Preservation Beat

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.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Today the University of Iowa Collections Coalition http://www.uiowa.edu/~collect/ went to the Iowa State Fair. We staged mock disaster recovery drills from 9AM until 3PM. Our message was that there is a strong likelihood that you can save your stuff even if it’s all grimy and wet. We invited people to participate. Several kids stepped up to the plate while the adults watched and listened. A few commented that they “wished they had known about this last year.”

It was messy but fun. We had one “pool” of muddy water and separate buckets for dunking books and photos and CDs. The books had had it by the end of the day from all the endless dunking and sometimes less than gentle treatment from participants. The photographs and CDs were still intact as were all the fake bugs and snakes thrown in for a little drama.

In addition to participating in the drill, kids lined up for a free tatoo.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

One of our volunteers, Dawn Wellington, has been working on a project re-ordering and re-housing a collection of court dockets for the Johnson County Historical Society. She went through hundreds of dockets and put them back in order and into new document boxes. When she finished, we had Leigh Ann Randak, the curator of the historical society come down to meet Dawn and check out our progress on that as well as other projects in the works. Our volunteers have been invaluable for projects like this one. It’s so satisfying to have one more thing to check off the list!

Monday, May 25, 2009

Every once in a while, we get to make a difference in someone’s life. I think it’s fitting on Memorial Day and the anniversary of the Parkersburg EF5 tornado, to post these pictures of Amanda’s Grandpa opening the Bible that our conservator repaired as best he could. His wife, Amanda’s Grandma died in the tornado. If you look carefully, you can see the damage to the Bible. It now tells the tale of the tornado. We’re glad that we could contribute in our way by returning a little something of Amanda’s Grandma to her family.

Photos provided by Amanda.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Three volcanoes overlook the city of Arequipa. Arequipa is known as ¨La Ciudad Blanca¨ or The White City, because of Sillar, the white volcanic rock that many of the buildings are constructed of. Another less desirable byproduct of the volcanoes is a fine glassy dust carried by the wind to settle in a fine layer over everything, including books. The dust is so fine it permeates even the smallest of openings. Many of the books are centuries old and have accumulated centuries of dust. One of the ongoing projects here in Arequipa is to clean and remove the books from the San Francisco Monastery. The Books are housed in a condemned building. Pictures of the library are unavailable at the moment but will be added later. You´ll just have to settle for the volcanoes which really are majestic troublemakers. Picchu Picchu is trying to hide beneath the cloud bank, but it´s there.

Misti

Chachani

Picchu Picchu

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Alvaro Meneses, Bibliographer, and Professor of Political Science at the University of San Pablo, paid a visit to our ¨conservation lab¨with his class today. Gary and Joyce talked about different book structures.

Chris Ryan gave a brief talk on early books printed at the Oldest University in Spain which is in Salamanca.

I demonstrated the construction of the ¨z¨ flags we use for cataloging and the reconstruction of a torn page. Gary showed a very large bible he has been working on by flattening pages and mending tears.

Monday , April 20, 2009

For a week and a half, Gary, Joyce, and I have been working in Arequipa, Peru at the Recoleta Monastery. We have been stabilizing and protecting damaged books. Many of these books have been damaged in earthquakes. They are in suprisingly good condition considering how old they are and what they have been through. We have been doing some mending and uniting books with custom boxes built by Linda Lundy and Joyce Miller in Iowa City.  Below are pictures of the Recoleta and the collections we are working with.   �
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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

We are currently working in the library of the Recoleta Convent in Arequipa, Peru. One of the most interesting things we have come across in this collection are the Marcas del Fuego. Marcas del Fuego are metal brands that were used to burn identifying marks into books. They were usually an initial or symbol associated with a library or collection. The Recoleta had different versions of it´s mark over time, these are a few examples.

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 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.