Tuesday, April 30, 2013 The Conservation lab recently acquired a Preservation Pencil from Preservation Equipment Ltd. It takes cold moisture from an ultrasonic humidifier and heats it to any desired temperature up to 100 C, producing a thin stream of fine, heated mist suitable for local humidification where it is not possible or desirable toContinue reading “Preservation Pencil in Action”
Category Archives: Book & paper conservation
Assessment and Cleaning
Monday, February 11, 2013 Today I spent most of the day inspecting close to 150 art works on paper for mold. It’s very time consuming. The front and back of each piece of art needed to be entirely visually inspected — each inch. I only found a handful that I thought a paper conservator shouldContinue reading “Assessment and Cleaning”
Piecing together a flood damaged map
Friday, October 19, 2012 We are nearing the end of the flood damaged flatwork for the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library. One of the final pieces was a map that had previously been broken into 32 pieces and lined on a linen cloth. We carefully removed each piece of the map from theContinue reading “Piecing together a flood damaged map”
Encapsulating a giant map
Friday, September 28, 2012 Part of our mission at the University of Iowa is community outreach, in the Preservation and Conservation department outreach happens in many different ways. One of our most recent community projects was helping the Davenport Public Library (DPL) with an over-sized map. Amy Groskopf, the Associate Director at the Davenport PublicContinue reading “Encapsulating a giant map”
Welcome Giselle!
Tuesday, September 4, 2012 At the end of June, the Preservation and Conservation Department welcomed our new conservator, Giselle Simon. Giselle joined us from the Newberry Library in Chicago. We were so excited for her to get here so we could put her straight to work on very important tasks, like boxing up officeContinue reading “Welcome Giselle!”
Busy Summer
Wednesday, August 15, 2012 Change was a foot this summer in the UI Libraries Conservation Lab. We started the summer by starting to pack up our lab space in preparation for our move to the 5thfloor of the library. It was a long, sometimes sad process but we knew that moving to a new cleanContinue reading “Busy Summer”
TGIF Sorta’
Friday, May 25, 2012 The time at OceanTeacher Academy flew by and it is already Friday! We had a great group of students who stayed engaged and worked hard. In the afternoon, Caitlin demonstrated several things including how to make a four flap enclosure and a simple archival paper wrap as options for providing protectionContinue reading “TGIF Sorta’”
Protecting Fragile Material
Thursday, May 24, 2012 We spent the morning at OceanTeacher Academy practicing stitching single-signature pamphlets into binders and making pockets. Pamphlet binders and pockets are both good ways to protect vulnerable material. We used both commercial and homemade binder covers for our pamphlets. A pocket can be used to keep a CD, pamphlet, map orContinue reading “Protecting Fragile Material”
Visiting the National Archives in Bruges
Wednesday, May 23, 2012 Today we visited the National Archives in Bruges at their old facility and the new facility that they will move into this August. Archivist Luc Janssens talked about how he organized the archives collection by size in order to maximize the shelving space. There are four different height and width sizesContinue reading “Visiting the National Archives in Bruges”
Dual tracks: Book Repair and Preservation Planning
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 During our week at OceanTeacher Academy, we are learning the basics of book repair for circulating collectons and preservation planning. Today we learned about mending page tears and tipping in loose pages. We stressed that these mends are for circulating collections only and not for special collections or rare books. TheContinue reading “Dual tracks: Book Repair and Preservation Planning”