Monday, March 22, 2010 This afternoon, Brian Baird, Vice President for Library Services, Bridgeport National Bindery, presented an overview of print on demand operations from the factory floor including an early review of the PUR (new adhesive) technology. It appears that high speed copier books are now approaching a large portion of the print acquisitions.Continue reading “Print-on-Demand Lecture”
Category Archives: Materials, equipment and procedures
Banner Solution
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 For months we’ve looked at the Jesse Jackson banner trying to figure out what to do with it. It was obvious from inspecting the banner that part of the damage was from folding the banner and not from the flood. Once repaired or at least stablized we didn’t want to foldContinue reading “Banner Solution”
Cleaning Busts
Thursday, February 11, 2010 One project that Kallie is working on is cleaning a collection of busts. After Caitlin tested a couple different treatment methods she settled on using a mixture of water and photo flo roughly a 4:1 ratio. Kallie has been using swabs and cotton pads to remove the mud covering the busts.Continue reading “Cleaning Busts”
From 78 to CD
Monday, February 8, 2010 One of the audiovisual formats we are digitally reformatting is the 78. We no longer have the equipment to play 78 recordings. In order to have the recordings accessible to researchers we needed to replace the 78s with CDs. Staff purchased commercially produced CDs where possible. Titles they couldn’t find wereContinue reading “From 78 to CD”
Maximizing Poster Space
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 I have a cool tip that I thought I’d pass along. Last week we decided to take a poster to the American Library Association preservation section meeting describing how the flood and other recent events have impacted our department. Hauling a poster through the airport and onto an airplane is noContinue reading “Maximizing Poster Space”
Two Vernons and a Typewriter
Monday, January 4, 2010 One of our quandaries was how to clean Vernon Smith’s typewriter, an important artifact from the African American Museum. We found our answer when we contacted Vernon Steve at Steve’s Business Machines (formerly Steve’s Typewriter) in Iowa City. Vern cleaned and repaired the typewriter but did not repaint it. The typewriterContinue reading “Two Vernons and a Typewriter”
Czech Pipe
Tuesday, December 15, 2009 This carved wooden pipe from the Czech Slovak Museum was covered in mud and dust. Since it has so many small crevices it was very hard to clean. I used dampened swabs to remove the dirt. It is in three pieces and combined it took 6 hours to clean. Below isContinue reading “Czech Pipe”
Steve Stenstrom Workshop on Shellac Finishes
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 Steve Stenstrom returned to the UI to teach us about Shellac. We learned about the properties of Shellac and the different ways to use it. Steve brought us pieces of wood to work with and we all got some experience “french polishing” which consists of a cotton pad soaked in ShellacContinue reading “Steve Stenstrom Workshop on Shellac Finishes”
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”