With winter break around the bend, campus wide student employee supervisors contemplate how to cope with the dramatic drop off of help to be had over the holidays. This poses unique challenges, but most of all it makes us appreciate student employees that much more. Here in Preservation/Conservation at the University of Iowa Libraries students are an essential part of our workforce and help out tremendously from the tiniest details up to large projects and day to day operations. Due to this fact, as a department we could not be happier that one of our own is the recipient of the Bentz Student Employment Scholarship, Katelyn Foster!
Katelyn Foster, Bentz Scholarship winner, at work behind the scenes at the library
On the occasion of winning the scholarship we decided we wanted to ask Katelyn some questions so other could get to know our awesome student. Here’s how it went…
Q. What is your major?
A. I am a psychology major.
Q. What year in school are you?
A. This is my senior year here at Iowa.
Q. Where and when did you graduate high school?
A. I graduated from Urbandale High School in Urbandale, IA in 2016.
Q. Why did you choose to work at the library?
A. I wanted a job on campus to get a little more involved in the University community and I liked the idea of working semi-independently in a calmer setting.
Q. What has surprised you the most about working at the library?
A. I think the variety of the projects surprised me the most, while some day to day things never change, I’m definitely not doing the exact same thing every single day and I like that! Also, the people I get to work with are all awesome. I wouldn’t say that was a surprise necessarily, but it’s a wonderful thing to like the people you work with!
Q. What is the most interesting or weird thing you have come across?
A. I think the most interesting things I have come across were from when I was collating dissertations, the topics, titles, and photographs definitely surprised me more than once!
Something else that I thought was really fun was we came across a photography book that was literally just pictures of dogs underwater. Imagine it, a book completely filled with dogs swimming/playing underwater, I think it might be my favorite book I’ve ever ran across.
Boston Terrier featured in Underwater Dogs by Seth Casteel
Q. How do you think working at the library will impact your future?
A. I think working at the library has helped me to improve my skills involving paying attention to detail, communication, and leadership, which are useful skills in any type of job or position and also just in everyday life!
Q. When you are not at work or class what are you most likely to be doing?
A. When I’m not at work or class I’m either doing work for a psychology lab here on campus, volunteering at the senior center, doing homework, or hanging out with my friends!
Q. What was the last movie you saw?
A. The last movie I saw in theaters was Bohemian Rhapsody, I highly recommend it!
Q. Since you work at a library here’s your obligatory book question: what are your 5 desert island books?
A.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (can the whole series count as one book?)
We are all happy for Katelyn and can’t wait to see what else she’ll achieve. Of all the people in our department who are proud of Katelyn, her supervisor Shelby Strommer is undoubtedly the most proud. Shelby had this to say, “Katelyn holds herself to unwavering high standards, and clearly takes sincere pride in the accuracy and quality of her work. Katelyn is also an excellent leader, and takes time to teach and correct other students in a constructive and supportive way. I can’t count how many times I have found myself saying ‘I don’t know how we would have made it through this [day, week, project, batch of new students, etc.] without Katelyn!’ She a valuable part of our department, and I’m so glad her hard work has been recognized with this scholarship.”
Last week the University of Iowa Library’s Preservation and Conservation Department were please to host Dartmouth College’s Collections Conservator Deborah Howe as part of the William Anthony Endowment lecture series. On Thursday, October 4th Howe gave a lecture at the Main Library titled Old Books, New Books, and In Between Books: a Brief Look at a Path in Bookbinding and Conservation. The William Anthony Conservation Lecture Series has grown out of an original gift from Julie Scott and Jim Fluck, both University of Iowa colleagues and friends. In 2001, their generous gift established the William Anthony Endowment, which honors our first conservator here at the libraries. He was also the first bookbinding instructor at University of Iowa Center for the Book. The fund has allowed for various conservation treatments of rare materials, conservation equipment and now, supports this lecture, which we hope will continue for many years to come. The William Anthony Conservation Lecture Series, hosted by the University of Iowa Libraries Conservation Lab, invites Book and Paper Conservators and Bookbinders to share their experience and work with the UI book arts community and beyond. More about information about the endowment and William Anthony can be found here.
