Wednesday, February 13, 2013 We had a very busy day at the Cultural Recovery Center in Brooklyn. The volunteer paintings conservator examined a couple of paintings that an artist brought in during the morning, just before noon she removed an artwork from a frame and examined the piece for mold and damage, in the afternoonContinue reading “Busy Day at the Cultural Recovery Center in Brooklyn”
Category Archives: Materials, equipment and procedures
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”
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”
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”
OceanTeacher Academy Preservation Course
Monday, May 21, 2012 Our first day at OceanTeacher Academy (http://classroom.oceanteacher.org/) Preservation of Books and Other Media was very productive in spite of students and teachers suffering from jet lag and the challenge of understanding each other. The students are from Ghana, Vietnam, Seychelles, Cuba, Namibia, Latvia, Ukraine, Latvia, Jamaica, Kenya, Mauritius, and Pakistan. WeContinue reading “OceanTeacher Academy Preservation Course”
Johnson County Record Books
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 We have conserved a number of record books from the Flood of 2008 for the Johnson County Historical Society. Most of them have been pretty straight forward in the treatment that was needed. We were so close to being finished with all of the record books when we came across aContinue reading “Johnson County Record Books”
Andrea’s Awesome Flood Recovery Video
Thursday, May 3, 2012 Recovering from a flood can take years and can be overwhelming if you don’t have help. Luckily the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and the University of Iowa Libraries have lots of excellent help. The UI Libraries Conservation Lab continues to act as a flood recovery lab for theContinue reading “Andrea’s Awesome Flood Recovery Video”
Hinge Tightening
Hinge Tightening or Tightening in Case This treatment should be performed when the hinge(s) of a book are loose but not separated. Do not use this treatment if the cover cloth is torn at the joint. The materials needed for this treatment are: Knitting needle PVA inContinue reading “Hinge Tightening”