A Very Big Challenge

I think this is the biggest box I've tried to make, it's for a Torah that was recently on exhibit and needs to go back to RBMSCL.

I'm experimenting with using double-walled corrugated board rather than binders board since it has strength but not weight. The board surface is easily marred but with the book cloth adhered it seems pretty solid. I'm going with a telescoping design, that is a smaller tray that has a separate slightly larger lid that fits over it.

What I'm not sure of yet is the design of the lid. The base is too big to make a lid from one piece of board, so I will have to cobble something together. I'm also considering experimenting with a polyester lid so you can see into the box. Nothing will be stored on top of this box, so having a sturdy lid may not be an issue, but would it provide enough protection? More thought is needed. Luckily the next few days are chock full of meetings, so I'll have time to mull it over.

Happy Anniversary Preservation Underground!

Today, Thanksgiving Day 2010, Preservation Underground turns one year old. It's been quite a year, the department turned 10 years old and we celebrated with an exhibit and interviews with the staff (search "Tenth Anniversary Celebrations" and "Ten Years, Ten People" on our blog to find those). We've shared some fun projects like Boxing the Devil, scanning the Ehiopic scrolls, summer workshop adventures, and stuff we've found in books.

In this season of giving thanks, we thank you for reading and commenting on our blog. I like to think there are many more readers out there than we realize. Thanks to everyone in the department for their hard work and dedication, and for making every day an adventure. Thank you to Amy and the Devil's Tale for helping us get started a year ago, and for naming the blog. And a big thanks to our fellow bloggers for starting up a wonderful community of like minded people (see our sidebar for some links, and check out all the library blogs we have!). This blog is one of the more fun parts of my job, I love sharing what we do with everyone in the library and out there in the real world.

Happy Birthday to us! To help us celebrate, leave us a note on your favorite post, or tell us what sorts of things you would like to see more of, or wish us a happy birthday . We also like chocolate chip cookies.

Image: Ethiopic wooden cross illustration from the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library.

DIY Book Repair

It's an urge, an itch you can't scratch. You see a broken book and you instinctively reach for the tape. You want to fix it, make it whole. We know how you feel, we feel the same way. But tape is not the way forward my friends...not for your valuable materials, the ones you want to pass down someday to your kids.

We see a lot of DIY book repairs. I think the people who try to fix our broken books at home are trying to do what they feel is right. The problem is that self adhesive tapes are too strong for brittle paper, it pulls pages out of bindings and often takes several pages at a time. Tape is very difficult or impossible to remove completely unless you use solvents, and it often can't be removed without damaging the paper surface.

If you have something valuable and it is in need of repair don't reach for the tape, reach out to a conservator. You can find one through the American Institute for Conservation. On their site they have information on finding and selecting a conservator as well as tips for preserving your treasures.

By the way, the image above shows an older DIY repair done with masking tape. I took a picture because the person carefully colored the tape so it would be less noticeable. I'm not sure it completely worked, but I give him/her credit for trying to make it a less obvious repair.

Going Old Skool

Remember Letraset? it was a staple for me as a young art student back in the day. I found this in a book that came to the lab today. Smurfs and Letraset, totally old skool.

The book itself is a mess of problems. Besides Soccer Smurf here, the paper is very brittle, the binding is hanging on by a thread, and someone tried a DIY book repair (or three) with brown packing tape to keep pages together. Needless to say this is also on hold for a patron.

Proof of Life

Have you ever been in the front of class or demonstrating something and thought to yourself "am I getting through to them?" A couple of weeks ago we held our annual week-long care and handling training to show staff and student assistants what sort of material to send to conservation.

We got two proofs of life through campus mail this week...pieces of broken books disembodied from their texts. This one was a piece of an old acidic pamphlet binder that broke off, the other was a detached spine.

It's nice to know that our pleas for broken books sank in. Thanks for listening and participating! And please send the actual items, too.

