Library Gazette

On Tuesday, I attended a panel discussion in Benson about the Boot Camp for Professors. Set in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Boot Camp for Professors is a week-long event where teachers can work on aspects of their teaching philosophy and approach. The TLC pays all the registration and travel expenses. A small town, Leadville, CO is the location, and is the highest town in the US. Why, you may ask, Craig, did you attend this panel? There are two reasons: one I’m a rookie teacher for LIB100; and 2. last summer, Jeff Lerner told me about this workshop after he found out librarians were getting faculty status. It is unclear whether Library Faculty can attend this workshop, but it sounds fabulous-especially for those whose primary work revolves around instruction.

The panel was made up of: Holly Brower (School of Business), Simone Caron (History), Jeff Lerner (TLC, History), and Erica Still (English). Each individual described a week in a dorm at Timberline Campus of Colorado Mountain College, and how hard they worked. They all worked in groups and had homework every night. Topics included deep learning, active learning, over teaching, and rubrics.

Some of Holly Brower ideas were:

1. Questions are the currency of teachers-use them to keep the class moving, emphasize a point, check for retention, or to promote discussion.

2. Evaluate whether you are under or over-teaching by not giving students enough guidance or too much direction.

3. Backward design your courses-ask what your students need to learn to do: ten, how will you know they can understand something at the end of the course, and how can you best help them learn how to do it during the course.

4. Limit lectures to 15 minutes and change your teaching method every 20 minutes.

5. Consider some form of daily accountability (quiz, 3-5 minute writing exercise, etc.)

6. Learn to love them- people are motivated by three things: fear, duty and love.

7. Use multiple methods to promote engaged teaching- 1 minute paper, teach your neighbor, directed paraphrasing, pre-class assignments, etc.

8. Use midterm evaluations

There were lots of other tips like play music before class, stop lecturing, being physically active while teaching helps learning and others. Everyone, without fail, said this camp was hard, but well worth the effort. Keep your eyes on the TLC for announcements about this year.

Give Hugh his due. Once again, artisan/craftsman Hugh Brown has done work that demonstrates thinking outside the box.

Special Collections is removing everything from the Rare workroom. This move meant demolishing a perfectly good shelving unit because it was too large to get out of the space. Hugh Brown to the rescue. He executed a deft move and sawed the unit in half-carried it down to Preservation on a dolly, and re-assembled it. There is now a very large unit with a laminate work surface and multiple shelves for storing flat materials in Preservation. This will allow me to store materials that I’ve keep for years on the floor and store them in a clean, easy to reach location. Thank you Hugh!

“When this old world starts getting me down……..” as the song goes, I go up on the roof! In May, I had the opportunity to check out our beloved former logo-the cupola- in person. I had mentioned in passing to one of my students, Kala Brown (whose Dad, Hugh is the “go-to guy” around here for most Facilities jobs) that I’d love to go up and see the library cupola. The next day, Kala had arranged a personal tour with Hugh. We went to the 8th floor, passed through a door into a dark room, and then through another door and we were under the library roof. A short climb up several sets of metal ladders and we passed through a door onto the cupola. The view was spectacular and a little dizzying. The campus looks different from above- a peaceful, idyllic community of buildings. In the distance, was Wait Chapel and BB&T Field. The inscription on the bell reads “Presented to Wake Forest College by the Class of 1957″.  Photos of my visit to the cupola are on the library Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zsrlibrary/

How does one go about sharpening the blade of a board shear? Well it is not a simple matter of pulling out your whetstone, oiling it up, and having at it! The blade of our board shear is 45” long and is curved. Not only that, there is a 4 foot long metal plate that aligns with the blade that must also be sharpened.

In early July, Hugh Brown came by and helped me remove the blade from the cast iron cutting arm. I needed Hugh’s hefty 5/8” hex wrench to remove the screws that held the blade onto the cutting arm. Once the blade was removed, I triple-wrapped it and sent it via UPS to Mid-Atlantic Knife Co. in Ashland, VA. A few days later, Mid-Atlantic called and asked me why I hadn’t sent the metal plate along with the blade. I replied:”What metal plate?” Apparently, the metal plate the board shear blade slides past on its way through binder board must be sharpened at the same time as the blade. Once again, two kind fellows from Facilities helped me remove the metal plate. Then, I triple-wrapped it and sent it UPS to Mid-Atlantic Knife Co. in Ashland, VA.

This week, both the metal plate and the blade returned to me screwed onto a wooden board. With the help of my student assistant, Trey Godwin, we re-attached both the plate and the blade to the board shear and returned it to good working order. Re-attaching a 45” long metal blade was a tricky operation requiring aligning 8 screws and the holes on the cutting arm. This was akin to standing on one leg, rubbing your stomach, patting your head, and reciting the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Not to worry, the blade is back where it belongs and the board shear is cutting through paper and boards of all kinds–like butter.

On Saturday (yes, Saturday) March 24, I traveled to the Etherington Conservation Center in Brown Summit, NC for an Advanced Book Repair workshop sponsored by the NC Preservtion Consortium. The workshop was taught by two ECC conservators, Matt Johnson and Sally Key. These two knowledgeable people covered many topics for the 12 participants gathered that day. Sally and Matt spent some time discussing conservation adhesives which can be broken down into 4 groups:

1. Starch/Cellulose adhesives - rice or wheat pastes;
2. Ether Cellulose Adhesives - Methyl Cellulose;
3. Protein Based Adhesives - Hide or fish glues; and
4. Synthetic Adhesives - PVA (the glue I use most often in Preservation).

My favorite part of the workshop was the cooking and mixing of rice starch paste. This archival, reversible paste is made by taking the rice starch powder and mixing it with water into a slurry. Boiling water is then added to make a sort of translucent goo. Trust me, its good stuff! This one demonstration made the workshop worthwhile for me.

We also discussed and practiced re-sewing loose signatures onto a text block, cleaning off old adhesives, and various Japanese hinging papers. We also made a new case for a text block from binder’s board and conservation buckram. All in all, it was a worthwhile workshop. Anyone who wants my recipe to make rice starch paste in the microwave-just ask!