Professional Development

Today a whole group of zsr staff watched a Blended Librarianship conference. There was an interesting discussion about how libraries are changing. There was general agreement that the most interesting part of the discusion was a review of perspectives on the future of libraries.

The session did include some citations to some recent reports:

• No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century
• Ithaka Report

This afternoon, a group of Carptenter, PCL, and ZSR library staff gathered together to watch the first OLE Project webcast. The webcast discussed their scope, goals, and accomplishments to date. The project is still in its early stages but intends to design a new ILS based on SOA principles. Interestingly, they are already looking towards the “build” phase which will possibly start in July 2009.

During the Q&A session, there was an interesting statement that there was hope that the build phase would take about 2 years. There were some related comments about being able to use the development efforts of other projects as well.

There are some detailed notes in the library wiki.

I’m starting this report with a disclaimer: I arrived in Minneapolis to attend and present at MERLOT International Conference this weekend AFTER a long week of intensive learning in Cambridge. So, I am admitting up front to the fact that my brain was already on overload. Thus, my notes are much more brief than Lauren P.’s, so I recommend you move on to her report for thoroughness and insight.

I’ll restrict my comments general ones and will tell you all about our presentation. We talked about our initiative to provide blog and wiki services campus-wide. I provided an overview of the environment that made it a desirable and doable project. Lauren talked about the library’s role in supporting and growing the program by integrating instructional design and technology training for the faulty and other users. Kevin shared the details of the technology specifics of the implementation and on-going maintenance and support of this locally hosted open-source service. The presentation was very well received with lots of questions about how we made this into a viable program. One might think people were being polite (but I will say that both Lauren and Kevin were fantastic presenters), but we continued to have people come up for the rest of the afternoon and again today to say how they had really enjoyed our talk.

This conference is one that targets educators who incorporate technology to enhance learning in higher education. This year, a library tract was added, “Reinventing Libraries in the Digital Age”, which prompted us to submit a presentation proposal. I had attended a few years ago and had found it valuable but mostly as a way to see what faculty are doing with technology in the classroom. So it was a bonus that libraries were invited to be specifically addressed in our roles to support campus learning.

One session I’d like to report on was presented by Peter Juvinall from Illinois State University, who has used Facebook as the delivery framework in classes he teaches for freshman students. His anecdotal findings paralleled what we experienced in our pilot to use Facebook in LIB100 last spring. It was encouraging to hear that we may be on track with our goal to meet the students where they already are.

One other session I’d like to  mention was a bit different. The presenter, Mike Buetner, spoke about the potential for video-based learning as a delivery method in a majority of situations. To make his point, he had the audience watch a video on how to tie a blood knot as we attempted to actually tie the rope. A few people were successful (I was way too brain-dead by the 5:30 session time yesterday to even attempt it). Here is an example of the type of video instruction he was promoting.

Finally, I have to tell about my new conference/class/meeting technology tool: the LiveScribe Pulse Smartpen! We weren’t allowed to use computers to take notes at the leadership institute, but one of the students had what looked like an expensive, but normal pen. It turns out it was really a computerized writing implement. It was so cool, when I got a few spare minutes yesterday, I rushed out to Target (Minneapolis is their headquarters city) and bought one. The technology uses a camera and custom paper with millions of microdots to capture every stroke and notation you make on the paper. You can download that onto your computer.The real fantastic part, though, is that the pen records every sound that is happening (read: presentation speaker or instructor teaching) and connects the audio to the image that was captured by the camera. All the captured material is time line based, so turning back to any page in your notes and tapping the pen on a word will restart your audio at the precise moment your wrote that word. I tested it out this morning at both the plenary session in a huge conference room and at a smaller session. The audio was clear and I was able to go back through my notes and hear exactly what was being said (helpful when I can’t read what I scrawled). I’m hoping it will become a useful tool for all the meetings I now seem to be attending.