Ten Years, Ten People: Beth Doyle

Your humble author rounds out the last of the Ten Years, Ten People series. I am the Head of Conservation Services and have been at Duke for eight years. I work with some amazing people and some equally amazing collections. The best part of my job right now is bringing you into the Underground to show you, dear reader, what it is that we do below decks. I hope you have found our sites informative and fun to visit.

In this video I share a personal story of unexpectedly finding an image of one of my ancestors in our collections in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collection Library.

Paper Crumbs

We just finished our fall semester Care and Handling sessions wherein we give out tips on safely handling library materials. We also display our "show of horrors" which covers amongst other things torn pages, food spills, damaged spines, and of course brittle paper.

These sessions are valuable to us because we get to talk to the staff and students who are our partners in keeping our materials in good condition and ready for the next reader. A great many items that come to the lab do so because they have circulated. If damaged, an alert staff member recognizes that it should go to Conservation and sets it aside for us. We could not be successful in our efforts to keep materials circulating without their help.

We also hold these sessions to get feedback on our services and how we can help create effective and efficient workflows. Over the years we have heard some comments about how much boxing we do and the perception that we prefer to box things rather than fix them. This is why we put brittle materials into our show of horrors. At some point, paper becomes too brittle to do anything for it. It cannot be sewn or glued, sometimes it can barely even be handled without self destructing.

We make every effort to repair the books and manuscripts in our care but sometimes we simply don't have any durable repair options due to their fragility. This is why we make thousands of protective enclosures every year, a good portion of these are for brittle items. Protective enclosures keep pieces together while we make reformatting or replacement decisions, it protects the already fragile book from further damage while checked out or while on the shelf, and it alerts people to handle these books just a little more gently.

A box can sometimes be a hindrance to use. But it is our job to balance the needs of the reader with the needs and preservation of the object. This balancing act is not always an easy thing to do, but hopefully our patrons understand that it is a far better thing to have access to a brittle book than having no access to that book at all.

Care and Handling Training

Pop quiz: What is the best method of removing a book from the shelf?

This week we are presenting our annual week-long Care and Handling/Identifying Common Damage demonstrations. Each year we present our show of horrors to help new library staff and student assistants learn to identify damaged books. We also provide quick tips and helpful hints that can minimize potential damage when items are handled during our day-to-day work.

What we hope comes across is that everyone has a role to play in getting our materials to the shelf safely. We appreciate everyone's help in keeping our collections around for a very long time.

If you work in the library, stop in to see a demonstration. Our sessions for the rest of the week are as follows (sessions are held in the conservation lab-Perkins 023-unless otherwise indicated):

10/19, 4pm, 6pm

10/20, 11:30am, 3pm (at Lily Library)

10/21, 10am (at Smith Warehouse), 1pm

10/22, 9:30am, 2pm

The answer: push the books on either side of the one you want inwards, and grasp the covers. If you pull on the top of the book to remove it, the spine is likely to tear.

Mastering Craft

Mastering Craft: Interpreting Historic Bookbindings

Our new exhibit highlights work from the Triangle Research Libraries (TRLN) Master Bookbinders Group. Our group consists of staff members from the conservation labs of UNC-Chapel Hill, NC State and Duke University libraries.

Its purpose is to research historic bookbindings so we can deepen our understanding of the history of the book, and develop knowledge and skills that help inform our daily conservation work.

Creating binding models is a traditional form of learning the craft of bookbinding and the history of the book. Each quarter we assign a binding style to one or two of our members. Our volunteer teachers research the history of the binding and how it was traditionally made, and demonstrate it to the rest of the group. We then make our models, sometimes recreating the binding exactly and sometimes interpreting them more artistically.

The exhibit will be up through January 2011, just outside the Conservation Lab in Perkins Library 023. It is open when the library is open.

