Conservation & Collections Care News

Benefit Auction and Plainly Spoken Reception at University of Iowa Library

Two events will mark the closing of the UI Libraries Conservation Lab’s 30th anniversary celebration: a reception for the Midwest Guild of Bookworkers Exhibit Plainly Spoken, and an auction of fine bindings, to benefit the William Anthony Conservation Fund. The festivities will take place in Special Collections, 3rd floor of the Main Library, on November 13th from 6-8pm.

• The exhibit, Plainly Spoken, features 17 fine bindings from Guild members who were inspired by Julia Miller’s Publication, Books Will Speak Plain. The exhibit runs from August 14-November 30 in Special Collections.

• The Auction will feature fine bindings from “alumni” and friends of the Conservation Lab, including Mark Esser, Pamela Spitzmueller, Gary Frost, Penny McKean, Anna Embree, Emily Martin, William Minter, Lawrence Yerkes, Bill Voss, Caitlin Moore, and handmade tools from Shanna Leino. In the coming days we will be posting biographies and images from all the auction participants — stay tuned!

Proceeds from the auction will benefit the William Anthony Conservation Fund, which supports ongoing conservation activities and special projects. More details are available at http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/preservation/30years/.

Books of the 21st Century

Monday, October 27, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

The making of printed books has continued quietly across each turn of each century since the fifteenth …except for one. With the turn of the twenty-first century a sudden displacement has taken place. Thereafter books need not be something somewhere; books could be effervescent, appearing and disappearing, on a screen display. The text is scrolled over the screen, displacing text paging. Another way of considering this sudden bibliographical significance is that prior to the twenty-first century almost all books were not produced digitally and following the turn of the century almost all books were.

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Library Science

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

Feral Seminar, 2014
Resilience of Book Transmission

Please join us for open forums,
Thursdays, 2:00—3:30, Fall Semester
Room 2058, Main Library

We have recently added an important reference for our wide study of resilience of book transmission. This is philology[1] and the legacy of comparative study of texts. We can extend this reference to include currently studied “comparative textual media”[2] as we expand philology to include screen and audio transmissions of texts. Our philology frame can also be extended if we add library science to engage books or bibliographic units and their arrangements into libraries. We could call the extension “philology of comparative libraries” and such projections could be extended to include audio and screen media.

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Cognitive Factors

Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

Feral Seminar, 2014
Resilience of Book Transmission

Please join us for open forums,
Thursdays, 2:00—3:30, Fall Semester
Room 2058, Main Library

As we arrive at the cognitive sciences we find a pivot in our studies of resilience in book transmission. This is a pivot from givens to potentials as we consider our bionic constraints and embodied cognitions and consider their amazing adaptabilities for uses such as book writing and reading.

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Don’t Be the Bunny

Friday, September 26, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

Feral Seminar, 2014
Resilience of Book Transmission

Please join us for open forums,
Thursdays, 2:00—3:30, Fall Semester
Room 2058, Main Library

We have a favorite dictum as we study and manipulate the experience of media. This is “don’t be the bunny” or otherwise fall victim to contending polarities. Such binary decoys provoke inconclusive debate and displace us from study of the wide territory exactly between simple contrasts.

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Imposition and Format for Book Description

Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Submitted by Gary Frost

There can be confusion regarding description of paper books; the given book needs description of how it was initially made as well as how it appears. Either perspective can unfairly dominate. Makers best describe their own work, but, perhaps, they cannot. Papermakers, printers and bookbinders would also prefer their own exclusive explanations. Bibliographers and book conservators can bring the description up to date but some estimation will be needed for missing production information. And the later encounters with the surviving book bring other surprises and descriptive challenges.

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Preservation & Conservation Welcomes New Hires

Thursday, September 18, 2014

The UI Libraries Preservation & Conservation department would like to welcome two new(ish) staff members, Justin Baumgartner and Elizabeth Stone. They join us as members of the Keith/Albee project team. They will be working together, along with other UI Libraries staff, to stabilize and digitize the Keith/Albee collection. Both Justin and Elizabeth are University of Iowa graduates who are no strangers to employment at the UI Libraries.

