For the good news, we are very pleased to announce that Rebecca Shindel was recently hired and has started working as a Conservation Technician in the Paper Lab reporting to Doug Sanders.  Rebecca has completed all of the work toward her Master of Arts in the Conservation of Fine Art, Works on Paper from Northumbria University.  The working title of her thesis is “The condition problems and cultural heritage issues arising from adhesive failure in scrapbooks and albums.”  Ms. Shindel earned her B.A. in the History of Art with a minor in anthropology from University College London in 2009.  She completed several conservation internships during her studies.  We look forward to working with Rebecca over the coming years.

In the General Collections Conservation unit total treatments increased from 2,407 during the previous reporting period to 2,615 for this one. Of these, the higher level treatments declined while enclosures nearly doubled as staff spent considerable amount of time working on projects for the Fine Arts Library.

Herb McBride was particularly busy during the quarter constructing enclosures for microfilm that will be moving from the East Tower of Wells Library to ALF2. In addition we have had a significant increase in requests from the Lilly Library for Kasemake enclosures since their hiring of a new staff person to be responsible for providing the needed information for the enclosures to be manufactured. For the reporting period, the Kasemake was used to manufacturer 3,851 enclosures. This compares to the 1,545 that had been made the previous quarter. We expect that the average for the coming reporting periods will begin to settle somewhere between these two levels.

One of the largest changes in the Lab happened in August when Nicole Wolfersberger resigned to return to graduate school. Nicole had been an employee with the Lab for several years and has worked with Doug Sanders in the Paper Lab for three years. During the quarter, the staff of the Paper Lab completed a long-term project of rehousing a manuscript collection for the Lilly Library. Sanders and Hufford met with Phil Bantin to discuss working more closely with the collections from the University Archives over the coming several months and years. The total number of items treated by the Paper Lab for the period was 96 which compares to the 112 previously reported.

Jessi Steiner has also been quite active in the Lilly Library conservation lab.  During the quarter she was involved in installing eight exhibitions and deinstalling five including making 98 labels for the exhibitions.  In addition she created 102 phase boxes, 56 folder phase boxes and encapsulated twenty-one items.  She also constructed 46 enclosures for the puzzle collection and helped to flatten 81 items.

Bindery Preparation saw a small decrease in the total number of items that were processed (4,230 vs 4,377). Most of this decrease seems to have come from materials that were processed for the Music Library which declined to 1,333 items from the 2,136 that had been handled in the previous quarter. With the change in the government documents collections as well as the change in how the Music Library binding budget is being managed it will be interesting to note if there are any significant changes in the overall amount of materials that are processed by Bindery Prep in the coming year. So far it appears that the decrease in materials from the Music Library has been somewhat off-set by an increase in items from the Kent Cooper Room that seems to be at least partly attributable to a change in staff within Technical Services.

Most of the staff took part in providing an orientation to the Lab to Cathy Martyniak who was visiting from the University of Florida in order to observe how a joint ALF/Preservation Lab facility works. Harrison and Salkola-White took a new approach to hiring student staff when they attended the IU Job Fair at the beginning of the Fall semester. Over 200 students expressed initial interest in working at the Lab and about 35 of those followed-up with an application. Several were interviewed and three were hired.

Various members of the Preservation Lab staff took part in several webinars during the quarter including: NISO: Tangible assets – the management of physical library resources; NISO: Discoverable, available, accessible – preserving digital content; IULDLP: Is scalable digital preservation possible; and CLR: Print and digital archiving.

Detailed Statistical Summary for the Period

General Collections Conservation

Level I: 710

Level II: 123

Level III: 74

Enclosures: 1,708

Total Treatments: 1,615

Heckman prep: 120

TOTAL 2,735

Paper Lab

University Archives: 2

Geosciences: 1

Wells: 3

GIMSS: 13

Lilly Library: 75

Wiley House: 2

TOTAL: 96

Kasemake Enclosures

Lilly Library: 1,220

Wells: 129

Cook Music Library: 16

Lilly Puzzle Collection: 68

Microfilm Project: 2,418

TOTAL: 3,851

Binding

Serials: 2,624

Music Prepared: 1,333

TOTAL (includes all IUL): 4,230

Lilly Library Conservation Technician

Phase Boxes: 102

Phase Boxes (Folder): 56

Corrugated: 20

Encapsulation: 21

Clamshell: 6

Puzzle Enclosures: 26

Flattening: 81

Tin IN/Hinge: 2

Paper Mend: 27

Dry cleaning: 4 hours

Tape removal: 4 hours

Labels: 98

Exhibitions Installed: Walt Whitman; Cookbooks; Uslan; Critical Collections; Mongolian & Linguistics; Lilly Treasures I; Immigration; Lilly Treasures II