Ten Years, Ten People: Meg Brown

In our ongoing series celebrating our ten year anniversary, we bring you the next installment of TYTP. Meg Brown is one of our Special Collections Conservators, she is also the library's Exhibits Coordinator. In fact, today we will be installing the new exhibit, "Books + Art", in the Perkins Gallery, just outside the the Perk. Be sure to stop by the library to see the new exhibit, and be sure to catch Meg's favorite preservation story in her video interview.

Happy Anniversary Devil's Tale!

Today, October 8th, marks the one year anniversary of the launch of The Devil's Tale, our sister blog from the Rare Books, Manuscript and Special Collections Library (and University Archives!).

To celebrate we bring our readers a list of some of our favorite Devil's Tale posts over the past year.

"Welcome to the Devil's Tale," their very first post.

"A Holiday Recipe From Us To You," because no celebration is complete without frozen cheese.

"Join The Preservation Underground." Our great friend Amy (keeper of all things Devil's Tale) named Preservation Underground and has been a great wealth of help and support. Thanks Amy, keep up the great work!

"Boxing the Blue Devil," a creepy gift that keeps on giving. A big thanks to RBMSCL for all the wonderful things they send us for Boxing Day.

As you may know, the traditional one-year anniversary gift is paper. As our one-year gift we give Devil's Tale this historic image of us working on a broadside (paper!) from the RBMSCL library collection. This happens to also be from our first post.

May you have another interesting year ahead of you and congratulations on your achievements Devil's Tale!

What Month Is It?

In October we gather ourselves together to celebrate all that is good and important, like the North Carolina State Fair and All Hallows Eve. But did you know that among other celebrations October is:

American Archives Month
National Medical Librarians Month
National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
National Graphic Novel Writing Month
National Arts and Humanities Month
National Book Month
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
National Dental Hygiene Month
National Fire Safety Month

What are you celebrating this month?

Image from the Duke University History of Medicine Collection exhibits website.

Reading Roundup

I'm starting a recurring blog post called "Reading Roundup" to share some reading that you may find interesting. These links will be at least tangentially related to books, preservation, conservation and libraries. Here is the first installment. Enjoy!

The Devil's Tale "Celebrates Banned Book Week." Share your banned book story with them.

The Chronicle of Higher Education asks whether digitized books "feel like a library" in "Digitizing The Personal Library."

Also in The Chronicle of Higher Education, "What Are Books Good For" questions when books became the enemy.

In The Library With A Lead Pipe (one of my favorite library blogs) ponders how to collect meaningful data about our instruction efforts in their post "Articulating Value in Special Collections."

Parks Library Preservation at Iowa State has a nicely written ode to Carolyn Harris and Paul Banks, leaders in our field. Read "Thank you Paul and Carolyn, et al," Then tell your favorite teacher or mentor how much they mean to you.

And finally over on Work of the Hand , our former staff member and student, Henry Hebert, is blogging about what he is learning in the book binding program at the North Bennett Street School this semester.

Image from Duke University Libraries Ad Access, click on image for details.

Word Cloud: 2010 Conservation Program Report

binding book cases collections committee completed conservation created damaged database department digital documentation duke erin exhibit general goals handling head hours imaging improve lab level libraries map mary materials meg member perkins posts preservation process rbmscl repairs request scrolls services special staff ten things training transfer transition treatments work years

created at TagCrowd.com

It's Better Than Christmas!

I love the new fiscal year, it's like Christmas in July or September. We got our yearly order of pamphlet binders this week. What do two tons of binders look like? Like a big ol' pile of presents waiting to be unwrapped.

My fabulous student Anne unpacked and inventoried these in about two hours. Our shelves are fully stocked with brand new, shiny binders which means we can now get back to the business of preparing pamphlets for the shelf. Yippeee!

Yes, I'm irrationally exuberant about supplies. I'm the same way with paste recipes and statistics, just ask anyone in the lab.

Where Art and Libraries Meet

I had the good fortune to again be called upon to help the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University install some books for their new exhibit "The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-18". The show opens on September 30, 2010, and runs through January 2, 2011.

