Preservation Beat

Thursday, February 26, 2009

This morning at 8:30 I received the following email. Imagine my surprise! For years I’ve been a strong advocate for the preservation of all types of collections, including library, museum, manuscripts, and archives. I’ve spent time learning about the issues, organization, and language unique to each collection type. It’s really great that I’m receiving an award “outside” my profession.

“Nancy,

We are very pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a 2009 recipient of the Presidents’ Award presented by the Midwest Archives Conference.

This award, established in 1986, recognizes significant contributions to the archival profession by individuals, institutions, and organizations not directly involved in archival work but knowledgeable about its purpose and value. Recipients are chosen by a committee comprising the three most recent past presidents of MAC from nominations submitted by committees in each of the 13 states in the MAC region.

The four of us agree that your tireless efforts following last June’s devastating floods alone merit this recognition. In addition, your lifelong commitment to assisting our profession is deeply appreciated by your colleagues. Thank you for all you have done for us in preserving and strengthening our collections.

The award committee will send you a more formal letter of notification soon, along with information about MAC’s annual meeting, which this year will be held in St. Louis, Missouri, from April 29 to May 2. We hope you can join us as our guest. Awards will be presented during the annual membership meeting at that time.

Again, congratulations! We are fortunate to know you as a colleague and as a friend.”

David McCartney
Kären Mason
Rachel Vagts
Tanya Zanish-Belcher

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

We’ve been eagerly awaiting our new book freeze dryer, especially since our old one is on its last leg AND we have lots of frozen art books waiting to be dried out. It took 2 hours to get the Wei T’o Hussmann freeze dryer in place.

The book freezer weighs 1730 lbs crated and 1430 lbs uncrated. It stands 86″ high x 67 1/2″ wide x 36 1/2″ deep. It was too tall to make it through the doors in the upright position so it had to be turned on its side. BUT not on the side with all the controls.

So how many people does it take to get such a large freezer into the building? And how does one turn it on it’s side without damaging the freezer? I’ll let the photos tell the story! Or see it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSelj2zmukQ
Special thanks to everyone who helped get the freezer in place.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Caitlin and Kristin spent most of the day at the Art Library sorting through the air-drying books. They inspected almost 400 books. At the end of the day there were still 18 volumes needing more air drying time. The rest were put on carts. About 200 volumes will need repair work – flattening, small repairs, or new enclosures. About 180 books are ready for reshelving. Yes, we know the book in the photo is upside down! As a book is air-dried the book is rotated to make sure that all sides are dry. As a book starts to dry the water settles to the bottom. You can actually feel that the bottom of the book is heavier as you lift to turn it over.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Art Librarian called early this morning informing us that a pipe had burst, soaking the oversize art book collection. The good news was that they had caught the water break early and that it was clean water. The bad news was that a majority of the books had clay-coated pages (glossy like a magazine) and if they dried before we could separate the pages the books would become bricks –never to be opened again. We estimated that about 2,400 books were wet.

We were over with an assessment team by 9:15 AM. Staff arrived shortly after that with needed supplies and the work began. We began pulling books out and setting them up for air drying. It didn’t take long to figure out that we would not be able to air dry all the wet books.

The Art Librarian, Rijn Templeton, selected the most valuable books for us to air dry while I called in a freezer truck and supplies to box up the remainder of the books. We sent out a call for volunteers to assist. Help poured in all day (excuse the pun). By 3:45 PM we had 165 volumes dried, 296 still air drying, and around 1,800 volumes packed in boxes and on the freezer truck. Special kudos to Kim Carpenter, Art Library Assistant, for acting quickly when he discovered the leak.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Our publicity has been paying off! Marilyn Maynard, a local Iowa Citian, read about our recovery efforts in the Press Citizen and thought she might be able to contribute. She is currently working on a project designed to clean and copy the working files for the African American Museum.

The files were in a large filing cabinet and are dirty and warped with water damage. Our volunteers will be dry cleaning them with eraser crumbs to prepare them for photocopying. The folders are being replaced and the information hand copied onto the new folders. 

This is a large scale project and would possibly have been dropped if it wasn’t for the help of volunteers like Marilyn simply because it would be too expensive. The fact that we have people willing to take on some of these projects allows the museums to put their money to use in other places and makes it possible to save more of these collections than we would have otherwise. 

