Wednesday, July 1, 2009 This ledger from the Johnson County Historical Society was in bad shape. The boards were warped, the spine piece had come detached, and the covers were almost completely off but for one small area. The covers were so far gone I decided to replace them altogether. I kept the cloth fromContinue reading “Peeling The Smells Away”
Category Archives: Book & paper conservation
Adherography
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 While processing manuscript archive documents from the African American Museum of Iowa we fortuned upon an old, mysterious and extremely problematic form of document duplication. What we believe we have, perhaps hundreds of, are adherography documents. A definition, found in “Guide to the identification of prints and photographs : featuring aContinue reading “Adherography”
Volunteer Dawn Completes Docket Project
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,Continue reading “Volunteer Dawn Completes Docket Project”
Stuck Pages
Thursday, June 18, 2009 This week when Susan Hansen and I reviewed the work for the Art Library, she pointed out a book that had a block of pages stuck together. It felt like a brick. We were convinced that the book was beyond repair. However, before declaring the book a loss, we forwarded theContinue reading “Stuck Pages”
A Pressing Job
Tuesday, June 16, 2009 One of our biggest workstreams at the moment is the rescue of the files from the African American Museum. We have over one hundred boxes of manuscripts which unlike the working files, which can just be photocopied, need to be saved. They are mainly records and correspondence, there are some photographsContinue reading “A Pressing Job”
It’s A Clover Mite!
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 squishContinue reading “It’s A Clover Mite!”
It Might Be a Mite
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 doesContinue reading “It Might Be a Mite”
A Typical Day of Flood Recovery Work
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 driesContinue reading “A Typical Day of Flood Recovery Work”
Amanda’s Grandma’s Bible: A Tribute
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 GrandmaContinue reading “Amanda’s Grandma’s Bible: A Tribute”
Figuring Out Our New Water System
Wednesday, May 21, 2009 One of our big concerns is to make sure that everyone knows how to shut the system down in case there is a leak. A leak is a sure thing when a new system is installed — at least in my opinion it is. It always takes a while to shakeContinue reading “Figuring Out Our New Water System”