Artwork from several institutions will be on display including some from the Manchester City Galleries. I got to meet and work with Sarah Rainbow, Collection Care Officer, who was there to oversee the installation of their artwork and that of the Victoria and Albert Museum. We conservators love to talk shop, and I really enjoyed talking with Sarah about her job. Of course, working with everyone at the Nasher is always fun, and this is going to be a really wonderful exhibit. I encourage you all to see it when it opens.

I had a few minutes after I was finished to see the current exhibits on display. "The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl" is a must-see (through February 6th, 2011). There is a combination of artwork that uses actual vinyl as part of the artwork, or uses the form of the discs or sleeves as inspiration. Some of the sculpture was fun, and there is mixed media, paintings, and video installations.

What most piqued my interest was the wall of records that you could choose and play yourself. What a great way to bring interactivity to your exhibit. I wonder if we could do something similar with our exhibits. Has anyone experimented with including interactivity with library exhibits in this way, beyond the guest/comment book? Let us know, we would love to hear about it.

Banks/Harris Award Nominations Sought

Nominations are being accepted for the 2011 Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award. The deadline for nominations is December 1, 2010.

Banks/Harris Preservation Award:

The award was established to honor the memory of Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris, early leaders in library preservation. The award, $1,500 and a citation, sponsored by Preservation Technologies, L.P., is given to a professional preservation specialist who has been active in the field of preservation and/or conservation for library and/or archival materials. Winners will be chosen based on: leadership in professional associations at local, state, regional or national levels; contributions to the development, application or utilization of new or improved methods, techniques and routines; significant contribution to professional literature; evidence of studies or research in preservation; and training and mentoring in the field of preservation.

Send nominations, a formal statement of nomination that provides a strong rationale for the nomination by addressing how the nominee meets the criteria for the award, letters of support for the nomination and a complete resume for the nominee to:

Hilary Seo, chair, Banks/Harris Jury

Iowa State University

441 Parks Library

Ames, IA 50011-2140

hseo@iastate.edu

For more information about the award and past recipients visit the Banks Harris page.

Further questions about the award are welcome and may be directed to any of the committee members:

Beth Doyle, b.doyle@duke.edu

Jake Nadal, jnadal@library.ucla.edu

Lene Palmer, lenep@gmu.edu

Hilary Seo, hseo@iastate.edu

Peter D. Verheyen, pdverhey@syr.edu

Saving Serials

The Head of Acquisitions brought these over after they discovered the books were damaged during shipping. According to her, these would be very difficult to replace so she wanted us to save them if we could. As you can see, these got pretty squished, and the black smudge indicates maybe they got caught in some mechanical thing. They were very bent and had a lot of little page tears.


I put them in the press for a very long time, giving the pages the opportunity to flatten out and stay that way. Then, as any good manager will do, I delegated the treatment to Mary, my talented Senior Conservation Technician.

It took a lot of work and patience, but she fixed all the tears in the text blocks. She also saved the decorative covers and overlaid them onto new boards. If you look closely you can tell something happened to them, but they look so much better than they did when they came in.

TRLN Bookbinders: Paper Case Binding

Our group has been studying paper case bindings. These come in a remarkable array of styles and were popular in the 18th Century. They are very close in structure to limp vellum bindings which date back to the 14th Century. They are fast to make and depending on the paper you use for the cover they can be a cheap but very durable binding.

We found a great array of samples from our collections to study. What I am realizing as we study these historic structures is that binders of all centuries seem to make it up as they go along. There are the canonical exemplars, the forms that have survived and were popular in their day, but the details show us that every binder did things a little differently. There is no one way to make a paper case, in fact there are several. You can lace the supports in or not, you can adhere the paste downs or not, you can adhere the turn ins or make yapps. Or not.

Likely this is due to the availability of materials, the popular methods of the day and who taught you. Judging from my own work, I also suspect there are so many variants because you make mistakes and need to fix them. Along the way you discover a better or quicker way to do things then adopt those "fixes" and pass them on. I like knowing that I'm just one in a long line of binders that never do things quite the same way twice.

