As part of his work in the conservation lab, Bill Voss constructs enclosures to house delicate artifacts. He recently completed a large custom enclosure for one item from Andrei Codrescu’s Art Installation Piece. Codrescu is a Romanian-American writer and artist. His artwork and poetry was acquired for the UI Libraries’ International Dada Archive in SpecialContinue reading “Not just paper and books: Conservation staff create custom enclosures for unique artifacts”
Category Archives: Storage environments
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”
Visiting the Vietnam National Archives Center IV
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 Today we visited the National Archives Center IV in Dalat, Vietnam. This visit was in sharp contrast to our visit to the Vietnam Institute of Oceanography. Our visit with the VNIO was quite causal and informal. Today’s meeting was very formal, complete with speeches, a gift, and several photo sessions. LindaContinue reading “Visiting the Vietnam National Archives Center IV”
Visiting Vietnam Institute of Oceanography Library
Monday, February 13, 2012 Linda Pikula and I met with Yen and Van to discuss preservation and possible digitization of select portions of their library collection at the Vietnamese Institute of Oceanography Library. The biggest challenge is that the library is quite close to the ocean where ships dock. These ships bring in a lotContinue reading “Visiting Vietnam Institute of Oceanography Library”
Moving out of 5th floor
Have you ever wondered what was in room 5065 “staff office” with the classification of the word typewriting across the door? Well, today is your lucky day. The room use to be a work space where PhD candidates’ dissertations were typed. Furthermore, this was our storage space for the items being recovered from the flood.Continue reading “Moving out of 5th floor”
Odor Reduction for Books in Storage
The National Czech and Slovak Museum and Libraries have a vast collection of books damaged in the flood. Most of their collection is currently in storage in Cedar Rapids awaiting treatment. We recently received a box of books that was pretty smelly. In order to help curb the smell we developed a new way toContinue reading “Odor Reduction for Books in Storage”
Blue Boxes
Wednesday, September 9, 2009 One of our volunteers has taken on the project of building custom boxes for objects to be returned to the African American Museum in November. Beth has been teaching Kallie Holt how to make boxes from the sturdy blue corrugated board we use routinely in the conservation lab. In addition to making themContinue reading “Blue Boxes”
Majestic troublemakers
Thursday, April 23, 2009 Three volcanoes overlook the city of Arequipa. Arequipa is known as ¨La Ciudad Blanca¨ or The White City, because of Sillar, the white volcanic rock that many of the buildings are constructed of. Another less desirable byproduct of the volcanoes is a fine glassy dust carried by the wind to settle in a fine layerContinue reading “Majestic troublemakers”
More Wet Books
Thursday, February 19, 2009 The Art Librarian called early this morning informing us that a pipe had burst, soaking the oversize art book collection. The good news was that they had caught the water break early and that it was clean water. The bad news was that a majority of the books had clay-coated pagesContinue reading “More Wet Books”
Protective Boxes for Art Books
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 In 2007, School of Library and Information Science Preservation students Laura Guth, Sally Myers, and Kris Wiley prepared a preservation plan for the oversize collection of about 550 books at the University of Iowa Art Library. The plan called for sending a small number of items to Book Repair each week.Continue reading “Protective Boxes for Art Books”