Students looking at materials as part of the William Anthony Lecture series with Deborah Howe.
In addition to Thursday’s lecture Deborah held an informal workshop in the Conservation Lab with students to demonstrate the French-style endband. It’s always great to see other techniques and methods for sewing endbands and this is one of Deborah’s specialties.
Deborah Howe demonstrating for students in the Conservation Lab.
Recently a group of staff from the University of Iowa Library’s Conservation Lab journeyed up to Dubuque to install some pieces lent from the Iowa Women’s Archive (IWA) to the Dubuque Museum of Art. The materials and artwork are from the Josephine Pletscher Papers collection, donated to IWA by Kimberly Kirkpatrick Sparling and Ann Saylor in loving honor of Pletscher who was an artist, Iowan, and student of Corita Kent. The exhibit that the pieces will be a part of is called Just to Live is Holy which “features more than a dozen artists affiliated with a religious order, each of whom has made a unique contribution to our understanding of the relationship between art and faith and the importance of social justice.” Some of the most notable works on display were made by Corita Kent and these include the ones installed by Conservation staff generously loaned by the Iowa Women’s Archive.
2 more Corita Kent works on loan from the Josephine Pletscher Papers housed at the Iowa Women’s Archive
Conservation staff assessing materials for display
2 pieces that show Corita Kent’s Pop Art sensibilities
In the words of Conservator Giselle Simon, “Staff couriered all the items and installed the work with assistance from the exhibit team at DUMA, who were excellent. We basically review the condition of each item before it leaves the UI, upon arrival at the location and then again when we de-install the work to assure both the borrower and lender that the materials are safely handled and secured. The 2nd photo is of us shows us checking the condition of items as we unpack them with the curator and exhibit staff as well as a team of preparators (including Bill) hanging the framed work. We have 4 framed wall pieces and 18 flat broadsides, cards and other printed materials in cases in the exhibit.”
The exhibit Just to Live is Holy will be on display through January 9, 2019 at the Dubuque Museum of Art. Check out the press release here.
Flood in Florence, 1966: A Fifty-Year Retrospective
Congratulations to our very own “Queen of Disaster,” Nancy Kraft, on the recent publication of her new book chapter.
Nancy’s chapter, “Bridging the Rivers,” appears in Flood in Florence, 1966: a Fifty-Year Retrospective, out now from Michigan Publishing. Find out how Nancy developed her disaster response expertise as she recounts the numerous floods and other disasters she has tackled throughout her career, and reflects on the changes she has seen over time.
Flood in Florence, 1966: a Fifty-Year Retrospective features the proceedings of a 2016 symposium which marked the fiftieth anniversary of a catastrophic flood in Florence, Italy. Hundreds of thousands of books, manuscripts, and other cultural heritage artifacts were buried in muck, and the subsequent recovery efforts made a lasting impact on the conservation and preservation fields. The symposium proceedings share insights about disaster preparedness and response, conservation, and the past and future of the preservation profession.
Flood in Florence, 1966: A Fifty-Year Retrospective, ed. Paul Conway and Martha O’Hara Conway. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2018. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9310956
Retrieving items from muddy waterSpecial Collections and Preservation/Conservation staff concluded a series of disaster preparedness and response training with a disaster response drill. We divided up into four teams. Each team retrieved, rinsed, and packed out the material found in a wet, muddy pool of water. Staff had to decide what to keep and what to salvage. Photographs, slides, and CDs were rinsed and laid on screens to air dry; books were packed to go off to be freeze dried; VHS, microfilm and other material were rinsed and set aside for consultation with an expert.
“Snakes” in the water To emphasize the importance of safety and taking appropriate precaution, plastic snakes, bugs, and spiders were hidden in the muddy water — getting the message across while having a little fun.
Post drill debriefing After the drill, we debriefed. Discussing the many uses of window screens, including drying photographs and sheets of manuscripts. The screens can be easily stacked to make use of limited space.