Boxing Day Favorites

As you loyal readers already know Boxing Day comes around every month, in fact it now comes around twice a month because we have so much coming into the collections that need enclosures. We crank out the work on Boxing Day but we also get to stop ever so briefly to take a closer look at some of the materials.

My favorite from our most recent Boxing Day were numbers 1, 4 and 7 in the Black Samurai series by Marc Olden. I have never seen these books, but I love the cover art and the story summaries on the back covers. These were written in the 1970's, and some were translated into films.

What really struck me were the cigarette ads inserted into the middle of the books. I wasn't reading pulp fiction in the early 1970's as I was too young to do so. I wonder, were cigarette ads put into a lot of pulp fiction titles? or was this a targeted advertising campaign? I'd be interested to know more if you know anything about this title, publisher or 1970's pulp fiction in general.

Saying Farewell

It's a bittersweet week here in the lab. We are losing two of our family who are off to start careers and take on new adventures.

Rachel Ingold, one of our two Senior Conservation Technicians, completed library school last December and has accepted a position as the Curator of the History of Medicine Collection in the Duke University Medical Center Library and Archives. Rachel has been here for almost eight years and has proved to be a productive member of the team. More important than that is that she is a wonderful person to work with, funny, energetic and a kind soul. I will miss seeing her every day, luckily she will be just around the corner.

This is also the last week we get to see Henry Hebert in the lab. Henry was one of my SILS students and worked not only in our lab but in the lab at UNC Wilson Library. This summer he was awarded a competitive internship in the Preservation Department at Parks Library on the campus of Iowa State University. Henry is headed to the bookbinding program at North Bennett Street School in Boston. Henry has been great to have in the lab, his energy and eagerness to learn has inspired all of us. We will miss him, but hope to see him again when he comes to visit and maybe teach us a few things.

We wish both Rachel and Henry all the best as they embark on their new lives. We will miss them both but know we will see them again. So it's not goodbye, it's see you later. Congratulations to you both, and good luck!

*Image: pathway from west campus to the medical center complex.

Our First Label

It may seem silly to be so exuberant about a label, but conservators get excited about weird things (anyone want to talk paste recipes?). We have finally procured a Kwikprint so that we can make lovely, gold foil labels for our rebinds. Erin modified one of our taborets to use as a base and has set up the machine. She printed our first label last week, and it is truly something to celebrate.

Erin's Summer Adventures

Written by Erin Hammeke, Conservator for Special Collections

I just returned from two fantastic professional development opportunities. First, I attended the Ligatus Summer School class on the History of European Bookbinding 1500-1800, held this year at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany.

Drawing from the instructor Nicholas Pickwoad’s research and using examples from the library’s collection, the class examined how changes in the style and structure of book bindings produced during this period can illustrate the effects of changing pressures and developments in the book trade and in the printing and bookbinding industries at the time.

The class will allow me and my fellow conservators to better contextualize the bindings we comes across during the course of our work as conservators as well as enable us to identify, document, and preserve critical evidence during treatment.

I then went to a workshop taught by Renate Mesmer, Assistant Head of Conservation at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. The workshop Tips & Tricks for Book and Paper Conservation was held in the bookbinding studio at North Bennet Street School in Boston.

It was packed full of practical techniques and handy tricks that Ms. Mesmer has amassed during her 30+ years as a bookbinder, conservator and educator. The tips ranged from pulp-filling paper losses, performing corner and leather repairs, and to creating a new flexible leather binding.

I am really looking forward to sharing these techniques with my colleagues in Conservation and to putting them to good use in my treatments.

10 Years, 10 People: Mary Yordy, Senior Conservation Technician

Our next video in the 10 years, 10 People series is of Mary Yordy, Senior Conservation Technician. Mary celebrated 20 years working at Duke this year. We've been lucky to have her working in Conservation the past ten or so. More videos in this series can be found on Duke Libraries on You Tube.

