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.