Exhibitions Deinstalled: Music Man; Immigration; Lilly Treasures I; Critical Collections; Mongolian & Linguistics

Usually the circulation desk staff will notify the Lab when a book that they suspect has mold is being sent to the Lab so we know to be looking for it. However, sometimes we do not know what the problem might be until we open the bag. Fortunately, red biohazard bags are hard to miss, so when one shows up we know to take special care in handling its contents. While we are not overly concerned with the supposed toxicity of mold, neither are we careless with it. Mold can trigger unpleasant allergy-like reactions and/or contaminate workspaces if its presence is extensive. Also, some books may have other, potentially more hazardous issues. Therefore, the contents of these bags are dealt with either in a controlled environment such as an exhaust hood or outdoors where there is unlimited air exchange.

About 25% of the time, the problem that was sent to us as mold turns out to be either just dirt or ink that has run, or a combination of the two. We appreciate this as erring on the side of caution. A more casual attitude on the sender’s part could result in our dealing with a major mold infestation in a collection space, so we do not mind receiving an occasional “false alarm” book.

Two Books

The two books in this first photo were sent to us in a biohazard bag earlier this summer. The Wells Library staff thought that both might have a mold problem. Both showed significant discoloration along the top edges, but only one had any evidence of mold, on the bottom edge. We believe that the dark staining on the top edges is the result of smoke from a fire that happened a few decades ago in the older library on the Bloomington campus. The smoke damage had been treated as effectively as possible using a dry cleaning procedure, and it had no odor. Thus, the tale ends for the book on the left in the image; it needed no further treatment.

The Northeast Document Conservation Center has a good overview on salvaging moldy books and paper (Northeast Document Conservation Center: Preservation Leaflets 3.8 Emergency salvage of moldy books and paper http://www.nedcc.org/resources accessed 6 September 2011). The NEDCC site says that there are over 100,000 types of fungi (e.g., mold and mildew) which make identifying the specific type of mold, when that matters, difficult at best for the lay person. The NEDCC notes that “molds excrete enzymes that allow them to digest organic materials such as paper and book bindings, altering and weakening those materials. In addition, many molds contain colored substances that can stain paper, cloth, or leather.” So, if you have a book that has mold, what steps should you take? That is what the remainder of this post will discuss.

Step One: does the book warrant the effort

Decide whether the book is one that it is sensible to spend the time and money on to salvage. It may be that a replacement is easily available and at a cost that does not warrant the effort it would take to remove the mold, or the item may be one that is no longer important to your collection, or you might have other copies of the same item and do not need the one that has the mold problem.

The book treated here suffered severe mold infestation. While it was treatable doing so would have required cleaning over two hundred pages. In the case of this particular book, the amount of time it would have taken to thoroughly clean and repair it would have far exceeded the cost of replacing it, so we made the decision to have it withdrawn. However, it provides a good demonstration opportunity. Fortunately, most books that we receive that have a mold problem come to us in a lesser state of infestation, so the treatment is much less extensive and time consuming.

Mold Facts

Mold remediation is a broad, often misunderstood, topic; conflicting information on the subject abounds. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss mold remediation comprehensively.  However, understanding a few basic concepts will go a long way toward your ability to deal with mold effectively. First are a few facts about mold itself. Mold is a variety of fungus. Fungi have some unique characteristics. Some taxonomists have assigned mold fungi their own kingdom, separate from plants and animals. From the practical standpoint, mold behaves a lot more like plants than like animals, and it is perhaps helpful to think of mold in this way. Mold produces “seeds” (spores), and these sprout as soon as they find “soil” (wet materials.) The sprouts then mature and make spores of their own, lots of them and really fast. These in turn sprout and the process continues so that in a very short period of time the result is a thriving colony of mold.