Elizabeth Stone started on July 21, 2014 as the Keith/Albee Project Conservator. She is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa Center for the Book where she studied bookbinding, letterpress printing, and book history. As a student, she worked in Preservation & Conservation salvaging flood-damaged items from the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and the African American Museum of Iowa.

Justin Baumgartner started on July 22, 2014 as the Keith/Albee Digital Project Librarian. He is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa School of Library & Information Science. As a student, he worked in the UI Libraries Special Collections & University Archives and interned for the Digital History Project at the Iowa City Public Library.

The duo will shepherd 125-150 oversize scrapbooks through conservation and digitization workflows during the next three years. Visit the growing digital collection at digital.lib.uiowa.edu/keithalbee .

The Keith/Albee project is a three-year project to stabilize, digitize, and provide online access to the Keith/Albee collection which documents the activity of a prominent vaudeville theater company through more than 40 years of business. The records chronicle the expansion of the Keith/Albee circuit, changes in its leadership, and the eventual decline of vaudeville.

The Keith/Albee Project has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

New Housing Option for Conservation

Thursday, September 11, 2014
Submitted by Bill Voss

With the recent acquisition of a riveter and a board creaser, the Conservation Lab has a new housing option – phase boxes constructed from sturdy 40 point featuring fore edge closures made of nylon string and riveted vinyl washers. Stronger than a regular 20 point four flap enclosure, and quicker to make than a full clamshell box, these phase boxes can also be modified with Volara foam padding or Ethafoam wells to accommodate objects of various shapes and sizes.

Buffalo and Iowa Connection

Wednesday, September 3, 2014
By Gary Frost

A library and archives specialty is now accommodated within art conservation programs at the University of Delaware, New York University and Buffalo State College. Iowa is among others supporting and participating in this overall initiative that is generously supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

UI has begun hosting short term Internships for students from the Buffalo State College. These students have elected to specialize in book conservation at their home program and welcome the opportunity to experience the varied service routines of a working preservation department.

The Buffalo and Iowa exchange is coordinated by Iowa Conservator Emeritus Gary Frost. He is traveling from Iowa to Buffalo to offer book conservation training sessions, three times a semester. Frost also presents a three-week summer workshop in Buffalo that is opened to students from all the art conservation programs.

The Buffalo/Iowa exchange has benefits for everyone. Beyond support of graduate education in library and archives preservation Iowa offers unique resources for the students. Beyond experience in a working preservation department the Iowa Center for the Book provides experience of traditional crafts of book production while intense learning going on between Buffalo and Iowa students is also an important factor. The mutual student learning suggests other initiatives including cross-program workshops hosted by Iowa and cross-program curricula.

The Buffalo/Iowa exchange is a classic win-win transaction. Considering the students benefits it is a win-win-win transaction.

Psalter-Spiel

Friday, August 29, 2014
By Gary Frost

The UI Libraries Preservation & Conservation Department continues assistance of the celebration of 300 years of book printing in the Amana Church community. The retrospective exhibit of the imprints, from 1714 to 2014, has been arranged and installed with the help of the conservation staff. Now we are printing the commemorative keepsakes for the various celebration dinners and conferences.

Printing of the keepsakes is underway at the Homestead Print Shop and Post Office. The Print Shop and Post Office is itself a historical exhibit. The recreation depicts printing and communication methods of the 1950’s in the Amana Colonies. The relatively late period depiction enables the inclusion of the Linotype composing machine; not until the mid-twentieth century did the German printers finally accept keyboard composition, modern types and English language.

The keepsake items feature proofs from the stereo-plates of the 1854 setting of the Psalter-Spiel. This hymnal and recitation book was produced from the beginning of the Church of True Inspirationists with the last edition from the 1854 plates printed in 1910. The plates appear to have been cast in Buffalo, New York replicating hand-set composition prepared just prior to relocation of the villages from Ebenezer, New York to the Amana Colonies.

Printing in the Inspirationist community has a long and impressive legacy of book printing. The UI Libraries Preservation & Conservation Department is proud to contribute the persistence of the craft of printing from metal type in the Amanas.