Thursday, July 1, 2010 Today was our first session on disaster planning and preparedness at the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Office for the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange in Ostend, Belgium. This is a five day course. One of our activities was to dry a wet book. Each student pulled a book out of aContinue reading “OceanTeacher Academy Course on Disaster Planning and Preparedness”
Author Archives: Nancy E. Kraft
OLLI Creating Post-Bound Digital Photo Album Class
Friday, April 16, 2010 This is the fourth class that we have taught for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. It’s a lot of fun introducing students to the joys (and trials) of working in a conservation lab. All the material is pre-cut for the class participants ready for them to assemble. Well, almost ready toContinue reading “OLLI Creating Post-Bound Digital Photo Album Class”
Print-on-Demand Lecture
Monday, March 22, 2010 This afternoon, Brian Baird, Vice President for Library Services, Bridgeport National Bindery, presented an overview of print on demand operations from the factory floor including an early review of the PUR (new adhesive) technology. It appears that high speed copier books are now approaching a large portion of the print acquisitions.Continue reading “Print-on-Demand Lecture”
Moving On!
Thursday, March 4, 2010 The long awaited day arrived at last. We moved out of our “dirty room” at Oakdale Hall, took down our sign, and turned in our keys! Over 18 months ago in the midst of finding space for faculty and students, University of Iowa officials took time to find us a roomContinue reading “Moving On!”
Banner Solution
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 For months we’ve looked at the Jesse Jackson banner trying to figure out what to do with it. It was obvious from inspecting the banner that part of the damage was from folding the banner and not from the flood. Once repaired or at least stablized we didn’t want to foldContinue reading “Banner Solution”
Cleaning Busts
Thursday, February 11, 2010 One project that Kallie is working on is cleaning a collection of busts. After Caitlin tested a couple different treatment methods she settled on using a mixture of water and photo flo roughly a 4:1 ratio. Kallie has been using swabs and cotton pads to remove the mud covering the busts.Continue reading “Cleaning Busts”
From 78 to CD
Monday, February 8, 2010 One of the audiovisual formats we are digitally reformatting is the 78. We no longer have the equipment to play 78 recordings. In order to have the recordings accessible to researchers we needed to replace the 78s with CDs. Staff purchased commercially produced CDs where possible. Titles they couldn’t find wereContinue reading “From 78 to CD”
Maximizing Poster Space
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 I have a cool tip that I thought I’d pass along. Last week we decided to take a poster to the American Library Association preservation section meeting describing how the flood and other recent events have impacted our department. Hauling a poster through the airport and onto an airplane is noContinue reading “Maximizing Poster Space”
Two Vernons and a Typewriter
Monday, January 4, 2010 One of our quandaries was how to clean Vernon Smith’s typewriter, an important artifact from the African American Museum. We found our answer when we contacted Vernon Steve at Steve’s Business Machines (formerly Steve’s Typewriter) in Iowa City. Vern cleaned and repaired the typewriter but did not repaint it. The typewriterContinue reading “Two Vernons and a Typewriter”
Flood-Damaged Phonograph Records Sent Home
Friday, December 18, 2009 A much awaited event finally arrived. We returned close to 1,500 sound recordings to David Muhlena, Library Director for the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids. Cleaning the records was very labor intensive. We began our work in July 2008, working in the Paper Lab cleaning offContinue reading “Flood-Damaged Phonograph Records Sent Home”