Why Am I Surprised?

Friends who read the blog have been asking what I’ve been doing lately since I haven’t posted for awhile. The answer is that I’ve been over in Special Collections creating an inventory of the scrapbooks in the collection. My life has looked like this lately.

And this.

That’s not to say that the scrapbooks are boring. There is some pretty cool stuff in those boxes that you will be hearing about in the coming months, but I will admit that I’ve been missing my workbench lately.

No worries, though, because Melissa has my back (I think). She asked me to work on this the other day.

I was a bit surprised that she brought me a book to work on until I opened it and found tears,

tape,

and large pieces of folded paper.

Am I the only one surprised to discover she brought me a book of bound blueprints? It seems I am now the lab’s blueprint expert.

The book contained three beautiful drawings for the original library building. I’ve taken them out of the binding to repair and flatten them. Our friends over at Facilities, Planning and Management have kindly agreed to scan them for us on their blueprint scanner, and we’ll hopefully have them up on the Special Collections web page in about a month.

 

1091 Project: The Good, The Bad, The Past Repairs

This week’s 1091 Project considers previous repairs and when to remove them or let them be.  The examples I was able to find here in the ISU Library Conservation Lab were not all repairs per se; some were preservation rehousing decisions.

At some point in the long-distant past, this collection of manuscripts was hinged onto stubs, and bound into a single volume.  In some cases, as shown above in the image on the right, the manuscript sheet was hinged onto a stub and then additional paper was hinged onto the tail edge of smaller sheets to make them all the same dimensions before binding.

Many of the manuscripts’ primary supports are becoming embrittled, so I was reluctant to remove the stubs from the paper supports either mechanically or by introducing moisture.  Instead, the volume was disbound and the stubs were trimmed by hand along the edge of the primary supports.  Some of the manuscripts will be encapsulated, and all will be rehoused in folders in archival document boxes.

Click on image to enlarge.

The above images show a student newspaper from 1902 which had been lined with linen or muslin and bound as a book.  The information is completely legible, but not aesthetically pleasing, and not ideal for potential digitization.  However, the image below shows the deciding factor in the debate whether to disbind this volume and reverse the lining.

As you can see, there are many small tears and losses in the text which were somewhat clumsily positioned in place during the lining process.  While this treatment may be, quite frankly, ugly, the information has been retained intact.  The process of removing the lining could easily result in the loss of many of these tiny fragments, thus defeating the purpose of our preservation efforts.  In spite of this treatment’s shortcomings, the University Archivist and I decided to leave the treated item as-is.

And then there’s the book tape.  I hesitated to include these volumes with book tape on their fraying spines as “previous repairs,” since no self-respecting book conservator would ever use — or condone the use of — pressure-sensitive book tape on collection materials.  However, such items are a common problem in many libraries.  When faced with General Collection volumes that have been taped along the spine, if the tape does not extend too far onto the boards, we simply cut away and discard the original spine with its book tape covering and then perform a reback on the offended volume.  If the tape coverage is too extensive, then we send the item to the commercial bindery for a new binding.

When faced with the sad circumstance of a Special Collections volume so mistreated, we either box the item to isolate the book tape (and its attendant “adhesive creep”) from adjacent items on the shelf, or we commit ourselves to removing the tape and the adhesive residue it invariably leaves behind, a time-consuming process usually involving both mechanical and chemical means.

Finally, there are many preservation housings, such as the old-school pamphlet binders pictured above, which were once widely used, but which we now know have their own inherent vice: they tend to be made from acidic paperboard and non-colorfast cloth.  We routinely discard these and replace them with more conservationally sound materials.  (Three cheers for conservation science!)

Don’t forget to visit Preservation Underground to see how the Duke University Libraries Conservation Lab handles past repairs!

 

Where There’s Smoke… There’s Water

Recently, there was a small fire in one of the research labs on campus.  Fortunately, the sprinkler system deployed and Ames firefighters responded quickly and effectively, so no one was injured and the building was saved.  We have a saying in the preservation field: “Every disaster is a water disaster.”  O.k., so that’s not always literally true, as tornadoes and earthquakes wouldn’t necessarily involve water (though they might!)  However, in the case of fires, if there is anything left to save, then it will likely be sooty, dirty… and wet.