I didn’t post about my last day an a half at the ACRL Intentional Teacher Immersion program primarily because it was pretty intense and I needed time to process it. Again, I won’t bore you with the details, but it involved pretty intense discussions of what we percieve to be weaknesses in our teaching that were carried out in what we called a Palmer Circle format. This comes from Parker Palmer, the author of one of the books we read. The idea is that a concern is stated by the focus person and the other members of the group can only ask questions of the person to try and help them think through the issue. The process of asking questions was almost as difficult as the process of being the focus person. Teachers and librarians tend to be problem solvers and the impulse to say “well…what I would do in your situation is…..” was difficult to overcome. But the experience was a great one and I hope to take away a new respect for questioning as a way to work through issues rather than just giving advice.

To prepare for the questioning aspect of the Palmer Circle we used a set of cards called the ‘whack pack’ which was designed to inspire creative problem solving. The questions were great and I am ordering a pack of the cards off eBay for us to use.

The final half day was devoted to creativity in instruction and in reflecting on the experience of the Immersion program. As I have reflected over the last week here are the big take-away’s for me:

1. Getting time away from my other duties to focus more on my instruction will become a higher priority for me.

2. Keeping up with the literature of instruction across the disciplines is a commitment I really want to make. This will include exploring presentation and publication possibilities in discipline specific arenas outside of librarianship.

3. I will endeavor to trust my students more with thier own learning and strive to be a guide to them whenever the opportunity arises.

4. The two leaders of the program, Lisa Hinchcliffe and Beth Woodard both from Univ. of Illinois are MASTER teachers and were such amazing role models of what exceptional teachers do that I will carry their examples with me for a long, long time.

5. Campus food is lousy everywhere, but UCSD has truly integrated environmentalism and sustainability into their campus culture which was a truly refreshing site. Even down to putting recycle cans outside next to all of their trash cans and using compostable plastic cups for conference set-ups.

Beginning with Tuesday temperatures soared in the 90’s for a Seattle high. The Student Union building where the sessions are held lacks sufficient air conditioning and opening the windows just didn’t get it.  Being without air in my office for the last couple of weeks I guess I should have felt right at home. Nonetheless conference attendees seemed cheerful and committed to continuing their library assessment discussions. As with each day we began with having to choose which one of the three tiered assessment tracks to attend. For me Qualitative Methods won out over Information Literacy and Management Information. First up was Zsuza Koltay and Kornelia Tancheva sharing their work with “Personas and a User-centered Visioning Process.” This presentation outlined a fast track process Cornell University Library staff used to develop a user-focused vision. A consultant was hired to conduct local interviews with faculty and students exploring work habits and needs. They used these conversations to create shall we say imaginary little friends. Each friend represented a type of user and was used to invite empathy and foster understanding. They created ten different type personas. Among their findings were; Cornell is not the world, streamline website, single point of entry and local content should be made available in the same information delivery as all other data.

Syracuse University conducted a similar type study also using interviews as their foundation. Nancy Turner shared her story of “Patterns of Culture: Realigning Library Culture to Meet User Needs.” Librarians listened to and observed how faculty did their work. Each faculty member was asked a series of questions and here are a few I managed to capture:

Tell me about a recent article or piece of information you read?

Where did you find it?

What did you do to prepare for a recent class?

When you started work in you office today, what was the very first thing you did?

A total of 291 quotes were captured and uploaded into a project management tool. Brainstorming sessions were held and quotes were categorized. Themes that surfaced were: tools, daily life, relationships, worldviews, collections and resources.

Todd White from the University of Rochester was last up sharing findings from interviews and observations of graduate students. His findings were interesting and I wondered if Wake’s graduate population if polled would share similar results. “In Mixing Methods, Bridging Gaps,” White shared findings suggesting that grad students don’t use endnote, they don’t have time for social networking applications, are Mac oriented and are most protective of their time. They find a path and continue on it. For Rochester the study clarified areas of disconnect between Librarians and doctoral students.

