Professional Development

On Thursday, November 20, the North Carolina Preservation Consortium held it’s annual conference at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill, NC. The topic this year was “Cultural Respect in Preservation and Conservation”. There were four speakers at the conference, all from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines.

The first speaker was Michele Cloonan, Dean of the Library School at Simmons College in Boston. Cloonan has written extensively on preservation topics, and began the Preservation Program at Brown University. Her topic, “Preserving Collections with a “Respect More Tender, More Holy, and More Profound” focused broadly on respect for cultural property and especially library collections. She discussed the ideas of ethics and moral philosophy and how these affect our decision-making and the prioritization of our materials. She discussed the idea of a book: a book is an object, but it is also a living, breathing thing in the sense it is the embodiment of ideas-and ideas are alive. Cloonan believes preservation should extend broadly to both the book as object and to the ideas contained within it. Michele kept comparing the idea of preservation and cultural respect to the layers on an onion. She stated that preservation has power in it-like an onion has the power to bring tears- she mentioned the bombing of the Buddha in Afghanistan which brought a strong reaction, and some tears as well.

The following speaker was Marian Kamintz, Head of Conservation at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. Kamintz spoke on the topic of “Conservation in Collaboration with Native American Communities”. Her main emphasis was on how the museum used collaboration to understand and interpret cultural layers of meaning. Often, Native American communities have individuals who possess traditional skills or knowledge. The museum meets with these individuals to understand materials in their collection, how and why these items were made, how to interpret them and sometimes, how to conserve or restore them. By using different ways of asking questions of native peoples in their consultations, the museum is able to understand their collection more fully-and as a result interpret these for the public. Kamintz focused on three major consultations over objects which garnered the museum much needed information: Siltez Dance regalia (Oregon), Passamaquoddy birch bark canoe (Maine) and a Hamsaml raven mask (Canada). In the case of the Siletz dance regalia, the museum was able to loan this item to the tribe for the first use of this item in an actual dance since it was outlawed in the 19th century.

After lunch, Karen Jefferson, Head of Archives and Special Collections at the Atlanta University Center spoke. Karen previously worked at the John Hope Franklin Research Center at Duke, the National Endowment for the Humanities and Howard University. Her talk was entitled: “Serving Many Masters: Legacy Collections in Archives. She spoke of the many entanglements which often arise as individuals or their families give materials to archives. Her library represents 5 universities in the Atlanta area, including Moorhouse College, which recently received the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The King papers are considered not only to be research materials, but ritual objects of veneration. Jefferson made the point that African-American women are often neglected by history while men are not. This is an issue Jefferson is not happy about. She said one of the intrinsic problems in collecting from African-American individuals is that often they don;t have “papers”. Civil Rights activists often don’t have a retirement-so their stuff IS their legacy and their only asset. This is difficult to sort out for archivists. For instance, for the MLK papers: the family holds the copyright, Moorhouse College owns the collection and Jefferson’s library is custodian of the collection.

Corine Megener, US Committee for the Blue Shield

The final speaker, and the most compelling, was Corine Wegener, President of the US Committee for the Blue Shield. This group is like the Red Cross for cultural property. Wegener spoke on “The Looting of the Iraq Museum and Cultural Respect during Armed Conflict.” Wegener is a retired Major from the US Army and served 13 years as a Civil Affairs Officer, tasked with protecting cultural property in Bosnia, Africa and Iraq. She described getting permission to go to Iraq in 2003 to help protect materials from the Iraq National Museum which had been damaged in the looting. Since Iraq is the “cradle of civilization”, the items in the museum were historically unique and internationally important. The damage to the museum affected the building and contents, the collections and all the computers. Since all the museums computers were taken, there was no inventory to refer to. This made identifying lost objects difficult. Many objects, such as was cylinder seals, were small, not catalogs, and easy to remove in quantity. fortunately, much of the collection was hidden by curators before the looting began. Many of the items in the collection, however, are still missing-and some have been seized as far away as New York City. This presentation was fascinating. Wegener discussed going to a bombed Iraqui Secret Police building. The basement was flooded because the water pipes were destroyed in the bombing-and many Jewish books, apparently being held secretly in this basement, were submerged or floating. They immediately froze the books on a semi trailer from Jordan, and shipped them to the National Archives. Wegener stated the dilemma: you are not supposed to remove cultural property from it’s home country! The problem is there are no Jews left in Baghdad-the few remaining were removed during the 2003 invasion. So what do we do with this stuff that isn’t ours and has no home to return it to?

An amazing day of information and networking with peers across North Carolina. I was especially gratified to acknowledge 4 scholarship recipients to our conference. this gets our name in front of new professionals and lets them experience a preservation conference and meet leaders from across our state.

Craig Fansler

NCPC Basic Book Repair Workshop, ECU Jan 24-25, 2008

Laupus Medical Sciences Library, East Carolina University

For two days, my colleague, Rachel Hoff and I, discussed and taught preservation concepts and treatments. It was two day-long Basic Book Repair Workshops sponsored by NCPC. Rachel and I have been teaching these workshops for several years both together and individually as our schedule permits. To prepare for this task, in 2004, we both received a 2-day training course at the Etherington Conservation Center in Greensboro. I also assisted Matt Johnson, ECC Book Conservator on one of his workshops.