Showing a freeze dried book At the very end of the drill we showed a couple of freeze dried books from the 2008 flood that we are working on in the conservation lab.
We are so pleased to announce that our own Nancy Kraft, Head of Preservation, has been awarded the Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Award for excellence in Library Preservation for 2018. The award was established to honor the memory of Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris, early leaders in library preservation and is given to a professional preservation specialist who has made great contributions to the field of preservation and conservation for library and archival materials. Nancy is recognized for her tireless work with the 2008 Flood Recovery, establishment of local and regional disaster teams and protocols, contributions to national disaster recovery efforts, and many more numerous achievements that have promoted preservation ideals throughout the library and archives world.
One the highest accolades a preservation professional can receive, Nancy will accept her award at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, LA on June 23rd. Congratulations, Nancy!
In higher education, we often equate student life and campus life. Last year, I found myself questioning this notion on my frequent shortcuts through the student center on campus. Absent from most of the archival photos hung in the student center’s hallway chronicling milestones in the building’s history are black students. Student life does not always equal campus life, especially for students who were not welcome into the same spaces as their white peers. In reviewing the UI Libraries’ (UIL) efforts to represent early black student life, I considered what the UIL Preservation Department could do to combat the erasure of the African American experience in Iowa.
We’re fortunate, at UI Libraries, that the university’s mandate to serve the public affords us the opportunity to leverage existing expertise and community connections. UIowa campus collections regularly partner with local cultural and community museums, like the German American Heritage Center & Museum, the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, and the African American Museum of Iowa (AAMI). Rather than push for a UIowa-specific event, I thought it best to see if there were communities in Iowa that the AAMI serves who would benefit from a digitization drive.
Nancy Kraft gives an overview of preserving family papers / Shari NealCandida Pagan discusses photo formats / Shari Neal
After meeting with staff from the African American Museum of Iowa to discuss how UIL could leverage its resources for outreach and education, AAMI museum staff decided their visitors would benefit from a digitization drive and other preservation-related events to coincide with the fall opening of their fall exhibit, If Objects Could Talk. After months of preparation, UIL preservation staff, volunteers, and UIowa Museum of Art staff shipped up to Cedar Rapids the night of Friday, August 25th and Saturday, August 26th.
Saturday began with a talk led by our department head, Nancy Kraft, and Keith-Albee project conservator Candida Pagan. After discussing the basics of preserving family heritage, they shared their experiences working with institutions heavily impacted by the flood of 2008. UIL Preservation/Conservation treated and recovered a significant amount of AAMI, Linn County Register, and Czech & Slovak Museum of Iowa books and artifacts damaged by the flooding.
Bettina Miller (center right) consults with Lexi Janezic, Giselle Simon, Katherine Wilson, and Nancy Kraft as AAMI educator Krystal Gladden looks on / Shari Neal
After the lecture, Nancy joined our head conservator, Giselle Simon, Preservation Processing Assistant Shelby Strommer, and UIMA staff to provide 1-on-1 consultations for the general public. Archival Products in Des Moines, IA donated enclosures for participants to rehouse their documents and images, which was highly appreciated.
The bulk of preparation for the events went toward the digitization drive pilot which began Friday night and continued Saturday, which we titled the If Objects Could Talk History Harvest. “History harvest” is a term coined by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln which we found fitting for another Midwest-area event of the same nature. The goals of the event were clear: test workflows for a digitization drive so that any volunteer without cataloging or archives experience could capture relevant metadata and digitize material to AAMI standards. My goal was to develop an AAMI History Harvest in a Box, for lack of a better term – easily edited and easily reproduced. Ideally, AAMI history harvests could occur around the state as well as on site. To that end, volunteers for the pilot were a mix of UIL staff, the UI history department, UIMA staff, and interested members of the public.