Burnt and Bent

Today Alex and I worked together to image some pages from this Syriac Manuscript. According to a hand-written note in the box, it is from the Gospel of Mark, dated to the 10th Century.

Clearly it's seen better days, but it is remarkable nonetheless. It looks to be to have survived a fire, at least the middle of the text block survived. The front third or so was burned off, leaving stubs that are still attached to the binding, but the spine has curled in on itself. The remaining vellum pages range from really brittle to fairly OK, if a little warped.

10 Years, 10 People: Rachel Ingold

Rachel Ingold, Senior Conservation Technician, shares her favorite conservation lab story. More videos from this series can be found on the Duke University Libraries You Tube channel.

Boxing the Devil

This little devil came to the lab from the University Archives for an enclosure. I put up a photo essay over on Flickr about how the box is constructed, and we posted about it over on Devil's Tale.

What We Find In Books: Blaeu Bears and Deer

Erin came across these illustrations in one of the Blaeu atlases that she has been working on. These are filled with lovely, hand painted images.

We've been having a little fun trying to figure out what the bears were saying to each other, and whether this deer is from the lost herd of vampire deer from Transylvania. In all seriousness, look how it is ever so daintily standing on the frame whilst seemingly taking a nap. Very skillful (both the illustrator and the deer itself).

*Illustrations from: Willem Janszoon Blaeu, "Toonneel des aerdriicx, ofte nievwe atlas, dat is Beschryving van alle landen; nu nieulycx uytgegeven." (E ff#91 dl.1 - 1649)

10 years, 10 people: Erin Hammeke

As part of our ten-year celebration we are highlighting everyone in the department. Erin Hammeke, Conservator for Special Collections has been with us for three years. Along with other conservators and staff from Special Collections, she selects items for conservation, designs treatment strategies and carries out those repairs. She works primarily on books from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. She documents each treatment using both photographic and written reports which we keep on file for future reference.

When asked about a favorite project, Erin replies:

"Currently I am working on a volume of De Bry's account of the New World, and this has been an extremely fun and challenging treatment that has involved paper repair, resewing the text, and rebinding in full calf leather. I am also wrapping up treatment of the Blaeu Atlases, six large Dutch atlases that were printed in the mid-1600s and hand painted with an inspired and vibrant color palette.

Over the past three years that I have spent at Duke, my main focus has been on the conservation of the Jantz Collection of German Baroque materials and German Americana. I love working with this collection because it seems to have everything - both in terms of content (there are materials that pertain to history, travel, the occult, women's writings, and more) and in terms of different binding styles and materials. For the most part, I am drawn to the more mundane items and the stories they tell about how they were made, why they were collected, by whom, and how they were used and cared for. I have found the Jantz Collection to be particularly rich with these stories."

*Top illustrations from: Willem Janszoon Blaeu, "Toonneel des aerdriicx, ofte nievwe atlas, dat is Beschryving van alle landen; nu nieulycx uytgegeven." (E ff#91 dl.5 - 1654.) Lower illustration: books from the Jantz Collection of German Baroque materials.

Papyrus Project

Today I started a pilot project to re-house the papyrus collection. My goal is to create enclosures that can house these fragments efficiently and safely whilst providing better access to the collection. Of course, they also have to be cost-effective.

Our papyri were digitized a while ago as part of the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS) project. At the time each fragment was carefully placed between two glass plates that were then taped together. My research indicates that this is still an accepted method of storing papyri and as long as the fragments and glass are in good condition, I'm not keen on replacing the glass.

I am keen on giving each package a better enclosure. I want to make a sink mat for each item that will securely hold the glass/papyrus package in place, and allow us to house several in one box without them rubbing against each other. This should also allow individual fragments to be served to patrons in the reading room in a safe manner. Better Enclosures + Better Access = Preservation. Wish me luck!