The classes were filled with library staff from the eastern portion of North Carolina, many from ECU, but also the NC State Archives, Elizabeth City State, Campbell University, UNC-Chapel Hill and many school librarians. We discussed the library environment-cleaning, mold, dust, pest management, etc. and also covered the key preservation issues of “Do No Harm”, reversibility, and appropriate adhesives. Because this was a basic workshop, we also covered tools and assembling a tool kit, reference books (we gave them a bibliography) and web sites for preservation, and suppliers (they received a list). Each participant also received a glossary of preservation terminology, a diagram of the parts of a book, and step by step instructions on spine replacement, tearing Japanese paper and the use of heat-set tissue. We also briefly discussed disaster recovery and treatment solutions.

After the hour long discussion, the rubber hit the road. Rachel demonstrated various methods of tipping in loose pages and hinge tightening methods. Following this, I demonstrated the spine replacement my own students do. We completed making a new spine piece for each book and following a nice lunch overlooking the Medical Sciences campus, we glued the new spine piece into each book. This spine replacement is a tried and true method that I hope will be used by each person when they return home. Rachel has her own version of this spine replacement technique, which she also demonstrated. We also demonstrated using heat-set tissue to repair paper tears and tearing Japanese paper for hinge reinforcement.

Questions abounded from the classes all day long: “should we use tape on that; what do I do when the top edge of the spine is pulling off; is Filmoplast Ok to use; this is too long, do I cut it off, or leave it”.

These workshops are gratifying because many individuals are not able to get this training and are very appreciative of our workshops. The skill level of the participants can range from experienced preservationists to bona fide ‘tapers’. This is a good way to give back to those in our profession by sharing our knowledge and skill. Each time I do a workshop, I feel very fortunate to have all the resources I have to do my job.

Following the first day of the workshop, I decided to visit the Preservation Lab at ECU’s Joyner Library. When I asked at the Circulation Desk, the student didn’t know there was a Preservation Lab. I walked a few steps and saw it listed on the map as being on the very same floor. We both laughed as he called the Preservation Staff, who to my surprise, had been in our workshop that day! ECU has a wonderful lab-it is open, with multiple work spaces for the staff and students, lots of equipment (fume hood, de-acidification sprayer, ultrasonic welder for encapsulation of documents, a 6′ board shear, numerous presses, and job backers, a sewing cradle, and tons of supplies. Each student who works in Preservation has their own work bench-impressive!

The ECU workshops were enriching to me and hopefully, the participants, who were sent home with a packet of information and repair techniques to improve the condition of their own library’s collection.

On Friday, Nov. 2nd, Sharon and I attended the annual conference of the North Carolina Preservation Consortium at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill. The topic of the conference was The Great Migration: Audio Preservation in the Digital Age. The keynote speakers addressed many aspects of preserving audio materials in a time that there are more materials out there than a typical repository can juggle.

Sam Brylawsaki, from the Donald C. Davidson Library at UCSB, gave some practical guidelines for audio preservation, including how to store records and cassettes; they should be put on the shelves vertically instead of horizontally to avoid cracking and breakage from the weight of other materials on top of them. He also stressed to SAVE THE ORIGINALS! Don’t dump them to make shelf space after they’ve been reformatted. Why, you ask? We want to preserve the imperfections which don’t always transfer to the new medium, and more importantly, because most CD’s and DVD’s today are NOT good preservation mediums. They are an interim choice at best, until a better way is developed.

Sam knows his stuff, since he worked for many years at the Library of Congress as head of the Recorded Sound Section in its Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. He is also editor of UCSB’s Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings. He had slides that vividly showed the damage that can be caused by improper storage of materials, as well as the proper types of facilities and storage areas to make sure that originals are well protected.

George Blood, from Safe Sound Archive, gave a very technical talk about Magnetic Tape and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: The Science and Psychology of Audio Preservation for Archivists and Librarians. Mr. Blood has documented over 4000 live events and has recorded and edited som 600 nationally-syndicated radio programs, most of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He has recorded or produced over 100 CD’s, 2 of which were nominated for Grammy Awards.

He discussed the types of originals that need reformatting, such as LPs, 78’s, CD’s, CDR’s, and analog reel-to-reel tapes. He also went into great detail about the scientific structure of sound waves, and how they transfer from originals to new mediums. The reformatted copy usually misses some of the sounds from the originals, which means that we want to save the original as well, for as long as it will last.

Mr. Blood had some audio clips that he played for us, to demonstrated the importance of having a professional recording engineer do the transfer to the new medium, vs. having a grad student undertake the same project. The difference was amazing! The student captured the basics of the audio, but it was clear that much was missing from the final product when he played a piece that had been professionally transferred. Alas, the cost of hiring a professional is many times cost-prohibitive to most institutions.

Some additional resources that were offered were these links:

• Audio Preservation and Restoration from the University of Washington Libraries
• Sound Savings: Preserving Audio Collections from ARL
• Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs from CLIR, Council on Library and Information Resources