During the summer of 2020, the staff of the Preservation Unit was working from home. Being home did limit our access to collections material and force us to create a make-shift studio in a spare room, but thankfully we weren’t the only ones around the world having to adjust to this temporary stage. Many Conservation groups and institutions made the collective effort to create programming, webinars, and tutorials for virtual viewing and professional development. These efforts made the summer much more productive for those in the field who couldn’t access their labs and materials.
Here in no particular order, we’ve chosen to highlight a few of the intriguing and provoking of webinars and programming that we participated in over the course of the summer. Many of these are still available for viewing online and we’ve provided links to them in each vignette. Feel free to watch the webinars if any pique your interest!
In “Torn, wrinckled, stained, and otherwise naughty sheets“, Andrew Honey showcases how discriminating conservators must be when determining how much to repair when it comes to historic books and paper.
7-second version: Tears, blemishes, dark spots, and thinning areas of paper can be created during the manufacturing period, especially during the pre-Industrial Revolution eras in Europe when paper was made largely by hand. Determining which types of blemishes could be the result of inherent manufacturing processes, and not use or handling damage, enables conservators to make the best decisions about when and how much to repair. By remedying historic ‘damages’, the historicity of the object can be largely erased, which isn’t the goal of conservation at all!
Kristine Rose-Beers demonstrates the intricacies of handling fragile parchment and the historic pigments in “Exploring the Materiality of the early Islamic book“. The particular manuscript is housed at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland.
7-second version: Kristine highlighted the problems that conservators face with re-assembling fragile documents and the importance of communication and collaboration when cultures, languages, and/or religions are inherent in the work being done. With this early Qur’an manuscript, particular care was taken to ensure the intellectual and spiritual value wasn’t compromised purely for the materiality of the object’s sake. The early pigments found within the parchment served as a highlight for this art historian, but also posed questions about the history and process of making this unique piece.
Art, theatre, and books collide in “What a performance! The preservation and photogrammetry of a giant pop-up book at the National Library of Scotland” presented by Shona Hunter.
7-second version: When Scotland’s largest book is also a prop from a traveling political theatre group from the 1970s, it’s bound to have some issues. (See what I did there – nudge nudge wink wink?) The conservation issues for this particular piece included not just the unusual binding structure which enabled it to be a functioning stationary pop-up book, but also the cardboard substrate on which the scenes were painted. In a seemingly nightmarish task, the conservators had to disseminate how much to repair since they wanted the item to reflect its age and use as a stage prop but also stabilize it for storage, transport, and display in the future.
We struck gold with this intuitively designed “Adaptable Conservation Book Support (ACBS): A DIY and open-design tool” by Roger Williams. With help from engineering students, this DIY suits conservators and digitizing technicians needs thoroughly and for only $80+/-.
7-second version: (Pulled from ICON’s Youtube post) “The Adaptable Conservation Book Support (ACBS) is a tool designed in collaboration with students at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. The ACBS secures books of various sizes in an open position at any desired angle to allow conservators to treat the book’s interior. This is useful especially when working with books that cannot safely open beyond 90 degrees. The ACBS is intended to be both DIY and open-design. A shared supply list and assembly instructions allows other to build their own and suggest design improvements and alterations.” We hope to make our own in the near future!
“How Do We Assess Mould Levels? Exploring the Parameters of Rapid Adenylate Bioluminescent Swabs in Conservation” taught us the use of chemical tests for mold assessment on collections materials including both the pitfalls and advantages. Tiffany Eng Moore’s research highlights just how tricky mold can be on paper surfaces.
7-second version: Using technology from other sectors often proves fruitful for conservation and this instance proves nothing less. From the food safety sector comes these ATP swab testers to ensure that no mold is present on food kept in industrial food manufacturing or large scale kitchens, but how useful are they for finding mold on books, paper and other organics like leather? Tiffany’s scientific approach to determining the efficacy of this technology takes us on a wild ride and ultimately ends in the question “How much is too much [mold]?”.
Caitlyn Southwick, the director of Ki Culture and Sustainability in Conservation spoke about the ever-growing importance of sustainability in cultural heritage collections in her talk “Sustainability and Cultural Heritage: Our Past and Our Future“.
7-second version: Sustainability may sound like a buzzword these days, but it is integral to the conversations about cultural heritage, collecting institutions and conservation. After all, how can we expect to preserve and maintain the integrity of our material if the greater environment isn’t being maintained and preserved? Caitlyn’s call to action highlights the 17 cultural heritage goals concerning sustainability which includes more than just a focus on material objects. The balance being sought with all these initiatives will not only create a safer environment for our cultural heritage, but also the cultures and individuals themselves who create, use, and appreciate the things that are made.
That’s a roundup of some of the great ICON webinars we participated in this summer, but there were over 45 individual webinars in the series from ICON alone (found here), not to mention other groups such as Rare Book School, AIC (American Institute of Conservation), and CCAHA (Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts). Overall, it proved to be a very fruitful summer in terms of educational growth and networking for the future. Already we’ve seen an impact on our goals and desired outcomes for the unit in part because of webinars and professional development like these examples. We look forward to seeing what else we can learn in the future and applying it to the collections at the University of Arkansas.