Hand in Hand: Analog and Digital Preservation

Sometimes people are surprised to find out that I have an interest in digital preservation.  I find their surprise surprising.  It’s as if they assume that, because I am a book and paper conservator, I must labor away in an ivory tower filled with moldering books while the modern trappings of technology hold no sway over me, if, indeed, I realize that “digital technology” exists at all.

Image from Lisa Gregory’s ASERL-sponsored webinar “Preservation Planning and PREMIS,” held on April 2, 2013, 11 am EST.

While it is true that my profession entails a love affair with history (i.e. “the past”), and the literal tools of my trade are mechanical devices and hand tools designed centuries ago, my passion for preserving the cultural record crosses the boundary of analog versus digital.  As time ticks relentlessly on, the culture of the present day slips ever backwards into history, and preserving born-digital works becomes just as important as preserving centuries-old manuscripts.  In truth, I see little difference in the mission.  In my day-today activities, I may deal more with the chemical deterioration processes of cellulose than I do with corrupted bitstreams, but I still consider it a significant part of my profession to stay informed about advances in all aspects of library and archives preservation.

I’m lucky to have a supervisor who shares my sentiments.  Our Head of Preservation includes me on the “Digital Team,” which is made up of our Head of Preservation, the Digital Initiatives staff, the Digital Repository Coordinator, the University Archivist and Assistant Archivist, and — when the position is filled later this spring — our Cataloging and Metadata Management Librarian.  This also means that I am invited to educational webinars like the one we all attended today, the ASERL-sponsored webinar “Preservation Planning and PREMIS,” presented by Lisa Gregory, the Digital Collections Manager at the State Library of North Carolina.  The webinar is the first in a series of four about digital preservation.  I enjoy thinking over the theories and practicalities of digital preservation while I’m at the bench, repairing and mending books and documents centuries older than I am.

 

Mobile Devices with Graphic Web Pages

Upon opening a website, there is an expectation to see a nice, neat, orderly layout with a banner across the top and a menu down the side. Whichever browser is opened, it will look and function the same. However, what happens when using a mobile device?

Mobile devices are a recent addition to the technology-based world. There are two different types of mobile devices: smart phones and tablets.  Each present two different ways to look at information. Although smart phone screens are inching back up to larger sizes, viewing a full website typically results in too small a view to appreciate the layout.  Tablets (including hybrid e-readers), however, are just miniature laptops, so viewing a full site looks decent.

More people are ditching desktops and laptops for tablets and smart phones. Tablets are a more affordable and portable option for many who only need to go online, check email, watch media and occasionally write documents.  Plus, more locations are offering free Wi-Fi.

While these device are more light-weight than laptops and desktops, and present instant-on and instant access to information, they offer an interesting and complicated development for website designers. There is waffling on how to present web pages with these devices in mind, with absolutely NO consistency across the internet. While using smart phones, some sites (www.iastate.edu) present a page or a pop-up window giving an option between a mobile or full site.

For tablets, it goes straight to full site. Others (www.lib.iastate.edu) simply send the user to the full site, whether using smart phones or tablets.

Other sites vary. The Des Moines Register utilizes a mobile site with two different layouts, in addition to the full site. The tablet edition gives the option of increasing data storage on your tablet to 50MB; the use of images is prevalent.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE. Clockwise from top left: tablet first screen; tablet second screen; tablet full site; tablet mobile screen.

On the smart phone layout, the images are unobtrusive, but these images are rotated out every few days.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE. Left to right: smart phone first screen; smart phone scrolled to bottom of screen; smart phone full site; smart phone landscape view.

The Ames Tribune defaults to the full site when using a tablet:

and mobile site (with no images) when detecting a smart phone:

The ISU Library Digital Collections site currently does not design with mobile devices in mind. This decision was made not only because images are not temporary and continue to be added, but because the images are managed and hosted through CONTENTdm^®, which does not utilize mobile layouts. To offer the mobile layouts for devices on the front end of the site, only to link into non-optional layout pages is neither seamless nor professional, and therefore the site will be left as-is for the foreseeable future. How would the user benefit from a text-only site, where the information, ultimately, is neither bite-sized nor appropriate without images?