For the next set of parallel sessions I choose to hear more about organizational assessment. John Harer of East Carolina University spoke on using “Employees as Customers Judging Quality.” This study sought to discover if current practices in employee assessment in academic libraries address employee’s perceptions of quality. Employee satisfaction and climate surveys, employee exit interview forms, employee self assessment forms and manager/dean evaluation instruments were obtained from ARL libraries and analyzed for possible avenues and measures of quality related to employee assessment instruments. This is the first part of an on going research project. Next steps include content analysis of employee satisfaction instruments from other industries.

Lisa Hinchliffe’s session was a little more practical and was most appealing to me. The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign used staff reflections on organizational goals, culture and leadership for organizational assessment and development. This experience gave staff a chance for renewal, refocusing and re-energizing. It also required high levels of trust, valued and appreciated diversity and regarded conflict as natural. People who work in an organization continually observe it, they analyze it and they judge it. Some of the six questions posed to staff were; what would be your top three issues to resolve successfully in three years; if you had all the votes, what would you do?; identify your leaders weaknesses and strengths; what do you need to be successful and finally, given your strengths and skill sets, what would you consider to be your role in improving the culture?

Afternoon sessions continued to stress the importance of conducting some form of organizational assessment. Here are a few notable statements taken from the afternoon sessions:

Promote a culture of assessment at every opportunity.

Communicate assessment within your library as well as to your user communities.

Use staff newsletters and blogs.

Create interactive student/faculty/staff learning communities.

Let assessment become part of everyday work process, part of the decision making loop within the library.

Collaboration improves library user experiences and builds interactive relationships.

The last session featured assessment pioneers Duane Webster, ARL; Amos Lakos, Waterloo University and Shelley Phipps , University of Arizona offering reflections on the first couple days of the conference. They advised Librarians not to get hung up on the tools but move towards the means, share their findings and their processes with other libraries, spend time redefining goals, understand and measure the impact of new roles. How can we change from competing with other libraries to collaborating. Leadership should be focusing on redefining libraries and librarian roles in research, learning and instruction within today’s educational communities. Remember we assess so that we can improve.

On Wednesday I asked myself if there were really more to hear. Could there be other angles not discussed.  And yes there were. The track entitled “From Planning to Action” featured three sessions with each focusing on ways to take assessment findings and link them to goal setting, strategic planning and even to business planning.  Raynna Bowlby, a Library management consultant described the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting method. Well designed goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. I see an advantage in writing goals in this manner and plan to review my own personal ones for possible revisions using those standards. A team of presenters from the University of Arkansas illustrated the value of pursuing an approach to improved library effectiveness that integrates strategic planning, performance measurement and organizational flexibility. Susan Bailey and Chris Palazzolo of Emory University discussed how Rick Luce’s arrival there brought in new challenges. One of which came about when staff were asked to develop a business plan that included a set of activities, processes, and tools to keep the strategic plan and progress on it in front of staff members in an ongoing and systematic way. Keys to their approach included creating a business plan for each strategic initiative and scheduling monthly meetings where reports on progress were given. I found the term “issue owner” a little disturbing. Especially when the presenter explained that this person was the one held accountable for resolving the issue that prevented adequate process towards completing a particular initiative.

Afternoon sessions changed focus from general to a little more specific with concentrations on “Webpage Usability.” A University of Louisville representative filling in for absent Mark Paul whose name I missed, suggested that library assessment services can and should take advantage of the outsourcing mentality in such areas as usability studies, focus groups or statistical analysis. Creative uses of these groups can allow for better facilitation and more targeted usability studies.

“If They Build It They Will Come” featured a story from Carnegie Mellon University where students were invited to create their own version of the Library’s web page. Graduate and undergraduate students began the brainstorming sessions by identifying all the components of the current web page they loved and wanted to bring over to their new design. Equal time was given to document all the components that they wanted to remove. Each student used poster boards to outline their web page of choice. One suggestion from the students was to eliminate so many words. Just give us boxes that take us directly where we want to go. Also they asked for rotating pictures of actual students and asked if possible to feature success stories by those same students.

