If you haven’t checked our Flickr page lately, I invite you to do so. We’ve added several images to our TRLN Bookbinders and the What’s In The Lab albums.
Oscar Arias has been at Duke University Libraries for eleven years. Six months ago he joined the staff of the Digital Production Center as a Digitization Specialist. The DPC digitizes rare and fragile items to make them available in digital format.
Oscar is usually involved in any of the three main stages of the digitizing process: assessing the collection to develop a digitizing work flow and digitization guide, the actual scanning or digitizing of materials (using a variety of scanners or video digitizing equipment), and the quality control phase.
When asked to describe an interesting project he has worked on, Oscar replied:
One of the most interesting collections I’ve worked with is the collection of papers of Marshall T. Meyer. Dr. Meyer was an American activist Rabbi who worked in Argentina in the 1970’s, during the period of military dictatorship and repression. This period gave way to what came to be known as “La Guerra Sucia,” or the Dirty War, as it came to be known, in which thousands of Argentine citizens were “Desaparecidos,” or disappeared and presumed dead, or incarcerated without trial for suspected opposition to the government.
Rabbi Meyer was an activist and advocate for human rights during this dark period of Argentine history, and he personally advocated for the release of political prisoners. As part of the collection that we had to digitize, there were many original hand-written letters from prisoners and other original documents filled with gut wrenching testimonies of arrests, incarcerations and torture, and the desperate plight of family members of those disappeared or incarcerated.
I remember reading in school in some distant history book about the military dictatorship in Argentina in the late 1970’s. But being able to browse and read some of these hand-written, first-hand accounts in Spanish (my native language) was a profoundly different experience. It helped to remember that behind the news headlines of some distant conflict or behind the title of a chapter in a history book, there are real human beings with names and faces and real stories of tragedy during times of war and oppression. I look forward to the time of the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “And they will have to beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 4:2)
Note on image: Correspondence to Rabbi Meyers from Deborah Esther Benchoam, a political prisoner who was held in cell 55 of the Villa Devoto women’s prison during the repression. From the RBMSCL Marshall T. Meyer Collection.
Heritage Preservation, the sponsors of May Day 2010, has pulled our name from a hat and awarded us a prize for our May Day blog post. Four winners from all of the participants were randomly drawn by members of the DC 16 firehouse, Heritage Preservation’s local firemen. Very fitting, no?
A list of all the participants finds us in good company. The other winners were Lycoming College’s Snowden Library, the Toy and Minature Museum of Kansas City, and the Balboa Art and Conservation Center.
Our prize is six Rescubes, perfect for those days when you come into work after a long summer holiday weekend only to discover that a water fountain pipe burst sometime at the beginning of that three day weekend, and there are three floors of wet carpeting and a small mold issue to deal with. Not that we would know from personal experience. [It’s all cleaned up now and dehumidifiers and carpet fans are on scene.] Happy Tuesday!
We got mentioned in Duke Today’s story about the Tin Foil Men popping up on campus. Yes, we are slightly obsessed about these. We love whimsy, and chocolate. But that’s a completely different post.
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We are participating in an ALCTS e-forum today called “Using Web 2.0 Tools to Enhance Technical Services Work.” The question is “how can you solve problems within technical services using Web 2.0 tools?”. Anyone have good ideas to share? I’m listing some of the more interesting ones on our Face Book page.
You can sign up for future ALCTS e-forums at this link, you do not need to be an ALCTS member to participate. The forums discussion is via email.
So far, some of the ideas including using social media for outreach and education (my first post to the discussion), using a wiki for your instruction manual, and using blogs for current events, and using instant messaging for large group projects.
We got a visit from our favorite local artist today. Hoorah! If you are in Perkins, swing by and say hello. Just dont’ ask him where to find a book.
Alex Marsh is a Digitization Specialist in the Digital Production Center. He has been with us for five months and works primarily with rare and fragile materials from a variety of collections. He has recently worked with the Ethiopic Manuscripts collection, Duke University Herbarium materials, and American broadsides from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections. Many of these will be made available through our digital collections portal.
Alex works with several different cameras to digitize the collections. Large materials or those that are particularly fragile go under the Phase One Camera. The Zeutschel 14000 A2 scanner is best for those items that are smaller and flat, like manuscript collections or typescripts. We also have a new SAMMA Solo migration system for digitizing our rare and aging videotape.
When asked to describe one of his favorite projects he said:
“The most interesting collection I have worked with so far are the Ethiopic manuscripts. They are very old and fragile and I cannot read the text, so I feel like an archeologist when I am handling them. Photographing the pages is tricky because they often do not lay flat, which causes focus issues, and, because I cannot read the text, it is possible to inadvertently miss a page or photograph the same page twice if I am not careful. It is exciting to work with such rare material and I look forward to seeing the project in digital format after completion.”
Images from Ethiopic Manuscript #35.
