When Is Big Too Big?

Today I received another big book in the Preservation Lab for repair that has split apart in the back, so that the case is detaching from the textblock.  Its treatment will be a recase, with textile hinges to reinforce the case-to-textblock attachment.  I see this kind of damage all too often in large books.  Publishers put everything they can into one large book instead of breaking the content down into two books of a more manageable size.  Thin, cheap, or slick paper, bulky size, too much weight, and too many pages all add to the structure of the book failing.

Hinge splitting at the back of the book.

Next is a post-bound book that one of our student workers, Hannah Isabell, is going to be working on.  She will dismantle it and put sections into custom portfolios for easier use and shelving.  As you can see, this book measures a whopping 8.25”!

Post-bound book too large to use safely or easily.

Our next example is Veterinary Medicine: A Textbook of the Diseases of Cattle, Horses, Sheep, Pigs, and Goats by Radostits, Gay, Hinchcliff, and Constable.

This book measures 3.5” thick and suffers from a typical split in the back of the book and wrinkled pages in both the front and back.

Veterinary Medicine: A Textbook of the Diseases of Cattle, Horses, Sheep, Pigs, and Goats by Radostits, Gay, Hinchcliff, and Constable.

Over 2100 pages of excellent veterinary information drew my eye and my hands to repair this book.  This book is so big that it must be sitting on my desk and not in my hands to look at, and would be much easier to use had it been made into two volumes.  The content could have been split up by species, such as cattle and horses in volume one, and sheep, pigs, and goats in volume two.

Veterinary Medicine: A Textbook of the Diseases of Cattle, Horses, Sheep, Pigs, and Goats by Radostits, Gay, Hinchcliff, and Constable.

While we understand that publishers are trying to save on costs by cramming all of the information into a single volume, it actually ends up costing us more, because we have to spend time and resources repairing these volumes after they have circulated just once, if they even make it that far.

 

Color Me Purple

Written by Hope Mitchell, Student Technician in the Conservation Lab

As a student technician, one of the things I enjoy the most about my job is the variety; every day has the potential to be completely different from the last and teach me something new and unexpected about conservation. Recently, I was given a book of paint chips titled Color and Color Names, by Gladys and Gustave Plochere, from our General Collection. Published in 1946, Color and Color Names contains 1,536 different color samples. My mission seemed simple: flip through the book and glue down any loose paint chips. What began as a simple task soon turned into nearly a week of poking and prodding over 1,500 paint chips with a microspatula.

Everything was going according to plan until I reached the purple section, where I noticed that the color had begun flaking off the chips. Initially, I tried swiping some PVA over the chip; while that held the flaking paint in place and didn’t compromise the color, it gave the chip a glossy look that didn’t match with the other matte chips.  Realizing that I was in over my head, I asked our conservator, Melissa, what I should do. She suggested that I test a small corner of the paint chip with the consolidant Klucel-G. Ideally, this would help to seal the paint, but there was also a chance that the Klucel-G would shift the color. Sure enough, it did, so we moved on to plan B…

After testing with Klucel-G (lower right corner) and methylcellulose (upper left corner).

Plan B consisted of using water-based methylcellulose instead of solvent-based Klucel-G. Once again, I brushed a small amount of methylcellulose on the corner of the paint chip to determine whether or not it would shift the color. We decided that it would be best to test the methylcellulose on a different corner of the same chip that we had used to test the Klucel-G, our logic being that it was probably best not to risk distorting another chip.  Also, testing on the same color gave us a truer comparison between the effects of the Klucel-G and methylcellulose.   In the end, the methylcellulose was a success! It stabilized the flaking paint without compromising the color, and without making the matte paint chip glossy.

During and After: wet methylcellulose just applied to the paint chip (left); the paint chip after the methylcellulose had dried (right).

 

1091 Project: Let’s Celebrate!

This month, the 1091 Project takes a quick peek at one aspect of departmental culture in the conservation labs of Iowa State University Library and Duke University Libraries.  To celebrate the end of each Fall semester, ISU Preservation Department holds a “staff development day.”  The staff vote on a type of project or handskill to work on during the day-long workshop, we gather our resources, and then have at it.  This year, we decided to take our theme from the discussion/debate arising from a recent blog post, and settled on upcycling discarded paper-based materials such as books, dust-jackets, magazines, and maps.  Preservation Assistant Mindy McCoy created this Pinterest board full of project ideas to inspire and instruct us.

A bookcart overflowing with craft supplies and materials to be “upcycled.”

Lori, from Digital Initiatives, meticulously cut strips from pages of children’s books which she will later fold, chain together, and weave into a basket.

One popular project several of us tried was building a gift topper bow out of strips of paper secured with double-sided tape. Pictured here are bows made from dust-jackets from architecture coffee table books, a map, and pages from a Russian dictionary.

Conservation Technician Mindy Moe turned a gift topper bow into an ornament with a button, ribbon, hot glue, and a little ingenuity.

Our conservation volunteer Martha went big! She rolled maps into a sunburst around a decorative mirror.

Jim, from Preservation Services, turned a book about fish into a 3D sculpture.

Jim also created this tribute to his friend’s dog Floyd, who has since moved on to that great dog kennel in the sky, but not before chewing up this case binding.

Now let’s see how they’re observing the end of the semester and the approach of the winter holidays over at Preservation Underground!

 

Repurposed Books: Yea or Nay?