Research libraries are facing among other challenges the fact that their catalog interfaces have not kept pace with other technical search innovations. Choosing to focus on next generation OPAC’s, Kathleen Bauer Yale University Librarian shared initial findings from early stage investigation of VuFind . Yale has chosen to rename the product YuFind. In preparation for this project they examined log files from their current Voyager system. Findings showed that the most popular search was by title (41.8 %), which was also the library search default. This was followed by keyword searches coming in at (31.4%). The average search phrase was 2.5 words long. The most common hit rate netted zero search results. (21.4%) They found that very few people availed themselves of call number searches. From the audience came questions about the validity of these numbers. As always the trail of discussions ended up on Google. From those in the audience as well as those on panel several admitted to beginning their searches using Google as the discovery and then on to the Library’s catalog for fulfillment. Perhaps these type studies along with such products as VuFind will prove to aid users in effectively using an OPAC to discover appropriate material in the library’s collection.

The final session was to offer advice for those beginning assessment planning. Four case studies were presented. The result of which was a storytelling session revealing the library climate when the decision to create a plan was begun. The emphasis was on more of a here’s why we did it versus here’s what we did to begin. Thursday morning I’ll attend one last class; “Getting started with Learning Outcomes Assessment: Purposes, Practical Options, and Impact.” The post conference workshop is intended for Librarians considering, commencing, or retooling a plan for assessing student learning outcomes.

I am eager to explore assessment opportunities for us at ZSR. I am sure you’ll here more as we begin to strategize on ways to revisit current assessment activities and explore options for growth and development within this arena.

Wanda

This week I’m in Seattle attending a Library Assessment Conference entitled “Building Effective Sustainable, Practical Assessment.” Of the 375 Librarians in attendance, some 15 % are from outside the United States. The day began with keynoters Susan Gibbons, University of Rochester; Rick Luce, Emory University and Betsy Wilson, University of Washington discussing what they perceived as the most important challenges for Library assessment. Gibbons began by reminding Librarians of their love to count and how they count everything. But what do these numbers teach us? Her library’s reference queries have dropped by 10,000 during the past decade. Does this mean they are failing? No. Everything has changed about user needs and demands. Their assessment plan included handing out disposable cameras and asking students to take pictures of their favorite places on campus, favorites within the library, study patterns, favorite times of the day and what items are essential to your daily activities? Among their many findings they concluded that all students have cell phones and they don‘t leave home without them. From a web page study that involved printing the page and presenting the copy to focus groups, they discovered among other things, missing contact numbers. Ironically though Rochester joined some 41 % of all ARL libraries failing to list their contact numbers on their web pages. Gibbons also stressed the importance of knowing the uniqueness of your community, timing is everything, when’s the point of need, accessing, looking, connecting, reallocating and refocusing.

Rick Luce was a good speaker with interesting slides which he was careful to remove before I could write down complete statements. He viewed assessment as the catalyst for organizational change. Statements without performance measures are nothing more than wishful thinking. What’s the framework for greatness? Do something others can’t; do something well others do poorly; or do something others have great difficulty doing well. Keys to successful assessment should include a strong customer focus, effective leadership, continuous improvement and management by fact. Luce advised against the following pitfalls; measures that don’t focus on strategic initiatives, no accountability, too many initiatives and lack of discipline. It’s a struggle and it’s sometimes very painful but libraries should strive for an honest self assessment.

Betsy Wilson cited the number one challenge for Librarians is to accelerate the relevance. We can’t live without assessment. It is the lifeblood to any successful organization. She encouraged attendees to turn a “culture of complaints” into a “culture of assessment.” If we stay ahead of the assessment game, we have more chances of controlling the future agenda. But to do this effectively, we need frameworks and models which reflect our values and our aspirations. We have to tell our stories. We have to be intimate with our users and engaged with our communities.

