Preservation Week, April 30 – May 6, inspires action to preserve personal, family, and community collections in addition to library, museum, and archive collections. It also raises awareness of the role libraries and other cultural institutions play in providing ongoing preservation education and information. The 2023 Preservation Week theme is Building Resilient Communities. Every year,…Continue Reading Preservation Week 2023
Hey there, it’s been… a minute! Many things have happened with the Preservation Unit over the past year-ish. Let’s get caught up. The end of 2021: we found out Mullins Library Phase II renovations were slated to start in December 2022. Special Collections and the preservation lab were located on Levels 1 & 2, the…Continue Reading What’s New with Preservation?
Preservation Week inspires action to preserve personal, family, and community collections in addition to library, museum, and archive collections. It also raises awareness of the role libraries and other cultural institutions play in providing ongoing preservation education and information. The 2022 Preservation Week theme is “Preservation in the Face of Climate Change” and UPROSE Executive…Continue Reading Preservation Week 2022
Pamphlet binding is one of the easiest forms of bookbinding and highly accessible for most people who want to make a simple journal or sketch book. The Basics Pamphlet binding involves very few steps, but the pattern of sewing changes depends on the size of the pages being sewn. Ultimately, pamphlet binding can only be…Continue Reading Basic Bookbinding: Pamphlet Sewing
These techniques were learned from a web-based tutorial courtesy of the Creative Arts Workshop. Learn more about CAW and their programs: http://creativeartsworkshop.org/. This was another experiment done while working from home, but repeatable in the studio or lab space. Book cloth: What is it? Book cloth is a cotton-based fabric with a protective backing of…Continue Reading Experimental Art: Making Bookcloth
The American Institute for Conservation (AIC) is hosting Ask A Conservator Day today, November 18th. The day is meant to raise awareness about conservation, and conservators around the world will be participating on social media (follow the #AskAConservator hashtag across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook to see what’s being posted and discussed by others). For a…Continue Reading It’s #AskAConservator Day!
Background Every year in July, I tabulate statistics for treatments performed by the Preservation Unit and for materials sent to the commercial bindery for the fiscal year that ends in June. The FY20 numbers were calculated in July, but only as numbers in a spreadsheet. I participated in a tutorial earlier this year on Tableau,…Continue Reading A Year in Numbers
In a change from our typical themes, we present a mystery: The Case of the Salt and Vinegar Microfilm. A frightening tale of degradation, fitting for Halloween this weekend. The piece is a work of fiction very loosely based on true events from Mullins Library. Oh, that smell… Sounds of a typewriter clicking and the…Continue Reading The Case of the Salt and Vinegar Microfilm
Don’t forget to check out our News section under the Outreach tab. We try to update it regularly and even though the current climate has quelled our events for the rest of the year, there are always exciting things going on in the field of preservation/conservation of material culture from all around the world. Most…Continue Reading EXTRA! EXTRA!
[Un]Boxing is a series where we’ll explore the creative and unusual ways to safely house fragile materials for the Libraries’ collections. This is the first installment and features a project finished in 2019 for the Archives in Special Collections. As part of the MC 1798 Ralph Hyman Papers there is a set of three miniature…Continue Reading [Un]Boxing: String Trio