A single mold spore is unimaginably tiny (as small as 2-3 microns) and virtually void of water and so it is very nearly weightless.  One statistic that illustrates this is that mold spores are said to fall at a rate of three feet per hour in still air (Applied Microbial Remediation, IICRC Certification class held on October 25-28, 2004, Greenfield, IN taught by Mike and Rachel Adams). Furthermore, some varieties of mold are customarily found in higher concentrations indoors than outdoors. Mold spores are almost always in the air both indoors and outside. (Florian, Mary-Lou E., Fungal Facts (Archtype Publications, 2002: 102) It is practically impossible to eliminate mold absolutely from a general environment. Thus, the goal of remediation is not to eliminate mold but to locally eliminate conditions supporting mold growth, within a given physical parameter. This parameter might be the entire structure and contents of a building or, as in our example, a single item.

Active (living) mold is somewhat slimy to the touch and will smear when you rub something (for example, your finger – in a protective glove, of course) across it. Inactive (dead) mold is dry and powdery. From the purely physical standpoint, this makes sense. Whether mold is active or inactive depends on one simple factor: the presence or absence of water. Nearly any material will support mold growth, but only if water is present. Remove the water and the mold becomes inactive.

The part of the mold that needs to be made inactive is the part that compares to the body or stems and leaves of plants. Even though the mold has been rendered inactive, it is just as reproductively viable as active mold should water be re-introduced. The dry, dusty mass of the inactive mold includes a huge number of “hibernating” spores. Mold spores are difficult to effectively kill. So “killing the mold” is not an objective of remediation. Rather, the spores must be removed.

Step Two: Removing mold spores

Washable surfaces should be cleaned with detergent and water only.  No biocides or other chemicals need to be used because they are no more (and perhaps even less) effective than detergent and water. When the host material is absorbent and not meant to be washable (like paper), determining the state of the mold comes first. If the mold is active, full-immersion washing is effective, but it can be quite time- and space-consuming. For more than a small volume of loose documents, this is often not practical; it is often even less practical for books. Generally speaking, no attempt should be made to remove active mold from paper by means other than washing, as it will only smear it and increase the amount of staining. The staining caused by mold is nearly always permanent.

If the decision is made to attempt removal of the mold from a book, and it is determined that the mold is still active, the first step of the treatment process is to render the mold inactive. As mentioned previously, this entails removing its water source. The least expensive way to do this is to take the book outdoors, stand it on edge in direct sunlight, and let nature dry the mold. This method is weather-dependent, of course. If it is necessary to wait for good outdoor drying conditions, the book can be wrapped in a plastic bag and placed in a freezer.  This is primarily just to buy time. Freezing will render most of the active mold inactive, as freezing its water source naturally makes it less available. However, freezing does nothing harmful to the spores, and the paper will still need to be dried once removed from the freezer.

How long it will take to dry will be dependent on how wet the book is when you receive it and how extensive the mold growth is. We have learned that most items that get wet will dry just fine once the source of the water is removed. The source of the water that encouraged the mold to grow on our example book is not known. Our best guess is that the shelf where it was housed had a low spot and water from an unknown source puddled under this book, and the paper and binding absorbed the moisture.

Regardless of the moisture source, the amount of mold in this particular book was extensive. Fortunately, it was confined to this one item and did not spread to the surrounding parts of the collections.

Step Three: Specific Treatment Steps

By the time we received this book it had already absorbed all of the water and was in the process of drying out. We allowed it to continue drying until we were satisfied that the mold was inactive.

There are several options for removing inactive mold. The one described below is the least expensive one that we know of and is easy to perform. If your library owns a HEPA filter vacuum cleaner, it can be used to remove the large, easily accessible growths. The following steps should not be performed in an area that is enclosed, where space and/or contents contamination are concerns. The best place to perform the necessary steps is outdoors provided conditions are suitable.

The materials you will need include:

Examination gloves.  Those made of Nitrile are preferable to latex since the latter causes an adverse reaction for some people.