This conference groups two to three presentations together in one room for an hour and a half time slot. It works out ok, however you begin to feel that sessions are rushed and sometimes a lack of sufficient timing for questions and answers remains. Our colleagues over at UNC-G were squeezed in between a LibQUAL presentation from the folks at Radford University and the University of Chicago’s review of “wayfinding efforts.” UNCG presenters Kathy Crowe and Michael Crumpton sported name changes as Associate Dean and Assistant Dean respectively. Their presentation was entitled “Using Evidence for Space Planning.” The three year study they conducted included an in house survey, observational studies and focus groups. A space consultant was also used in the assessment process. Many of their resulting upgrades from the studies mirrored changes that we here at ZSR have also implemented. They repurposed spaces, implemented quiet study zones, reduced the size of reference collections, expanded their information commons area, went to 24/5 hours of operation, began allowing food and drink in the library, brought in more comfy furniture and have began weeding the government documents collection.

Roger Schonfeld of Ithaka is tasked with studying how new technologies affect academia and how those changes they bring can best be managed. For the Assessment conference he reviewed, “Strategy and Leadership in the Transitions Away From Print.” Schonfeld visited 14 American academic libraries for 1 -3 days each, meeting with Library directors, staff, faculty, students and campus leadership. Findings from these visits seem to indicate that budgetary limitations and space management considerations play a major role in format migration. While most libraries see the digital future as beckoning they have not allowed for effective community wide strategic planning. Smaller libraries are relying on larger libraries to preserve or keep the print. Larger libraries are not seeing this as their role and are not doing so. Schonfeld warned that librarians should remember the lessons learned when transitioning from newsprint to microform. Are we Librarians preserving the intellectual content for those around in the year 2050?

More later, Wanda.

The 2008 NC ILL Users Group meeting was held at UNC-Chapel Hill on July 29.  It has always been a gathering that I look forward to participating.   Not only do we get to hear about the latest developments with OCLC’s products, we get to exchange information and learn what each library is doing.

The meeting started out with Julie Nye updating us on OCLC Resource Sharing (ILL), such as Reasons for No and Conditional, Deflection Enhancements and Auto-IFM trigger for items not updated in time.   She reported a 34% increase of participating countries in WorldCat Resouce Sharing.   And we are getting more and more ILLs filled by non-US libraries, a 92% increase from last year according to her statistics.  She also discussed the WorldCat.org website that OCLC has created and how it can be used to enhance usability for both staff and patrons.

Madeleine Bombeld at UNC-Wilmington did a survey on AV materials lending policies.   Her library does loan out to good borrowers the audio books, CDs and VHSs, but not DVDs, which are used heavily, 40% of all circulating materials.   At this point, we don’t loan out DVDs, since they are heavily used by our patrons and many for classes.   Occasionally, we will send out documentaries to trusted borrowers.

The afternoon session was mainly a report of the WorldCat Group Catalog that the UNC system will implement sometime this year.    A group catalog will be created from records already cataloged in WorldCat by the UNC member libraries.   From the group catalog, patrons can see which library has the item he wants and requests it.  Staff can use it for collection development purpose.  There were quite a bit of discussions about the system and it will be interesting to see how it will work out and what the benefits are for both the patrons and the library staff.

Other than all the information I received, I also enjoyed talking to other ILLers.   It was nice meeting new faces in the ILL land and exchange information about ILL issues.

This week I am in San Diego in one of the ACRL Immersion programs. For those unfamiliar with them, these programs are week-long immersion programs focused on various aspects of information literacy. There are four tracks. Assessment (not running this time, but focuses on how to assess student learning and program success), Program (focusing on how to get an IL program going at your institution), Teacher (focused on instruction strategy for new teachers) and Intentional Teacher (the one I’m in) which focuses on people who have been teaching for a while in an effort to make them more aware of their teaching.There are 25 of us in the Inentional Teacher group from all over the country (and Canada) and from all sorts of libraries, backgrounds and stages in their careers.

