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 or other loose material with a book. A pocket attached to a folder can also be used to protect an item, particularly pamphlets that are too fragile to stitch in a binder or items too thick to include in a book. Pamphlet binders and pockets are inexpensive ways to protect fragile material.

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 sizes of shelving. He also mapped the collection areas on an architectural floor plan so that the movers can move the boxes and shelve them for him. He has to very careful that the boxes get on the correct shelf so he can find the boxes back again.

In order to reduce the chances of fire getting into the archive collections, he requested that a fire wall be built that will withstand fire for one hour. The depth of the fire wall can be seen behind the architects who came to visit with us during the tour of the new facility.

Luc also should us an example of safely displaying a book that needs special handling. Each book that needed special support was set out on a pillow.

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. The goal of simple mends for circulating collections is to extend the life of the book so it can continue to circulate until the book wears out. We used transparent, thin, flexible mending tissue.

We also continued to work on a preservation plan for each library. Students are discussing and recording preservation needs for collections, equipment and building. After each lecture, they review their recorded needs and make additions and/or corrections. By the end of the week they will each have a preservation plan. Today the students got into groups and shared ideas for filling out the various needs forms.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Ms. Yen, Librarian for the Vietnam Institute of Oceanography, needs to make the most of her limited resources. Here she has designed a simple protector for a fragile map. She used a poster, turned it over to the back side and made corners to hold the map in place. Maybe some day she will be able to give the map an archival folder. Until then the map can now be handled safely.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Today we worked with the rare books. Two years ago Yen prepared a list of rare books for review. Both Linda and Yen checked different sources to determine how widely the titles were held and if they have been digitized. From this list we selected only three titles (20 volumes) to inspect, given our time limitations. As a gift to the Vietnam Institute of Oceanography library, the University of Iowa Libraries plans to make boxes for these select titles. I just hope my measurements are accurate.

Each book had to be measured in several places to find the highest, widest deepest part in order to know how large to make each box. I decided to err on too big rather than too small. Plus, we decided with the 14 volume set to make all the boxes the same height and width and just adjust the depth — a shortcut that we probably wouldn’t take if we were working in a lab. We checked the measurements twice and Linda recorded the information.

The books were in mixed condition. All bindings had extensive damage. Most of the volumes had intact legible text except for one extremely brittle book. Fortunately, the brittle book is held by two other libraries and has been digitized.