Preservation Beat

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The “bug guy” stopped by this morning. It is, indeed, a clover mite. Had we just consulted our marking/binding supervisor, Deb, we could have skipped consulting with our pest control contractor. When I told her about the clover mite, she said, “oh, yeah, my grandkids love them. They like to squish them and see the sidewalk turn red.” It’s all in knowing whom to ask! Probably most gardners would know that our bug was a clover mite.

The biggest danger to our books is that these bugs do easily squish and leave a red stain. We are monitoring the books. So far, nothing. Since they don’t breed in or munch on books, the books will go back to the processing area tomorrow.

Our pest control contractor told us that there are lots of these clover mites just outside the dock door and outside the south Main Library entrance. They either came in along with our box of books or rode in on the student who found them.

A careful observer — which I, obviously, am not — can see these little critters in the flowers just outside the library.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

We had a little bit of excitement this afternoon. A student worker had a small red mite fall out of a book he was processing. We called the “bug” guy who will visit us tomorrow. We’re hoping it’s a clover mite. Apparently, they are plentiful this year. The clover mite does not like books but will leave a red stain if smushed. In the meantime, we’ve bagged the books from that particular shipment until we get confirmation of what we are dealing with.

Here’s text book photograph along side photo of our little critter:

Learn more about the clover mite at: http://doyourownpestcontrol.com/clovermites.htm

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

I checked in with the conservation lab staff this morning. I happened to have my camera with me and thought you might like to have a snapshot of a typical day. This is the activity I captured at 10AM this morning.

While the ledger from the Johnson County Historical Society dries in the press, Gary begins to inspect and separate the pages from the next ledger in the queue.

While the records from the National Czech & Slovak Library & Museum are drying, Beth is mending a record cover.

Caitlin is cleaning a manuscript from the African American Museum of Iowa and Bryan is cutting board to make folders for Czech records.

Kristin is searching for the “perfect” spill guard to put around our new water system for the “just-in-case” pipe leak. The last time we had a pipe break all the water went into the Library Director’s office. Not a good thing!

Monday, March 2, 2009

Dick Smith, the inventor of the Wei T’o Book Freeze Dryer and Insect Exterminator, after checking all the controls to make sure they had survived the trip, spent the day training us on how to use the freezer. The first step is to set the controls to freeze the books. Once the books are frozen, the freezer controls are changed slightly for the freeze drying process. The drying is done through with additional fans and controlled defrost cycles. It’s similar to a home freezer. If you leave a tray of ice cubes in your home self-defrosting freezer long enough, the ice will disappear. Wet books typically dry within 2-4 weeks in a book freeze dryer.

We have probes that we set inside 2-3 different size books to monitor the internal temperature. One of our first tasks was to uncoil the probes and plug into the freezer.

ISU Preservation staff joined us for the day. They have a freeze dryer and welcomed the chance to get a refresher class from Dick.

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.

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

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Here is another Civil War letter similar to the one posted below, only here the additional challenges were that the letter required some flattening of the wrinkles and folds before mending and the repair tissue had to be tinted.

This letter was pressed overnight between moistened blotter paper to flatten it.

Then the Walters repair tissue was tinted to match the original.  The tissue was brushed with a thin wash of acrylic paint and allowed to dry overnight on polyester sheet.

Once the tissue dries, mending proceeds as before.

To see a scan of the completed work in our digital collection, click here:

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/cwd,5138

Thursday, January 15, 2009

One of the collections that the department is currently digitizing is a collection of letters and diaries relating to the Civil War.  While most are in good condition, a few are so torn that they require considerable mending before they can be scanned. 

For our mending, we use Walters repair tissue which we have previously prepared.  It is made by brushing adhesive (half paste, half methylcellulose) in a thin layer onto kozo repair tissue which is then layed down on a sheet of polyester and allowed to dry. 

 For mending tears, small strips of the Walters tissue are torn from the sheet using a needle tear or a water brush tear.  The strips are positioned over the tear with the dried adhesive side down and reactivated using a moist cotton swab or water brush.  They then dry under blotter or Remay and small weights.  Infills are treated similarly, with patches adhered to the edges of both sides of the paper loss.

To see the finished product, scanned and uploaded into our digital collection click here:

http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/u?/cwd,5134