As the ‘Immersion’ moniker suggests, it’s an intense program with long days, many activities, much discussion and even more reflection. I’m not going give a play-by-play of each day but will instead highlight as best I can those things that stuck out to me. Once I’m done I hope to also have some bigger picture thoughts to share.

Today we first focused on the two books we read before arriving. Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach and Steven Brookfield’s Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher.  Both books had their moments for me (usually surrounding concrete examples rather than lofty theory) although both tended to obscure points with too much jargon for my taste. What was interesting in our discussion is how what one person found depressing in one book, another found exhilarating; what I may have dismissed as unimportant, another person really connected with. So I came to see both books in a new light.

Later in the day we discussed our results of the Teaching Perspectives Inventory.  This measure was developed to show teachers where they stand within the five teaching perspectives identified: Transmission, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing and Social Reform. I won’t bore you with the specifics, but I’d love to get a group of our ZSR instructors together to take the test and discuss the results when I return. Taking the inventory is free and it can offer real insights into how we approach teaching and where the disconnects are between what we believe about teaching and what we actually do in the classroom. It was a fascinating discussion and one I’ll be mulling over for some time to come.

One of the goals of the week is to begin to develop our own teaching philosophy statement so I will close here and begin my work on that. Tonight we have a movie and tomorrow it’s another all day set of discussions and activities beginning at 7:30am and ending at 9:30pm. What I find really nice is to have the time to really reflect about the part of my job that brings me the most joy and satisfaction, but the part that I find I don’t spend enough time really thinking about. It’s also very invigorating to be around colleagues that do what you do on a daily basis. I’ve already shared stories and gotten inspiration from the folks I’ve met.

The fact that it is 70 degrees, sunny with a nice breeze doesn’t hurt, either. San Diego has it made in terms of weather!!

“Counting Opinions” (CO) is an instantaneous, continuous customer feedback system designed specifically for libraries. It provides libraries with innovative, comprehensive, cost-effective ways to measure and manage their customer satisfaction and performance data, including open-ended customer feedback, trends, benchmarks, outcomes and peer comparisons. ZSR Library has just become a beta partner for the product. Susan, Lauren P. and Kevin are soon to be in product install mode. To learn more about the product, I attended the CO Users group meeting held during ALA this past June. I must admit they had me when the discussion began comparing feedback forms and how they are distributed or left lying on the counter and how we hope someone will take one complete and return it. Mounted on our website, the CO survey lets the patron know continuously how interested you are in hearing their opinions. Patrons are prompted at random times to take a survey or offer input on a particular topic.  You can create categories such as staff, services, facility and collections. The categories are created by each individual library. Feedback reports are available and searchable by categories. You have the ability to create notes, clarify comments, or track what you did in response to a comment or suggestion. You can tag comments by categories and rank them as positive, neutral etc. The feedback can be ranked as either high or low priority.  However you can’t deliver a response to an individual because the survey is anonymous. I think CO will be good for us!

With all the focus lately on ergonomic assessment, the LAMA sponsored session entitled “Ergonomics in Libraries: Human –Centered Design for library Facilities” was of particular interest to me. Ergonomists seek to apply the knowledge about human capabilities and limitations to the design of facilities, workstations, equipment, tools and job. The design of our work space and the furniture we use affects our health, our safety and our productivity. How can we best manage all of these factors? Is it possible for workers and planners to speak the same language? Then, how can we afford to implement and redesign our workspaces? These are questions that all of participants in the audience seemed to be seeking answers for. The primary goal of human-centered design is to develop a workspace that “fits” the worker. Conducting a task analysis to understand current process and risks is essential to the evaluation. Here at ZSR, I think we would benefit from a refreshers course on ergonomic do’s and don’ts. I also believe it a good idea to incorporate some ergonomic training within our student orientation. Here’s a summary of some of the known activities that increase pain and the likelihood of injury:

• Handling heavy books 32%
• High repetitions 25%
• Using computers 18%
• Shelving books 18%
• Handling books co tenuously for more than 2 hours 15%