Alonso Avila, David McCartney, Ashlee Wilson, and Madde Hoberg ready to welcome history harvest participants / Vitalina Nova
Using guidelines modified from AAMI and libraries that have conducted similar events, we scanned document and photographs from visitors as well as narrative forms which participants filled out to share the story behind the items they selected for the history harvest. The narrative form arose from discussions on how to ethically capture the stories behind participants’ items – I wanted to eliminate the number of judgement calls facing a volunteer throughout the process. For this reason, the Google Form that was used to capture metadata had notes beneath each field that explained what to enter, gave an example, and referenced separate handouts when necessary. Additional handouts expounded on the notes about content description. The narrative form itself had 3 questions:
Why did you select these particular items for the If Objects Could Talk History Harvest?
What do these items say about you or your family?
What do these items say about your community or family’s history?
Filenaming was a simple formulation of a pre-determined folder number printed on slips and attached to clipboards with a release form and a narrative form. For example, the release form associated with f_10, would be f_10_release and the 3rd item that volunteer brought in would be digitized and named f_10_3. In keeping with AAMI conventions, _front and _back were upended when appropriate.
Bettina Miller shows Allison Bettine her family photos / Shari Neal
Aiden Bettine ready to scan as Allison Bettine catalogs photos with Bettina Miller / Shari Neal
Shari Neal with former AAMI Executive Director, Thomas Moore / Vitalina Nova
Volunteer Heidi Stofer with participant Diana Henry / Vitalina Nova
Vero Rose Smith and Dominique Alhambra of UIMA cataloging and scanning / Shari Neal
Vero Rose Smith uses a Google Form to catalog Thomas Moore’s photograph as Dominique Alhambra scans / Shari Neal
The history harvest’s model was post-custodial – the only materials that AAMI would accept were the scans of participants’ items and narrative forms. At no point would any staff or volunteers take ownership of physical items and participants were under no obligation to donate. At the end of the process, participants would receive digitized copies of their photographs or documents on a UIL flash drive and were encouraged to save several copies in different locations. This was made clear through the release and deed of gift, both of which were purposefully redundant to make clear to participants that they need not become donors to participate in preservation events.
The pilot was a success! We tested out what works, made changes for the future, and can suggest improvements. Participants appreciated UI staff and volunteers being there and visitors that heard about the events but didn’t have materials at the ready asked for the date of the next event!
In response to interest, and outcomes from this weekend, museum staff will begin planning in October for a Black History Month history harvest in 2018. They’ll use photos and digitized material from this weekend in addition to all the preparation for the If Objects Could Talk history harvest and equipment we were able to purchase thanks to a mini-grant from the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.
Creating forms, workflows, and managing the project took a lot of work and wouldn’t have been possible without collaborations within the department, UIL, other campus departments, and the previous work of colleagues outside of UIowa. Thank you to all the volunteers on Friday and Saturday (including Ben Bessman and Heather Cooper, neither of whom are pictured in this post), UIL Metadata Maven Jenny Bradshaw, Adam Robinson at American University for his cataloging expertise, Shelby Strommer for selecting literature and refining scanning workflows, the UIL Preservation/Conservation Outreach and Engagement Working Group, Jacki Rand for her help figuring out how best to gather narratives, and Katie Hassman and Hannah Scates Kettler for their general guidance.
As Project Conservator at the UI Libraries, I am tasked with several workflows that are slightly outside of the regular Libraries Lab flow. One being conservation of the Keith Albee Vaudeville Theater Scrapbooks (see more here and here), another being treatment of Linn County Recorder’s Office record books.
Nearly 430 Linn County record books have been surveyed for treatment, and after just over a year, we have worked through approximately 115 of them, getting the books back into use at the County Recorder’s Office. As you will see in the photos below, their office faced a catastrophic disaster in the floods of 2008. Eight years later, recovery work is ongoing.
In the UI Libraries’ conservation lab, we remove books from damaged covers, dry clean textblocks, separate adhered pages, humidify and flatten warped pages, and even wash pages of the record books in preparation for rebinding at a commercial bindery. Each book in this large collection is unique and requires different types of treatment. We evaluate each book prior to starting treatment to determine the needs of each item.
