Custom Portfolios by Mindy Moeller

Recently I was given four pictures that were copies of original paintings that needed to be housed in custom built portfolios.  We have a wide variety of sizes of portfolios but none that would fit.  I don’t mind making custom portfolios as they are fairly quick to construct and look professionally made.

But this wasn’t the first time I had seen the portrait of Petrina Jackson, Head of the Special Collections and University Archives here at Iowa State University.  Last August while I was at the Iowa State Fair Petrina and Eric Schares, Science & Technology Librarian, had their portraits painted on site by artist Rose Frantzen of Maquoketa at the university’s state fair exhibit booth in the Varied Industries Building while people strolled by.  The completed paintings themselves become a part of the university’s booth exhibit.  I had stopped by the day Petrina was having her painting made and chatted with her for a moment while Rose painted away and does a nice job of capturing the individuals on canvas.  So five months later I see the completed painting.

And it’s a perfect custom fit!

 

Large Map Enclosure by Mindy Moeller

Those of you of a certain age might remember in your early years at school the long metal tube with the large roll down map that hung on the wall of your classroom.  

Recently the Stanford’s large school series Map of India 1914 by James L. Barton came into my hands to construct an enclosure for safekeeping.  This map arrived in the Preservation Department as a folded 10” x 9” piece from a 62” x 54” map and with careful conservation efforts by our conservator, Sophia (Sonya) Barron, the map is now viewable again.  It was next handed off to me to construct a box.

The challenge in making this box was its size and I wanted a lightweight product.  I used the corrugated blue board for its length and light weight, Ethafoam for cradles that were easy to carve with a knife to the size I needed, Velcro straps to hold the box together, and Velcro coins to hold the end caps on.  I am pleased with the end product.  Stay tuned as there will be more on the Map of India in a future post from Sonya and her conservation treatment.

 

A variation on a mat board display cradle

This past week a new exhibit opened in Parks Library’s Special Collections and University Archives reading room. It is called “For Married Students”: Building a Community in Pammel Court, 1946-1978. The exhibit tells the story of a housing development that was built on Iowa State University grounds to accommodate  student veterans of WWII  and their young families, as part of the GI bill.

    

The Preservation Department staff worked hard to fabricate mat board exhibit mounts for the items to be displayed. Jim Wilcox and I set out to make a simple slanted mat board book cradle. We were attracted to using mat board because it is easy to manipulate and recycle afterward.  It turned out the task was not actually that simple! The slanted cradle needed to be quite strong to withstand the weight of the heavy book.

We looked at an article that provided details for construction of a cloth covered slanted cradle. (Andersen, Jennifer, Cloth Covered Book Cradles, Abbey Newsletter, Volume 17, Number 7, December 1993, http://cool.conservation-us.org/byorg/abbey/an/an17/an17-7/an17-715.html).

This is an excellent design, which has been used by many institutions for years,  but we still hoped to find a solution that was a little less labor-intensive.

We started with the tried and true model of two wedges on a base, using museum-grade mat board and double-sided 3M 415 tape. Then Jim added another wedge to the bottom of the base to slant the cradle forward.

A small triangular ledge is built into the base, it keeps the book from sliding  off the cradle. The tricky part was to keep this ledge securely attached to the rest of the cradle. The answer was…..drum roll….wait for it –  yes, book cloth! Not so revolutionary after all, I know!

But in this version, the book cloth is almost entirely concealed in between the various parts of the cradle. Pale tan Cotlin book cloth was attached to the cradle itself and to the wedge base that elevates the cradle, then wrapped around the ledge. Cloth is only exposed on that narrow triangular support ledge on the front of the cradle.

I used PVA to adhere the book cloth to the mat board and let the cradle off-gas for 2 weeks prior to installing it into the exhibit case.

Aside from the fun and excitement with the cradle, I became acquainted with a wonderful piece of equipment – the rotary cutter. We had lots of exhibit labels to cut out and the rotary cutter was excellent for making 90 degree cuts without the combined effort of lining up the paper, holding down the ruler and minding the scalpel. A plastic bar holds down your paper and a sharp blade makes the perfectly straight cut for you. It’s like a mat cutter for paper! The roatry cutter comes in a large size too, so for lightweight materials it can be a good alternative to a board shear.

      

Learn more about our new exhibit by checking out the links below.

Publicity article:

http://www.inside.iastate.edu/article/2017/01/19/pammel

Article about curating the exhibit:

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/ames247/article_e6b0e76c-bc29-11e6-83b2-c72d80011232.html

Photos from the exhibit reception:

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/ames247/collection_884277bc-ddfe-11e6-9272-6f8ae44f9de6.html#1

 

It’s like a box of chocolates….

You never know what you are going to get. As an artist myself I can appreciate art books and books with unique characteristics but let me tell you that when they enter the lab we usually groan. These books are often neat and unique and creative but more often than not they just don’t hold up well. Take for instance the most recent one to enter the lab – and funny, check out the title.

This book looked fine on the outside but when we opened it we realized the cover of this book had separated itself from the text block. A fairly easy fix by our technician and she also constructed a box for it to give it some protection since this item will be in our general collection and may get used a fair amount.

Curious if you see items like this in your repair work and how you feel about them.

 

 

Lennox Interns – where are they now?

We are currently reviewing applications for the 2017 Lennox Internship, this will be my first time participating in this process.

