Thursday, December 12, 2009 After lots of fussing and fiddling the suitcase is finally done. I removed all the rust from the exterior and cleaned up the metal. The interior was trickier. I removed the paper lining and lined it with a heavy japanese paper and wheat starch paste. Underneath the paper the metal ofContinue reading “Suitcase Saga Part 4: Conclusion”
Category Archives: Flood Recovery
New Volunteer Elizabeth
Friday, November 20, 2009 Elizabeth Boyne has joined us in the lab as our newest volunteer. We have no shortage of projects. She started with cleaning and flattening newspapers from the Czech Slovak Museum but will most likely clean a collection of busts from the African American Museum and assist with cleaning and flattening manuscriptContinue reading “New Volunteer Elizabeth”
Where We Are Now
Monday, November 16, 2009 On October 23 we sent another round of artifacts back to the African American Museum. We also sent back the first of the manuscript boxes to be cleaned. We hope to be out of Oakdale Hall by the end of the year and it is heartening to see it empty outContinue reading “Where We Are Now”
Storage is as important as treatment
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 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 metalsContinue reading “Storage is as important as treatment”
inventory fun
Thursday, September 24, 2009 Keeping order in the aftermath of a disaster is not easy to do. When the flood hit Cedar Rapids in 2008 there was very little time to get everything out of the museums and things that weren’t rescued until after they had sustained flood damage were at times so unrecognizable itContinue reading “inventory fun”
JCHS return!!
Thursday, September 17, 2009 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 longContinue reading “JCHS return!!”
A New Conservation Lab Sink at Last
Friday, September 11, 2009 Finally, all the pieces are in place and fully functional! I thought it would be good to reflect back on the old system on the left and ponder the new system on the right. The stainless steel sink is 48” x 72” x 4” allowing for work on large and smallContinue reading “A New Conservation Lab Sink at Last”
Adherograph Reformatting Continues
Monday, August 3, 2009 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 theContinue reading “Adherograph Reformatting Continues”
Yet another workflow…
Sunday, July 19, 2009 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 ofContinue reading “Yet another workflow…”
Adventures with the warp eliminating vacuum…not Star Trek
Thursday, July 16, 2009 We have been experimenting with a fancy new vacuum packer, generally used for food preservation. We are using it to flatten books and other paper items. It would be inefficient for batch work because of all the material that needs to be cut to size but for especially warped booksContinue reading “Adventures with the warp eliminating vacuum…not Star Trek”