 

Relocating Print Serials into the Periodical Room

Written by Suzette Schmidt, Preservation Services unit.

Iowa State University Library Periodicals Room

There are three reasons that serials are put into the Parks Library Periodical Room: 1) new serials titles have been requested by a bibliographer to be part of the Periodical Room Collection; 2) reanimated titles selected by the requesting bibliographer to go to this location (i.e. journals which had been closed, but which we are now receiving again); 3) journals being transferred to the Periodical Room from the General Collection due to space overflow issues (also at the request of a bibliographer).

Transfer form with bibliographic information.

The relocation process requires three steps. First of all, I take the paperwork or information given to me and then check the computer to determine if we have additional holdings of the serial on either microfilm, which is located in the Library Media Center, or in electronic journal format.  If we do, then the shelf tag label will indicate this.

Typing the call number and title into the computer program (left); printing directly to the label maker (right).

Secondly, I click on the P-touch icon on my computer where I format and type in the call number and title, which are then subsequently printed out by the label maker and added to the label.

Labeling the shelf (left); shelf label with an “e” to indicate that the Library also holds an electronic copy of the journal (right). Labels with an “m” indicate that the Library also holds a copy of the journal on microfilm.

Lastly, these labels along with their corresponding journals are then placed onto the appropriate call number shelf in the Periodical Room.  In order to do this, there may be some physical shifting of the serials already located in the Periodical Room to make room for the incoming ones.

 

1091 Project: Portrait of the Student Technician

This month’s 1091 Project highlights the role of student workers in the Conservation Lab.  Quite honestly, many university conservation departments wouldn’t be nearly as productive without these unsung workhorses of conservation. Often the most tedious tasks fall to the students: they make enclosures, tip-in loose pages, surface clean, and vacuum moldy items.  Yet they perform these tasks efficiently and cheerfully, and miraculously, they keep showing up for work.

When I interned at the Conservation Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, many of the students working in the lab were also studying in the GSLIS program.  We don’t have a library school here at ISU, so our students come from other departments. Of our current four student employees, one is a graduate student pursuing her MA in History (although she started working for us as an undergraduate Anthropology major), one is an Anthropology major, one is a Design major, and one is a Elementary Education major.

Hannah makes spine title labels for tux boxes.

Our students tackle a variety of projects according to their handskills and experience.  Hannah just started with us this semester, and she has learned to surface clean, insert tip-ins, sew on pamphlet binders, and construct tux boxes and other four-flap wrappers.  We have a shelf full of items needing other types of boxes which will be next on her plate.

Devin has been with us for about a year, but already had excellent handskills from her experience in the College of Design.  She performs many mid-level treatments such as custom portfolio construction, double-fan adhesive bindings, and shield bindings.  Devin divides her work schedule between Conservation and the Preservation Services unit of the Preservation Department.

Ashley clamps down adhesive bindings in a book press.

Ashley and Hope have both worked in the lab for two and a half years.  Their handskills have developed beautifully during this time, and both are now capable of executing more advanced book repairs such as rebacks, new cases, re-cases, and “full repairs,” which they tackle when the more general student treatment workflow slows down at various points throughout the year.

Hope repairs a volume of color samples. And yes, she knows that our volunteer Martha is giving her mutant bunny ears. She’s good-natured like that.

When we hire new students, we look for hobbies or work experience that show evidence of good eye-hand coordination, but we don’t expect them to have any prior bookbinding or conservation experience. The typical student workflow includes materials preparation (such as cutting spine inserts and hinging endpapers), surface cleaning, box-making, tip-ins, page mending, pamphlet binding, double-fan adhesive binding, shield binding, vacuuming mold, and small-scale deacidification using a compressor and Book Keeper’s spray unit.  The students have also been called upon to assist during disaster recovery.  In fact, when Hope and Ashley first started working in the lab, they spent a month washing Mylar architectural plans which had been damaged during the 2010 Ames flood.

We know our students’ first and foremost goal is to receive a good education here at ISU.  We appreciate being just one of their many priorities, and have been impressed by their reliability, their cheerful hard work, and their diligence in developing their handskills.  We couldn’t run the lab without them!

Don’t forget to stop by Preservation Underground to hear about the student technician experience in the Conservation Lab of Duke University Libraries.

