Preservation Beat

Monday, February 8, 2010

One of the audiovisual formats we are digitally reformatting is the 78. We no longer have the equipment to play 78 recordings. In order to have the recordings accessible to researchers we needed to replace the 78s with CDs. Staff purchased commercially produced CDs where possible. Titles they couldn’t find were sent to us.

We quickly discovered two things. The jackets that we had made to house the 78s many years ago were too small for the 78s. We had to split open the jacket in order to safely extract the 78. We also discovered that some of the 78s were extremely brittle. We never knew when the next handling would cause the 78 to break.

We sent off a sampling to Safe Sound Archive to find out just how good the sound would be when converted to a CD. We were curious as to how much sound loss there would be for a cracked/broken 78. The results were very interesting.

Most of the records reformatted quite nicely with a few words repeated (just like a stuck record) the only evidence that it was a copy of a cracked record (image on left). One recording had missing sentences (image on right). All in all the results were quite satisfactory so we sent the rest of the collection off to Safe Sound Archive for conversion from 78 to CD.

Safe Sound Archive was kind enough to share some photos of the work with our 78s. You can see from the photos that the correct size stylus or needle is critical and there are many to choose from. Adjustments for frequency and treble and bass are also made. The hisses, pops, and crackles were left in.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I have a cool tip that I thought I’d pass along. Last week we decided to take a poster to the American Library Association preservation section meeting describing how the flood and other recent events have impacted our department. Hauling a poster through the airport and onto an airplane is no picnic. I decided that the poster needed to fit in my suitcase (14″ x 20″) for hassle free transport. As you can image this makes for small pictures and text.

Preservation Assistant Bill Voss devised a way to maximize the small space so we could have larger photographs and text. I’m not sure which was more interesting to our audience — the message or the poster design!

Bill took the printouts of the images and text and mounted them on folded thin board. He added velcro dots to hold the folded board and mounted the board to the poster. Everything opens up and tucks inside the folded poster. When ready to display, just fold the boards against the velcro and voila! An attractive, interesting poster.

Monday, January 4, 2010

One of our quandaries was how to clean Vernon Smith’s typewriter, an important artifact from the African American Museum. We found our answer when we contacted Vernon Steve at Steve’s Business Machines (formerly Steve’s Typewriter) in Iowa City. Vern cleaned and repaired the typewriter but did not repaint it. The typewriter shows the wear and tear of the flood but is clean and fully functional.

Vern inherited the business from his father. He not only repairs typewriters but also repairs cash registers, old calculating machines, time-clocks, etc. In fact, after seeing the results of the typewriter cleaning, we left a flood-damaged sweeper for repair.

Vernon Smith courtesy of the African American Museum of Iowa

The typewriter was a college graduation gift from Elmer Sr and Vesta Smith to their son, Vernon. He graduated from Coe College circa 1950. He used this typewriter to type up his master’s thesis at the University of Iowa. He received a master’s in Chemistry from the U of I in 1952. Before receiving his master’s he had accepted a position as a chemistry instructor at an African American college in Virginia. 10 days after receiving his master’s while he was packing to move to Virginia, he contracted polio and lost the use of both of his legs and one of his arms.

He spent 4 years recovering from polio and then found a job in the special laboratory at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids. He worked there for 35 years retiring as head of the lab. He was very active in community affairs in Cedar Rapids, particularly in Civil Rights issues. He co-founded the Cedar Rapids Negro Civic Organization in 1961 and served on its scholarship committee throughout the 1960s. In addition, he served as a member of the Cedar Rapids N.A.A.C.P. and the Cedar Rapids Council on Human Relations. In 1971, he was named “Handicapped Iowan of the Year”. He married Phoebe Downs and raised five children: Ruby, Vernon, Deborah, Phoebe, and Katharine. He passed away in 2000. More at: http://www.blackiowa.org/exhibits/finding_guides/SmithVernonPhoebe.doc

Friday, December 18, 2009

A much awaited event finally arrived. We returned close to 1,500 sound recordings to David Muhlena, Library Director for the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids. Cleaning the records was very labor intensive. We began our work in July 2008, working in the Paper Lab cleaning off the worst of the mud, mold, bacteria, and river debris. In September 2008, we brought the records to the conservation lab for a more thorough cleaning. We’re estimating that actual hands-on cleaning time was around 750 hours. We’re not done yet. We only returned the LPs and 45s, we still have the 78s to clean.