Here is a link to the Lennox Foundation Internship information page. The 2017 deadline for application has already passed, but keep us in mind for the following year, if you are interested.

https://parkslibrarypreservation.wordpress.com/lennox-foundation-internship/

Recently I found myself looking up former Lennox Interns and ferreting out what some of them are up to these days. The results of my findings were impressive, here are a few tidbits.

2006 Carie McGinnis

Works as a preservation librarian and a registrar at the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

2007 Ilse Entlesberger 

Works as the book conservator for the Regional Library of Upper Austria.

2008 Kathleen Fear

Went on to receive a PhD at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, focusing on the topics of curation, preservation and reuse. Then worked as a Data Librarian at the University of Rochester Library. Currently the Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at University of Rochester Medical Center.

2009  Bexx Caswell-Olson

Works as a book and paper conservator at the Michigan State University Library in Lansing.

2010 Kristi Westberg

Went on to work as a book conservator at NEDCC (Northeast Document Conservation Center) and is currently a  book conservator at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.

2010 Henry Hebert

Went on to work as a book conservator at the University of Illinois Library in Champaign and is now a book conservator at Duke University Library in North Carolina.

2011 Lauren Calcote

Went on to do a conservation fellowship at the University of Michigan Library and is now a book conservator at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

2013 Sue Donnovan

Went on to work as a  book conservator at the University of Notre Dame Library in Indiana and is now a book conservator at the University of Virginia Library in Charlottesville.

2014 Gloria Diez

Worked at GOTIKA film restoration and preservation services. Is currently the producer of the Mobile Cinema at ACERCARTE, organized by the Ministry of Cultural Management of Provinicia de Buenos Aires.

2014 Nicole Monjeau

Went on to do an internship in paper conservation at the Corning Museum of Glass and to volunteer at the Midwest Art Conservation Center. She co-presented a paper on her work at the Corning Museum of Glass at the 2016 ICOM meeting in Paris. Nicole is currently working in Minneapolis as a conservator of paper and photographs in private practice.

Here are some earlier blog posts from 2010 and 2011, written by Hilary Seo about former Lennox Interns.

https://parkslibrarypreservation.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/lennox-foundation-preservation-internship/

https://parkslibrarypreservation.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/lennox-foundation-interns/

https://parkslibrarypreservation.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/from-lennox-intern-to-zipf-fellow/

 

Weights by Mindy Moeller

One thing that is very important to have in a Preservation Lab is weights.  Whether you are using them for constructing a clamshell box, help in tissue mending, flattening an adhesive bind, or weighing down a book you need some kind of weight that is versatile and portable besides a book press.  I have below the different varieties we have in our lab from sizes, heaviness, and purpose.  First I have several common ones we use in Preservation.   In the back left is an old brick covered in book cloth and next to it is an acrylic “brick.”

The rest are all filled with either 4.5 mm BBs or mini BBs.  On the right is another acrylic “block” with mini BBs in it and to its left shows a BB box, one covered in binder’s board, and the middle one covered with book cloth.  In front are 2 oz. bottles filled with both mini and 4.5 mm BBs.  The mini BB bottle weights much more than the 4.5 mm BBs.  The little flat top 2 oz. bottle are the latest additional to our weights.  We like these as they are small for little jobs yet we can stack them for more added weight.  What we don’t like is when an acrylic block is dropped to the floor, it shatters, and BBs roll everywhere in the lab and you find them for months afterwards!

Next we have cloth covered BBs, metal washers, and flexible metal strings for more sensitive work and holding down pages in a book.

Then we have heavy metal plates with handles that remind me of a bacon press, nickel-plated steel bars that are small and extremely heavy, and glass blocks with safe edges which you can see your work through.

Lastly is my collection of weights filled with 4.5 mm BBs.  Something as simple as a Beanie Baby toy can be gutted and filled, a plastic Minion toy, and even my duck needle holder has BBs in it to help hold it upright but also can be used in a very small area needing weight.  I like using the Beanie Babies when I am sewing the folios of a book back together.  This also gives you something fun to look at on your lab table and also for entertainment when guests come for a tour and I tell them to pick up a Beanie and they are surprised by the heavy weight.  And of course I must have a Baby Cy weight too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guys, dolls and… a monkey

A couple of weeks ago I went over to a meeting of the local Doll Collectors’ Club to talk about preservation issues. I was in for a treat! Yes, Halloween and Thanksgiving are past now, but  I am thankful that these creatures are only dolls and not alive. I am sincerely hoping they won’t come and haunt my dreams, ever. The theme of the meeting was “Off the Wall Dolls”, the really weird dolls, that is.

There were 13 people present at the meeting, and all of them had lots of questions about how to best preserve their many many dolls. A variety of materials were involved: plastics, paper/clay compound, textiles, wood, paper, leather. I came armed with a bag full of archival supplier catalogs and product samples, ready to  advise on storage options. As in all collecting, it is important to preserve original packaging that the dolls came in.
In most cases I ended up recommending archival boxes and buffered tissue. If the doll packaging was already opened, the doll could be taken out of its original packaging and wrapped in buffered or unbuffered tissue.

Archival flat storage box, polyethylene bags and Volara foam

 

The original packaging could also be wrapped in tissue. Then both things could go into an archival box and packed with balled up tissue to fill up the empty spaces in the box. Another solution is to use an archival polyethylene zip-locked bag for storing the doll. A sheet of Volara foam or Ethafoam can be inserted into the bag for support.

My favorite dude

This is the transparent middle-aged man. He even has little audio transmission holes on the back on his head, so apparently he used to have a sound component and batteries were meant to be inserted someplace. If only we knew what he used to say!