In June I was appointed for a two year commitment to the ALA Advocacy Committee. We held our first inaugural meeting during ALA even though our committee didn’t become official until the close of the 2008 conference. During our first meeting we spent much of the day deciding on a definition for advocacy. Here’s what surfaced: “turning passive support into educated action” or in other words, empowering people to take action on behalf of their libraries. Our committee’s charge is to support the efforts of advocates for all types of libraries; to develop resources, networks and training materials. I just may come looking for ideas so feel free to share any thoughts you may have on advocacy initiatives for today’s libraries. — Wanda

A canvas roll of tools used for book repair

What is the most preferred kind of leather for bookbinding? How do you quickly and easily attach loose boards to a leather volume? What adhesive is most useful for leather book repair applications? Is there an easy way to pare leather without doing it all by hand? These and many other questions were answered for a group of 7 preservationists from across North Carolina last week.On Thursday and Friday, July 24-25, a Leather Repair Workshop was held in the ZSR Preservation Lab. The workshop presenter was Jim Hinz, a Book Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia. The workshop was sponsored by the North Carolina Preservation Consortium, and was attended by preservationists from NC State, UNC-CH Medical Sciences Library, ECU, UNC-G and Duke. Because of bad weather, the workshop started late because Jim’s flight was canceled. By the time he arrived, however, everyone was more than ready to begin.

Jim began by discussing how leather has been processed and tanned over time, and how light, humidity and temperature fluctuations break leather down. Jim described how, over time, the processing of leather was better or poorer based on market demands and other factors. Today, leather is largely processed by a vegetable tanning process that makes it safe and stable. We then began a demonstration on “tacketing” - a process where a loose board (or cover) is re-attached to the book by sewing through a few locations along the shoulder of the book. This repair is a quick and easy way to the many loose covers of leather-bound books back where they belong. We also toned some Japanese paper with acrylic pigments and let them dry. These strips of paper were toned to match the color of the book’s cover and would be used to repair the broken joint on the outside of the book.

The second day of the workshop began with a discussion of how to hide the repair of the tackets with Japanese paper. We also tore pieces of the toned Japanese paper we had made the day before and covered the broken joint along the outside of the book. The paper blended perfectly because it was toned to the color of the book’s leather and it was a very light weight paper (Tengugo). We then discussed sharpening a paring knife using a sharpening stick (made from laminated board and sandpaper), oil or water stones, emery paper, or a leather strop. Jim demonstrated some sharpening techniques for the class. Following this, we examined various types and colors of leather-mostly calf and goat skins. Jim pointed out the grain and texture differences to the class. The next step was to prepare a book to be re-backed with leather. Starting with a suitable book, Jim lifted a layer of the boards on each side to allow the leather re-back to be inserted. He then applied heavy cord across the spine to simulate raised bands. We were then treated to a leather dyeing demonstration using leather dyes and fixative. Following this, Jim cut a piece of leather for the spine of the book and began paring it. He used a paring knife to pare the edges of the spine piece. The larger areas were pared using a paring machine which pared the leather to a thickness that would be very flexible as the book covers were opened and closed. Everyone got a chance to practice paring using the machine, paring knife and a sanding stick. The leather was then dampened and applied to the spine of the book where Jim expertly turned in the head and tail of the new spine and inserted the edges into the splits in the board. Jim then used a bone folder to reinforce the raised bands along the spine, and tied linen thread over each raised band to dry. The result was beautiful.

The answers to the questions in the first paragraph? goat; tacketing; PVA; and Scharf-Fix Paring Machine.

This workshop was packed with great information that frankly is just too hard to find. for some reason, these repair techniques are kept hidden in the conservator’s world and only trickles out when a knowledgeable and open-minded person like Jim Hinz comes along. I learned so much-not just information, but stiff I can use in my job from now on. That, my friends is invaluable! Another benefit from this workshop was spending 2 days with colleagues across the state who share similar jobs and concerns. I’m hopeful we’ll all be able to collaborate together again soon.