June 11, 2008: Vault Room at the Linn County Recorder’s Office 1 hr before closing time (photo: Joan McCalmant)
June 14, 2008 taken from same perspective as above, after flooding, prior to clean-up (photo: Joan McCalmant)
Instilling some order… (photo: Joan McCalmant)
Moldy books, already dry, were hosed down and wiped off (photo: Joan McCalmant)
FAST FORWARD 8 Years: Joan McCalmant, Linn County Recorder, stands with record books, many of which have undergone conservation treatment at the University of Iowa Libraries, currently in use at the Linn County Recorder’s Office, on the 2nd Floor.
Graduate student, Lindsey Blair, dry cleans, and works on page separation.
Before treatment image of a sewn volume. Notice the warped spine and pages and caked mud on pages.
A mud-caked page during stages of washing (Do not try this at home!)
Loose pages in a humidification chamber where paper fibers soften and relax. Pages are dried flat, under weight, before being rebound. (Do not try this at home!)
The warped, mud-caked textblock from above, split into two volumes, rebound at the commercial bindery after cleaning and flattening in the UI Libraries’ conservation lab.
As a new librarian, I appreciate the privilege that my residency at the University of Iowa’s Preservation and Conservation department affords me; aside from the professional expectations of any other position, I’m encouraged to explore gaps in my LIS education and professional interests. However, there is never enough time to learn everything! Professional conferences are invaluable, particularly in this stage of my career, for continuing education and exposure to adjacent areas of focus in librarianship. Imagine my excitement when I learned that that 2016’s PASIG fall meeting would be in NYC. Yes, I WAS overjoyed. PASIG’s conference was envisioned as both a sharing and learning opportunity for preservation and archiving professionals at all levels, as well as those outside of the LIS profession, such as developers.
Founded in 2007, the practice-centered meeting focuses on questions and considerations as well as solutions, but keeps it light on theory. Too often, professional meetings and conferences’ pre-assumption of broad audience understanding and heavy use of LIS-centered jargon can leave one feeling intimidated and behind the pack. Day one at PASIG directly addressed the issue and leveled the plane in preparation for the deep dives to follow – all without an additional cost and additional travel accommodations of a “pre-conference.” About half of the estimated 300 participants attended boot camp the first day, which serves as both an introduction, overview, and a refresher.
Sessions following the boot camp covered topics along the spectrum of the 3rd age of digital preservation, as well as preservation and archiving in relation to reference rot, new media, social justice, and the environmental impacts of digital preservation and professional responsibilities, among others. Though vendors were well-represented at the conference, the mix of professionals and scholars were the highlight of the conference. Presenters and lightning round speakers from libraries, archives, museums, universities, and cross-institutional partnerships shared case studies, challenges, successes, and pitfalls to avoid.
As always, librarians and archivists put together a lovely fete for attendants. Our hosts at MoMa arranged an after-hours reception and tours of two works that were recently treated by their Media Conservation department. Media Conservator Kate Lewis gave a tour of Teiji Furuhashi’s 1994 immersive work, Lovers. After we experienced the piece, conserved to maintain the integrity of Furuhashi vision as well as its condition in 1994, we were allowed a peek at the required wiring and networked coordinating components of sound and motion. After discussing the guaranteed obsolesce of hardware currently in use and the knowledge management in place in anticipation of treatment needed in 20 years, we moved on to Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency(1979-2004). Peter Oleksik spoke of the use and conservation challenges of the work before we viewed MoMa’s iteration of the installation.
By conference close, I felt that I had valuable information and references to bring back to Iowa. By far, PASIG 2016 was the most useful professional conference I’ve attended thus far. Next year’s PASIG meeting will be in Oxford.
Before treatment: Crumbling edges, misshapen spine, detached pages, overfilled pages, board detachment front and back.
After treatment: Foldered and housed detached pages in a 4-flap wrapper, sewed new endsheets front and back, lined spine and created new flange with extended liner and new endsheet, reattached text-block to case using new flange, mended edges and substrate tears with Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste, humidified and flattened creased clippings.
At a future date, this clipping book will be photographed and uploaded to the Keith/Albee Digital Collection. This project has been funded in major part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