Some other workflows we hope to get going with our volunteers are cleaning, flattening, and rehousing newspapers from the Czech Slovak Museum and cleaning, and rehousing court dockets for the Johnson County Historical Society. 

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Walter Cybulski, Preservation Librarian at the National Library of Medicine, and I led a two-day e-forum lsitserv discussion on disaster planning and response. We weren’t really sure how it would work but were willing to give it a try. It was exhausting but well worth it. 

We shared sites for resources; discussed mutual aid agreements, “disaster response” exercises for training, and tips on dealing with a disaster; had lots of ideas and pointed to templates for crafting a disaster response plan; talked about how to deal with water leaks and the virtues of cleaning or not cleaning mud from books before packing up; pondered whether to store record album covers and discs together or separately; had a rather lively discussion about mold clean up; and identified funding for recovery and working with FEMA as an area that needed further action at the national level.

We had 549 subscribers and posted close to 100 emails. The e-forum was free and sponsored by the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association.

For the archives of this discussion go to: http://lists.ala.org/sympa, click on ALCTS (spelled out) under the ALA Division heading, then choose alcts-eforum@ala.org

Friday, February 6, 2009

Susan Kuecker, African America Museum curator, would like to save her working files. These files have all her research for various researcher requests, grant applications, and projects, collected over eight years. Most of this information is not in her computer. Since most of the items in the files are not unique, she can’t justify spending a lot of money on recovery.

Since the material is not unique, our working premis is that we’ll clean the items good enough to make a photocopy replacement, flattening only when necessary. Our best guess is that there are about 6,000 pages. When I first priced this proposed project out using a conservation lab technician’s time, the price tag was around $24,000. Then I tried the same scenario using student workers. The price tag was $12,000. Still too high. A little light bulb went off — we are interviewing volunteers. Perfect!

After a brief discussion with Susan, we arrived at a plan whereby the AAMI will supply us with replacement folders and photocopy paper and we’ll use a combination of students and volunteers to process the files. Any exceptions (unique brochures, newspaper articles, photographs) will be separated out for a later project. New price tag is under $900. Very acceptable to all!

We’ve begun pulling the material out of the file drawers and putting them into boxes for volunteers to work on. The file drawers are going back to the AAMI. They hope to be able to clean the drawers and repaint for re-use.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The covers of the LP records in the Czech Slovak Collection come in different formats and conditions of which some are worse than others. Then there are those few that are exceptionally awful. This is an example of a double disc set in which the inner images fused together in the water, like the pages of a book.  I had to peel away all the layers of the cardboard that I could without damaging the cover images and it all came apart except the very inner facing images. I couldn’t separate these mechanically so I put the whole thing into a tray of warm water and photo flo using sheets of remay cut to size as a transfer support. I left it to soak for a few minutes until I was sure the water had completely saturated the paper. I then took a teflon lifter and the pages came right apart. There was a piece that got stuck and came away which you can see in the photo but after I had dried and flattened the cover I was able to mend it and put the piece back where it belonged. The image was dried open, flat between two blotters beneath weight. 

Monday, February 2, 2009

The process we have been using to clean and prepare the LP covers to be rehoused with their respective 33 1/3s has turned out to have a lot more steps than we thought. We have been removing the image from flood saturated cardboard which is warped, discolored, and in some cases has a strong flood-ooze odor.

The moisture introduced during the cleaning process can warp the already warped paper and it is necessary to flatten each image. To do this, even more moisture is added in the form of misting water from a sprayer to the back side of each image. This relaxes the paper which is then put in between blotter paper and pressed in a large nipping press. The blotter paper absorbs the excess moisture and the pressure of the press flattens the images. I have been doing these in batches since it is possible to put a large stack in the press at one time. 

Though this is a lengthy process it is necessary to bring the covers as close to the original condition as possible. These images are inserted into a polyethylene sleeve along with a three flap enclosure to hold the record. 

Not all of the covers have been so cooperative. Some are so soundly adhered to the cardboard that it needs to be peeled off from the back. We are still working out the most efficient way to do this. Now that we have a system sketched out it will start going more quickly.  It’s satisfying to see a box of finished covers put together. We’re definitely making progress!