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.

The objects we have received since the flood span a wide range of materials. Since we couldn’t work on everything immediately, one of the first things we had to address was proper storage. The wooden objects were set out to dry as were the baskets and miscellaneous plastic, ceramic, glass items. The metals however presented a problem. They were rusting and since we weren’t able to get to them immediately we needed to arrest the deterioration somehow.

After doing some research and consulting with Steve Stenstrom, an objects conservator, we bought large plastic tubs in which we could create a micro-environment for the metal objects. This allowed us more control over the condition of their surroundings. We put packages of dessicant in the tubs with the metals to absorb any moisture which might contribute to the deterioration of the metal. The dessicant packets were switched out periodically and we were able to slow the process of rusting until we had a chance to stabilize the objects.

The items in the tub to the left are already cleaned and waiting to go back home to the African American Museum of Iowa.

When we got the books, maunscripts, and artifacts back to the University one of our first, and largest, tasks was to put things in some semblance of order. This was mainly done for museum artifacts as opposed to the books and manuscripts which tend to be a bit easier to identify. We had a rough idea of what we should have and the curators were extremely helpful but many items had tags obscured by mud or ink that had run.

The African American Museum is using a program called Past Perfect which allows us to see images of items before the flood. This has been invaluable in cases where we don’t know exactly how much treatment an object needs. We don’t want to remove a finish because we think it is staining from the flood. We also do not want to “overclean” objects, taking away from their provenance.

Finally sending some ledgers home!! Leigh Ann Randak came to the Conservation Lab today to pick up 42 finished ledgers and the completed collection of re-boxed court dockets!!

This means we are nearly half way through the ledger project and that we’re making progress! Many of these projects are so long that it is hard to gauge our progress so when we can send things back to their museums it is very satisfying. The ledgers are mainly record books from the Johnson County Historical Society. Many of these books are enormous and in addition to the satisfaction of having them finished, it will be helpful to have the extra space. Now we just have to get those LP’s sent home.

One of our volunteers has taken on the project of building custom boxes for objects to be returned to the African American Museum in November. Beth has been teaching Kallie Holt how to make boxes from the sturdy blue corrugated board we use routinely in the conservation lab.  In addition to making them easily transportable the boxes will be good for long term storage for these artifacts.

One of the advantages of our close communication with the curators is the ability to have us prioritize items. Susan Kuecker of the African American Museum is opening an exhibit in November and sent us a list of objects she needed so we could re-arrange our workflow. These are the objects that Kallie is re-boxing.  We hope to have a majority of the items from the African American Museum treated, boxed, and ready to go by December.

     A UI prof and grad student were interested in getting a digital copy of Cursus Literaturae Sinicae, a 19th C. translation of classical Chinese texts into Latin in five volumes.  When the volumes came via ILL from Notre Dame, they were scanned using the overhead scanner with the gradation curve set to give as white a background as possible, since it was determined that we should also print out a copy of the scans and bind them for our own circulating collection.  Here’s what they look like.

     The sheets from the printer were perfect bound with the double fan press.  To account for the swelling in such large volumes we decided the backs should be rounded, which was accomplished with the aid of a couple of cardboard map tubes at the fore edge.

For the first volume (at left above) only three spine linings were used: kozo, acrylic/cotton super, paper.  As this volume had a lot of throw up, subsequent volumes got additional linings: kozo/cotton super/paper/cotton/paper, which worked better.  Hopefully they will stand up well to frequent use.

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.

Ongoing efforts to clean and flatten flood-affected archives manuscripts from the African American Museum of Iowa have turned up yet another form of adherograph deterioration. (See June 30, 2009 entry)

As seen in the example to the left, the powder medium that holds the adherograph text image has irreversibly adhered to the back of a preceding document page.  Unable to separate the two, I decided to scan both pieces of the damaged document and then attempt to reunite them in Photoshop.

The first step was to flip the fragment horizontally.  Though only the back of the reversed fragment text was visible through the adherograph medium, flipping it over digitally created a faint, though workable positive. 

Note the altered color of the reunited fragment.  Through a haphazard process of tweaking color levels and saturations I was able to pull the text out, making it as legible as possible.  After doing so, reducing the image from color to black and white serves to isolate the information from the discolored document carrier.

 This detail, captured after converting document to black and white, shows that while the texture of the adherograph medium remains cumbersome, the information is again legible. 

This second example details another completed document as well as its original post-flood condition.  While this process is probably too time consuming in many situations, experimenting with the procedure was a valuable experience.  Not only is there now a workflow for this in the future, but it also raises some interesting questions about disaster recovery, institutional resources, and policies pertaining to discarding and reformatting.

This Marriage Certificate arrived at the Conservation Lab tightly rolled in a tube. It was in two torn halves, somewhat soiled and quite tattered along the edges with some degree of loss particularly along the right margin.

The treatment that followed included a gentle humidification and flattening, followed by dry cleaning using Minter eraser crumbs and Absorbene sponge eraser. Kristin secured strategic bridge mends of tenjugo along the major tear to insure proper matching of scarfed edges, and then lined the entire certificate onto a medium-lightweight Korean handmade paper. The lining enforced an additional gentle flattening of the certificate and countered it’s tendency to curl.

Once the lining was dry and the certificate flat, Kristin createdcustom-tinted double layer/sandwich infills for areas of loss. A thicker more fibrous paper was used for the bulk of the infills (to echo the thickness of the certificate) and was thin sekishu-gampi was then adhere along the top of the infill (to echo the calendared sheen of the original paper). Custom color tinting was achieved post-mends, using acrylics and a “dry-swab” technique.

Text provided by Kristin A Baum.

This weekend I’ve started working with the Johnson County Historical Society book collection. So far they have required some dry cleaning, mending and flattening. I’ve been using the vacuum packer to flatten them which has been very effective and is really fun to watch. The damage is similar to that of the ledgers but since the books are smaller it goes a little faster. We still have a yearbook collection and the rest of the ledgers to do so I’m not going to run out of books anytime soon!