Thursday, July 3, 2008

As we are taking out the LPs from their disgusting boxes, the covers and the records themselves are still wet. And caked with mud. And they need to be dried–preferably with some semblance of the order they are in. Luckily, Tim Barrett has allowed us to take over the Paper Lab at the Oakdale campus, which means we get to use this ingenious drying rack for our own means. This rack was constructed based on European versions of paper racks–Tim told us who made it for the lab, but now I forget. It is suspended from the ceiling with enough room to walk under, and the little green specks in the picture are marbles (one is a cats eye).

The marbles are set within an angled groove–does that make sense?-so that the marble holds up the paper without putting undue pressure on the sheet. It works wonderfully for the covers, which are then pressed flat. The LPs themselves are hung from the marbles, too, without mishap.