, from the late 19th century to the mid-20th. When the company’s stocks were sold back, they were cancelled and glued onto the stubs bound into a ledger book. The stock certificates were also glued in, leaving the book with a fore edge 2-3 times the thickness of the spine. We started calling these ‘swirl books’ because of their exceptional shape. These items really seem more akin to sculpture than book bindings.

We consulted with the head of collection development in the Rubenstein Library and we agreed that treatment would be too time-consuming of an option before the move. We decided to house the swirl books as they were. Needless to say, these items posed unique shelving and housing challenges to us.

Our technician, Tedd Anderson, bravely met the challenge. For each ledger, Tedd created a wedge to accommodate the shape of the original so that they would fit  inside a custom phase box. They can now be shelved safely and are protected from further damage. These will go in our conservation treatment request database for future treatment.

phase box insert
A wedge compensates for the shape of the ledger.
finished boxes
Finished boxes on the shelf.

Duke University Libraries Preservation