 

A Bit of Mystery in “A Little Book of Nature Thoughts”

We have a charming little mystery in the Conservation Lab right now.  A particularly aesthetically pleasing volume from our General Collection,  A Little Book of Nature Thoughts by Richard Jefferies (Mosher Press, 1903) caught my eye as it sat on the shelf awaiting repair.  Its type, its fine laid paper, its worn but once-beautiful sheepskin full leather binding, and its spare but elegant gold-stamped cover decoration all gave this slender, pocket-sized book an air of something special.

A Little Book of Nature Thoughts (1903)

A little bit of digging revealed some characteristic particularities of Mosher Press editions, which expressed Mosher’s love of the book as artifact, as an object of beauty, and not merely as a utilitarian vessel for its content.  All books were hand-set, usually with Caslon type, with a few, modest decorative flourishes.  Most were printed on Van Gelder hand-made paper, and indeed, our little volume bears the Van Gelder watermark on a few of its pages.  Forty-seven Mosher titles between 1898-1913 were also printed on vellum.  Finally, most of these publisher’s bindings were bound in white, blue, green, or gray paper-covered boards and housed in slipcases.  This last detail about the binding surprised me, until I came across evidence of the allure that Mosher Press editions held for contemporary fine binders.

According to the program of An Exhibition of Books from the Press of Thomas Bird Mosher from the Collection of Norman H. Strouse (1967), “No press has tempted the best efforts of so many of the world’s great binders as has the Mosher Press, but even when rebound in full leather, whether by the famous Grolier Club Bindery, Zaehnsdorf, or Sangorski & Sutcliffe, there is always something about the dimensions and title of a Mosher book that admits its identity to the Mosher collector on sight.”

Mosher himself was aware of his books’ appeal for the fine binder.  He commented in his 1898 catalog A List of Books in Limited Editions, that “In America, Mr. Otto Zahn, the Misses Nordholf and Bulkley; in London, Miss Prideaux and the Guild of Women Binders have re-clothed in exquisite bindings not a few of the special copies” of his editions.

Our copy of A Little Book of Nature Thoughts, unfortunately, bears no bindery ticket, and no discernible private mark of its binder.  Something about the blank endpapers and simple, somewhat generic, floral board decoration suggests the work of a larger bindery rather than an individual fine binder in private practice.  I had hoped that the gold-stamped symbol on the back board (pictured above) would provide a clue to the binding’s origin, but my cursory searches have turned up no lead.  If this lit torch, surrounded by intertwined serpents (or vines?), represents a bindery with which you are familiar, then please let us know.  We welcome any and all theories and speculations!

 

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.

 

Do You Have the Recipe?

Recently we have been thinking about how we are going to handle a certain book. Yes, I know this sounds funny – we do make treatment decisions daily but this one really has our wheels turning. The said book is a binder-style cookbook. There are pros and cons to each option we come up with. Is there a “right” solution?

 
So what do we do?

Option 1: Make a box for it.
Pros: This would help protect it a bit – and would definitely help if it gets returned into the book drop. Pages are easily removed to make photocopies.
Cons: This wouldn’t stop people from easily removing and stealing pages. Pages can also be easily torn/damaged around the holes.

Option 2: Post-bind it.
Pros: Less likely to have pages stolen. More stable than the ring binder.
Cons: Harder for people to make photocopies of the pages or use the book, because it wouldn’t lay open as easily.

Option 3: Send to the bindery.
Pros: Easy solution.
Cons: Slick pages paired with the heavier tabbed pages would just be a recipe (pun intended) for disaster.  It wouldn’t be long before pages (tabbed or not) started popping out.

Option 4: Leave it as-is.
Pros: A basic scan of the stacks shows that there are a number of these types of cookbooks left as-is on the shelves. Leaving the original binding unboxed and unaltered is visually appealing to those just scanning the shelves for similar books.
Cons: Same as option 1 : the possibility of numerous damaged pages if going through the book drop, and vulnerability to theft of individual pages.

Is there a simple/right solution? Are we thinking too hard about this? We go back and forth on what best to do. My question for you is: what do YOU do with items that come in ring binders like this?