On a recent trip to Kansas City, MO, I dined at a trendy, downtown gastropub where the server brought the check to the table not in one of those ubiquitous pleather folders or on a tray, but rather, tucked between the pages of a cloth publisher’s binding ca. 1910.  I was simultaneously charmed and aghast.  The experience recalled the mix of emotions I feel every time I see books repurposed, whether as objets d’art or as alternatively functional items.

A cloth publisher’s binding from the turn of the 20th century holds the check at Gram & Dun, Kansas City, MO.

As a book conservator, my mind is ever bent toward protecting the book not only as a container for intellectual content, but as a physical artifact which holds evidence of material culture.  I feel strangely torn to see books cleverly repurposed as purses, coasters, and furniture, valued neither for their textual content, nor for their binding structure, but merely as raw material.

Photo credit: Design Every Day Blog. Click image to visit original post.

My inner dilemma arises from the fact that such projects destroy the primary function of a book, and as a conservator, my role is always to preserve and protect that function.  I feel torn because I often genuinely appreciate the result of such projects, and somehow, a project constructed of books still speaks to the constructor’s love of books, albeit for aesthetic rather than informational purposes.  And let’s face it — if a book is no longer valued as a work of textual transmission, if its binding is not unique or rare, then why not give it a second life as some other type of artifact?

Photo Credit: Rookie Magazine. Click image to visit original post.

My devotion to the history of the nineteenth century publisher’s binding (a category of book I consider “medium rare” — not quite Special Collections material yet, but heading in that direction with the passage of time) motivates my strongest caveat in the repurposing of books.  Many of these significant bindings have been lost over time, particularly as a result of commercial binding practices at academic libraries.  While not every publisher’s binding from ca. 1830 to ca. 1920 may be significant as an historical exemplar, the popularity of this type of binding for repurposing chafes my conservation ethos.  And yet… I am still tempted to make myself one of those nifty book purses — with a modern, mass-printed discard, of course!

The BookBook Shelf from design firm Not Tom. Click to view article at Design Buzz.

Preservation professionals, what’s your take on the repurposing of “old” books for new DIY projects?  Librarians? Artists/makers?

Click image to visit the website of artist Brian Dettmer, who transforms books into narrative sculptures.

 

Care of Historic Scrapbooks Workshop at the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation

Recently, I attended the Care of Historic Scrapbooks workshop taught by Jennifer Hain Teper at the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies in Mt. Carroll, IL.

Jennifer Hain Teper lectures on the preservation challenges particular to scrapbooks as composite objects made up of many different types of materials.

The Head of Conservation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (which, full disclosure, is where I performed the third-year conservation internship required by my conservation study program), Jennifer generously shared her experiences working with UIUC’s extensive scrapbook collection.  The workshop at the Campbell Center lasted two full days, with lectures and discussion in the mornings, and hands-on training in the afternoons.

Hence the name: an example of a true “scrapbook,” made up of scraps of fabric and paper clippings adhered to the pages of a wallpaper sample book.

In addition to an overview of the common materials and preservation challenges of scrapbooks as artifacts, Jennifer presented us with a case study of a scrapbook assessment and treatment project performed at UIUC.  Jennifer shared her projected and actual budgets both for the condition survey and the treatment project, as well as a thoughtful analysis of the inevitable discrepancies.  Her honest assessment of the project pointed out potential pitfalls and areas of concern when designing a scrapbook conservation project.  Having the opportunity to learn from her experience puts me in a far better position to begin planning our own scrapbook project at ISU Library, since I now have very concrete data on which to base my own estimates.

An example of a scrapbook rehousing designed by the UIUC Libraries Conservation Lab.

Our lively, engaged group of workshop participants included three librarians from Western Kentucky University Library Special Collections, a curator from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, a student from the Museum Studies Program at Western Illinois University, an archivist from UIPUI University Library, and an archivist from the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission.

Sue Lynn McDaniel, Special Collections Librarian at Western Kentucky University, practices consolidating red rotted leather with Cellugel.

Jennifer demonstrates the intricacies of properly wrapping a book for storage or transport.

Among our group, I was the only conservator taking the class.  However, while I am already well-versed in the actual treatment techniques we practiced (encapsulating, making wrappers, paper mending, hinging, backing removal), the class still proved to be a valuable experience for me.  Learning some tried-and-true approaches from someone who has been thinking about the complexities of scrapbooks for much longer than I have saves me from having to reinvent the wheel when I approach our own scrapbook collection.  It was also just a joy to have two uninterrupted days to think about scrapbook preservation problems non-stop, and to bounce ideas off of others struggling with similar issues.

Jennifer’s solution to isolating an attachment which still needs to be handled: a Melinex encapsulation with a window cut into it, so the card can still be opened and read.

I’m very happy to announce that we have just started our own scrapbook project at ISU Library.  The overall goals of the project are to:

• Identify and inventory scrapbooks in the Manuscript and Archives collections
• Assess the condition of the scrapbooks
• Prioritize scrapbooks for digitization, rehousing, stabilization, and full treatment
• Treat scrapbooks according to the determined priorities

Images of some of the scrapbook challenges which await us in ISU Library Special Collections and Archives.

Our conservation volunteer, Martha, will be working with me on this project, so look for updates from either one of us in the months ahead.  In the meantime, if your own scrapbook collection needs some TLC, I can recommend Jennifer Hain Teper’s Care of Historic Scrapbooks workshop at the Campbell Center without reservation.  Whether you work within the conservation field or practice an allied profession, you will end the course better equipped to tackle the challenges of these complex artifacts.