10 Years, 10 Treatments

Yesterday we installed our exhibit "Ten Years, Ten Treatments." As part of our year-long celebration of our tenth anniversary, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite work.

The exhibit is outside the Biddle Reading Room on the first floor of Perkins. While there, you can also see our display in the wall cases (on the opposite wall from the exhibit) that gives ten tips you can use to save your personal collections.

Our exhibit will be up through mid-October. We are planning a companion exhibit of Ten Projects from the Digital Production Center to be installed in our exhibit space on the Lower Level of Perkins outside the Conservation Lab. Hopefully we will have that up next week, we'll let you know when that happens.

Here's Your Mule

It's Manuscript Day in the lab, similar to Boxing Day, wherein we all work on flat paper repair. Today we are continuing the Broadside Project, getting these items ready for their close up in the Digital Production Center. North Carolina is this month's project, and this little gem caught my eye. It's from the New Bern (NC) Republican Banner, dated April 1884.

Mary has been repairing the tears and losses on this broadside with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. After the tissue is applied, a blotter is placed on top with a weight until dry. When the digitization is complete, these will come back to Conservation for rehousing.

Ethiopic Manuscript Digitization Project

As you may know we have been working with the Digital Production Center to digitize the scrolls in the Ethiopic Manuscript collection. I've posted some images from that project, not the high-resolution ones the DPC is creating, but some snaps I made during the imaging of items that I found particularly interesting. You can find them in our Flickr Ethiopic Manuscript Project album.

The date ranges are fairly recent but you can see traditional vellum joins and repairs in the scrolls. I always find it interesting how people utilized defects in the skins to their advantage. I also find the graphic depictions to be wonderfully modern and very geographic, and the colors are amazing. You never know what you will find when you start digging through collections. One wooden icon (not the one shown here) has been previously repaired with dental floss. File that under "use what you have on hand."

Ten Years, Ten People: Rita Johnston, Digitization Assistant for Road 2.0 Project

Rita Johnston, Digitization Assistant for ROAD 2.0 project has been with the department for one year. She is digitizing outdoor advertising materials described in the Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions database. The bulk of materials being digitized for this project are from the OAAA Archives and OAAA Slide Library collections, but some images from the John Paver Papers and the John E. Brennan Survey Reports are also included.

The project includes about 15,000 photographs and negatives which Rita has digitized, and I have about 12,000 slides which she has sent to a vendor for digitization. She uses different equipment including flatbed scanners and the Zeutschel 14000 A2 scanner for photographs and the Phase One Camera for transparent materials such as negatives. Rita is wrapping up the digitization phase of the project and will begin focusing her attention on normalization and cleanup of the metadata in the ROAD database.

When asked what is the most interesting collection you have worked with, Rita replied:

Since I have mostly been working with materials from the OAAA Archives, the OAAA Archives is the most interesting collection I have worked with. There is a great deal of variety in the content and types of materials in the collection. Much of the subject matter is of billboards, art designs, and other forms of outdoor advertising from the 1910s to the early 1980s.

The subject matter includes food & beverages, local businesses, political propaganda, cars, financial institutions, movies, and of course, beer and cigarettes. It’s really interesting to see how much billboards have changed over time, from the beautiful hand painted signs of the early to mid 20th century to machine printed billboards of later years.

There are even a few interesting examples in the collection of cellulose acetate negatives breaking down. All negatives are prone to deterioration over time, and the process may be sped up if negatives are exposed to high heat and humidity. Some of the negatives smell strongly of vinegar and are warped and cracked where the emulsion is breaking down.

We are all eagerly awaiting Rita's project to be online. Thanks Rita for all of your hard work!

Stop the Presses! Conservation is in the news

Neil Offen of the Herald Sun came to interview us last week. You can see his wonderful story about us in the June 24, 2010, edition. And yes, the banana book gets mentioned (we know you love that book).