Tip 8: Access and Preservation Go Together
A great amount of ink has been spilled when it comes to the “dilemma” of “preservation vs. access.” I, however, think access and preservation depend on each other for success. If items are not used, how do you know what condition they are in? Without access, digital files can become corrupt or disappear without notice. Friends, it’s two sides of the coin. Some tips to improve access and thus promote preservation:
Provide who/what/when/where for photos and documents.
You can write on the back of photos or documents lightly with a pencil, or take a digital image and add the information to the digital file. Be sure to put these in a safe location, or transfer the files regularly.
Inspect items regularly
Take things out occasionally and inspect them for mold and insect activity. Be sure they are clean and have no damage.
Organize and identify items
Label enclosures adequately so you know what is inside. This will also reduce rumaging through boxes to find what you need.
Give displayed items a rest
Rotate displays to give items a break from being out, and to show off other items. This gives you a chance to inspect items regularly, too.
Document your documents
Document items for insurance purposes should disaster strike (describe valuables and take pictures of them, perhaps part of a home inventory).
Tip 9: Be An Informed Consumer
There is a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to preservation information and conservation instructions. You need to be an informed consumer when you are searching the web or watching television. There are some excellent online resources out there that offer solid advice including these:
Library of Congress Preservation Directorate
Northeast Document Conservation Center
Conservation Online
National Archives and Records Administration
Lyrasis
American Institute for Conservation
ALA Preservation and Reformatting Section
National Archives of Australia
British Library’s Collection Care Department
Tip 10: Leave the Repairs to the Professionals
Sure, you can tape book pages together or attempt DIY book repair, but if your collection is valuable to you sentimentally or monetarily, it is best to consult a professional conservator. A good conservator will give you a range of options from an enclosure to full treatment and should be able to discuss with you, in plain English, what your choices are and how they will affect your material. Do not be afraid to ask questions. We conservators love to talk business. We also love to talk food…but that is a completely different blog post.
Thanks For Reading
We hope you have enjoyed our Preservation Week blogging. If you have learned something new or taken any advice, we would love to hear from you on what you did to protect your personal collections.
Tip 6: Be Prepared For Disasters
We wrote about disaster preparedness for our May Day post. You should have a plan for yourself and your family in case of an emergency. And you should have one for your collectibles in case they are also affected. We won’t list all the resources from our May Day post, but here are some that address personal collections.
Library of Congress “Preserving Treasures After the Disaster”
Council of State Archivists “Rescuing Family Records: A Disaster Planning Guide”
Tip 7: Preserving Non-paper Collections
So far our posts have dealt mostly with paper-based materials. We of course collect a lot of other things, too. All collections benefit from a controlled environment and good handling practices. While we do not have room here to address all non-print media, here are some tips for the common items in home collections. A good place to start looking for information on non-print materials is the AIC Specialty Groups.
Textiles
Many of the dyes in textiles are sensitive to alkaline (basic) conditions. If you are choosing enclosures for your wedding or christening gowns, baby clothes and other textiles, choose enclosures and wrapping materials that are pH neutral. These can easily be obtained by perveyors of quality conservation supplies such as Gaylord Brothers, University Products, or Talas. Listing does not imply endorsement of any product or vendor.
Textiles are also very sensitive to environmental conditions. Food stains can attract hungry insects and high humidity can accelerate decay and attract mold. If you display textiles, but especially sure they are not exposed to light and pollutants (cooking vapors, dust, etc.). Cleaning should be undertaken very carefully and follow established conservation guidelines (read: consult a professional). See the AIC Textiles Specialty Group page for some good information.
Photographs and Home Movies
Photos and film are very sensitive to the environment around them. Dust, light, pollutants, and handling can cause irreparable damage. As with textiles, some photographic processes can be alkaline sensitive. While you will find debate on this, if you have a choice we recommend pH neutral enclosures. If all you can find are alkaline enclosures, they are better than no enclosures at all. Good quality film cans come in acceptable plastics which do not rust. We also recommend creating high quality facsimiles if you have important photographs you want to display, and you can digitize your home movies so you don’t have to play the originals. Obviously do not throw away the originals once you reformat them.
Digital objects
We are creating digital materials at a fast clip these days. Photographs, documents, electronic scrapbook pages. These are all very fun and convenient for sharing and displaying, they are also very vulnerable. Digital documents are vulnerable to format and hardware obsolescence (video tape and CD’s are soon to be obsolete), chemical instability, and unpredictable and often complete failure. For this reason we often recommend creating backups often and in the most current formats. For instance, if you have a lot of home movies on VHS videotape, it is time to transfer them to DVD or MPEG format.
Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe. That is our mantra. Make digital copies, send them to family members, even print out documents now and then and put them in a safe place. Be sure to transfer your electronic documents each time you update platforms or software versions.
Resources
American Institute for Conservation “Caring For Your Treasures”