“Wringing out” a water-saturated notebook with a press-board in the sink.

Such was the case with a dozen or so lab notebooks that were brought to us late in the day of the fire.  All of the notebooks were wet, but some were completely saturated, dripping in rivulets, the covers mushy, the textblocks bloated.  Some of them were also very dirty, covered in grit and soot.  We quickly separated the notebooks into salvage categories and got to work.  The notebooks, as part of the active research of the lab, could not be spirited away to our Wei T’o Freeze Dryer for its usual two-month freeze-drying cycle, so we decided to blot, airdry, and interleave instead.

Interleaving pages with paper towels.

The merely wet notebooks were interleaved with paper towels, a time-consuming but effective low-tech solution.  One notebook was just damp, so we stood it on end in front of a gentle fan to air dry.  The gritty items were first briefly rinsed in clean water.  The most bloated of the lot were “wrung out” by pressing them under a board in the washing sink.  About half of the notebooks were so saturated that we had to disbind them by removing their adhesive covers and then prying out the staples along their gutter edge.  The freed pages were then careful separated, one by one, and laid out to dry between sheets of blotter under boards and weights.

Disbinding a completely saturated notebook.

The next morning, the interleaving process began all over again, as wet interleaving was removed and fresh, dry paper towels inserted.  Likewise, fresh blotter replaced the damp blotter in the stacks of disbound pages.  We continued to monitor the materials in this way for another day or two.  As each notebook or stack of pages approached the stage of being almost dry, but still very slightly damp, we put them in books presses to flatten out the pages as best we could.

A few of the pages had been written in felt-tip pen, which bled considerably, but the majority of the notebooks were written in ballpoint pen, which remained fairly stable.  In all, we salvaged over 2,000 notebooks pages of handwritten data.

When the materials were dry and flattened, we rebound them simply and cost-effectively by post-binding through the 3-ring binder holes of the pages and covers.  We used 20-point Bristol board to replace a few of the back cover boards which had been discarded.  The results are not “pretty,” but the important information contained in the notebooks was saved, and the materials are now stable.

Water-damaged lab notebook, after treatment.

 

Five Shades of Gray

Some library materials come to you and you’re just not sure what your treatment will be.  There might be a lot of staring, thinking, drawing, prototypes, and conversing with co-workers to get ideas as what to do.

THE GRAY NOTEBOOK by Alexander Vvedensky is one of those library items that I won’t forget because of its uniqueness.  It’s a nice little pamphlet with gray, zigzag stitching offset by a half-inch inside to the right from the spine with two unattached, folded papers that, when they are unfolded, are larger than the pamphlet.

Mylar pockets sewn in along the fold.

I first humidified and flattened the two papers to take the crease out.   I wanted to preserve these pages flat and house them separately from the pamphlet, so I encased them in two Mylar pockets welded onto a single, folded sheet of Mylar.  The pockets were both left open along the gutter edge so the pages could be removed later if needed.

Pamphlet stitched into the binder in five spots, following the same zig-zag stitch of the original sewing.

The thread used to stitch the pamphlet into the binder was first dyed gray.

The pamphlet was sewn into the binder off-set from the Mylar pocket folio.

Next I used acrylic paints to dye white book thread to gray, as I wanted something that would match the gray thread originally used on the pamphlet.  After the thread was dry, I decided to sew the Mylar pockets into the pamphlet binder first along the main back crease.  Then I sewed five zigzag stitches in through original holes in the pamphlet to attach it to the binder in an offset fashion in front of the Mylar encapsulations.  I had to make a new crease in the binder to accommodate the pamphlet and then trimmed the pamphlet binder and rounded the corners.    The finished product came out nicely, very useable, and I’m proud to say I did it.  And yes, Virginia, there are five shades of gray in the completed product.

 

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.