Ten Years, Ten People: Mike Adamo, Digital Production Developer

Mike Adamo, Digital Production Developer, arrived at Duke just over five years ago. Mike graduated with a degree in Photography in 1993 after which he opened and operated a table-top advertising studio for three years in Atlanta Georgia. After that Mike worked in a stock photography studio as a black and white printer for four years. The studio switched from analog to digital photography while he was there so Mike learned about color calibration and color profiles, which was relatively new at the time. He came to Duke after working for four years as a supervisor of a digital imaging unit at a library automation software company in Virginia.

As a Digital Production Developer Mike assess Library collections for digitization, creates images for high end print projects, and designs workflows for digitization projects in the Digital Production Center. He is also responsible for calibrating and maintaining the various cameras and scanners that they use in their daily operations.

When asked about his favorite preservation project, Mike responded:

My favorite project over the years has been building the Digital Production Center. When I started on March 14, 2005, the Digital Production Center was located on Perkins lower level behind the copy room and was often used as a shortcut from the lower level to the RBMSCL. We had one Epson Expression 10000 and a BetterLight scanback fresh out of the box. The camera room had previously been a traditional wet darkroom. The sinks had been removed but some of the plumbing remained jutting out of the walls and though the tiles had been scrubbed clean the chemical stains from years past were still present.

The questions at the time were: What is a digital collection? How do we represent the physical item digitally? What metadata scheme should we use and how do we capture it? While from a distance these questions seem fairly simple and straight forward once we started building digital collections we had to apply the concepts of sustainability and scalability while being as transparent as possible. Easy… right?

Since then, we have moved 3 times and are now in our permanent space (I think). This space was specifically designed with the Digital Production Center in mind. Our air handler is HEPA filtered, the lighting is full spectrum, the monitors are color calibrated, the walls are 18% gray, the floor is cork and we have a large vault that we share with Conservation.

We added another flatbed scanner, a dedicated quality control station, a P65 Phase One R-Cam, a Zeutschel 14000 A2, a SAMMA Solo video encoder a high-end light table (for digitizing negatives on the Phase One), 2 FTE, additional students and a database to track production and collect technical metadata. In addition to all of this a few months ago we added a Scribe book scanner through the Internet Archive. Our production rates have gone from 4000 + digital images the first year to a projected 100,000 digital images this year and that doesn’t include the images created using the Scribe.

We have come a long way in a short time.

You can see some of the work that Mike and the DPC staff on the Digital Collections Blog.

TRLN Bookbinders: Islamic Binding

The interesting thing about Islamic bindings is that they haven't changed much. According to Jane Greenfield in "ABC of Bookbinding," the format was likely learned from binders in Ethiopia. This structure strongly influenced bookbinding in Europe, traveling through Italy and Spain.

Extant bindings are generally made of highly burnished paper text blocks with a simple chain stitch. The covers were made off the book and included a fore edge flap. The case itself was adhered in a tight-back fashion (the spine of the case is glued to the spine of the text block). The endbands are an interesting combination of sewn and woven techniques as described in "Headbands and How to Work Them" by Jane Greenfield and Jenny Hille. The leather-covered boards and flap were decorated, but not the spine. More information can be found on the National Library of Medicine's Islamic Medical Manuscripts web site.

Our models strayed a little from the extant bindings we looked at from our collections. Mostly due to our desire to keep personal costs down, we used Western paper and book cloth to create our samples. They follow the original structure, and we now understand the bindings a little better than we did before. You can see Jamie's wonderful models on his Flickr page. Henry's model is at the top of this post, can see more on Henry's web site.

What struck me is how influential these bindings were on the progression of binding through Europe. The chain stitching, sewn headbands, the case construction...these were lost and seemingly rediscovered sometime later in the 19th Century A.C.E. What happened? how did this structure migrate through Europe, get lost, and come back without being cited as a major influence in the histories of book binding? We need a better understanding of non-European bookbinding history. Anyone have some good resources for that? they seem to be missing from the canon.