We could not have competed this project without the donation of archival tan board for the three flap enclosures by Archival Products, Des Moines, Iowa and funding for new sink/water system from the State Historical Society of Iowa Historical Resources Development Program (HRDP).

The local media has been very supportive in covering our flood “mile markers.” It’s always good to get the message out that many flood/water damaged items can be salvaged and to remind the public that recovery from a disaster such as the Iowa Flood of 2008 takes time.

http://gazetteonline.com/local-news/flood-recovery/2009/12/18/return-from-ruin-flood-damaged-records-restored-for-c-r-museum
http://www.kcrg.com/floodwatch/79688237.html?video=pop&t=a

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

This carved wooden pipe from the Czech Slovak Museum was covered in mud and dust. Since it has so many small crevices it was very hard to clean. I used dampened swabs to remove the dirt. It is in three pieces and combined it took 6 hours to clean.

Below is the before (left) and after (right) cleaning of the pipe stem.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Elizabeth Boyne has joined us in the lab as our newest volunteer. We have no shortage of projects. She started with cleaning and flattening newspapers from the Czech Slovak Museum but will most likely clean a collection of busts from the African American Museum and assist with cleaning and flattening manuscript files. Elizabeth is a Graduate Student enrolled in the Joint SLIS and Center for the Book program. She will be working with us in addition to working in Book Repair with Susan Hansen. We’re always excited to gain an extra pair of hands!

Monday, November 16, 2009

On October 23 we sent another round of artifacts back to the African American Museum. We also sent back the first of the manuscript boxes to be cleaned.

We hope to be out of Oakdale Hall by the end of the year and it is heartening to see it empty out a little more each time we send things back. Almost all the metal objects have been finished and we are in the process of completing the wooden items from the African American Museum. We have only a few remaining objects from the Czech Slovak Museum that need to be cleaned.

The African American Museum Manuscript box project, which consists of 105 boxes of files that need to be cleaned, flattened, and rehoused, is well underway. Twenty three boxes have been returned and there are several more in various states of progress.

The LP and 45 Collections are virtually finished, we are still researching cleaning methods for the 78s. Once we have returned the LPs we will be able to move the remaining objects at Oakdale Hall to be stored at the Library.

The fact that we are getting to the point where we can consolidate items is a pretty big deal. When the flood recovery began we were bursting at the seams wondering where on earth we would find the room to store all of these things. Now that we have some breathing room it is easier to see the progress that we have been making.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Steve Stenstrom returned to the UI to teach us about Shellac. We learned about the properties of Shellac and the different ways to use it. Steve brought us pieces of wood to work with and we all got some experience “french polishing” which consists of a cotton pad soaked in Shellac wrapped in a piece of cotton (old tshirts work the best). Using the pads we learned the basic technique for finishing a piece of wood with shellac. This will mainly be applied to the trophies and plaques we have from the African American Museum.

Read “The Story of Shellac” and learn how insects make shellac.

Monday, November 9, 2009

On Nov. 6 Beth and I gave a presentation to the Iowa Special Libraries Association in Lindquist Hall. It was one of our first experiences presenting the flood project. It was a good feeling to see how interested people are in what we have been doing. The talk was scheduled to be an hour which seemed like an incredibly long time to have to fill when we started but I didn’t realize until we were putting our presentation together how much we’ve actually gotten accomplished. It’s hard to take a step back and see the big picture sometimes so explaining it to others gave us a new perspective and it was very encouraging.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute students spent two Mondays making a post-bound photo album in the University of Iowa Libraries conservation lab guided by preservation assistant Bill Voss and two Mondays with preservation librarian Nancy E Kraft learning about digital photo layout.

Although most of the material was pre-cut, there was still much to do to put an album together. The OLLI students learned a about paper grain, paste, and mitering corners and experiened some of the challenges of a conservator during their class. They also learned a little about digital photograph preservation and tested the stability of their digital photos by soaking them in water for a few hours.

These photo albums can be used for traditional or digital photos.