N95 mask or cartridge respirator.  If the latter, medical clearance and fit testing are required. (Applied Structural Drying, IICRC Certification class held at Hydrolab, Noblesvillle, IN on June 2-4, 2004 taught by Kurt Bolden and Bill Yeadon)

A paint brush

An apron or protective coveralls

An eraser sponge (As in this exercise, we use an Absorene Dirt Eraser for many projects involving the dry cleaning of books and paper.)

Step One: Put on the gloves, apron and mask and carry the moldy item, brush and sponge to the location where you will be working on it.

Step Two: Use the brush to remove the most obvious mold on the exterior of the item if there is mold present there. Then open the book and begin to examine the interior for signs of additional mold growth.

Step Three: Use the eraser to “erase” the mold from the pages of the book, brushing away from the center of the book. Use the brush to remove the mold from the center gutter area. Repeat this step on every page where mold is present. For the book used in this example, over 200 pages needed to be cleaned. This is the part of the treatment we did not do in full, but one example is shown below. Otherwise, all of the steps are represented in this article as they would be performed if the book had been one that had to be saved. The point here is that inactive mold can usually be removed cleanly from paper and often leaves behind little or no evidence that it was ever there.

Before erasure                        After erasure

Using brush to remove mold from the gutter following the use of the eraser

Step Four: If the mold infestation is severe, as in our example, it is necessary to disbind the book and check the parts of it that are normally hidden from view. (See next image.) Note that if you do not have the knowledge, skills or means to re-bind the book following this step, then obviously you will need to call in someone else to do this work. If you have access to the tools and materials and would like to have a look at the procedure, a detailed guide can be seen by clicking on “Recase” or “New Case” (depending on whether or not the original case is usable) in the Preservation Manual on the E. Lingle Craig Preservation Lab’s web site: http://www.indiana.edu/~libpres/manual/mantoc.html

Due to the extensive amount of mold evident on this book, we decided to look in less accessible places that seemed likely to harbor mold growth. As is often to be found, the hollow of the spine was one location that showed high concentrations.

Another was under the circulation pocket.

While working on the cover, Garry Harrison noticed a slight bulge in the cover material in the lower corner that he suspected might also be harboring mold growth. The bulge and the problem he discovered are shown above.

Step Five: Since the cover was off the book and unusable we took the opportunity to trim the smoke tinted end and return it to a more natural state, using a hydraulic guillotine paper cutter. Harrison then constructed a new case for the book. The following image shows completed item.

The interior of the book shows staining from at least three different sources. The stain in the lower left photo is a tide line left by the water. In the lower right photo, the stain at the top is from smoke, and the spots are dye produced by the mold. These pose no threat of re-infestation, but staining of any type always presents the question of whether or not the item is visually acceptable for return to the collection. Sometimes photocopied replacements are a solution for text-bearing pages, and blank endpapers can simply be removed.

In summary, mold-infested books call for decisions as to whether or not the book should be treated and, if so, how to treat it. Our example was an extensively infested book. To warrant the effort necessary for effective treatment, it would have to be valuable and/or difficult to replace. On the other hand, many less severely afflicted books can be quickly and easily restored via the dry removal methods described.

Approximately 20 monographs were received and treated from the Herman B Wells Library that had suffered water damage.

Seven tours were provided by the Lab staff.  Some of the groups/individuals for whom these tours were conducted included: INDIGO (Indiana Government Documents Librarians), staff from the IU Music Library, Liz Dube – the conservator from Notre Dame, members of an IU Committee who are working on the design of a film preservation facility, and SLIS (IU School of Library & Information Science) alumni.

The Preservation Lab staff toured both the Wiley House Museum and the Monroe County Historical Society.  We saw a number of items at the Wiley House that, depending on our resources for the coming years, we could provide preservation assistance with.

The Paper Lab is continuing to work on a large project for the Lilly Library that involved the rehousing of medieval manuscript fragments.  During the quarter 112 fragments were rehoused.

The Paper Lab worked with a student volunteer, Krista Grant, for the semester.  Krista contributed approximately 144 hours of volunteer work.

The General Collections Unit and the Paper Lab combined to treat 2,500 items during the quarter.  Of these 93 were treated by the Paper Lab staff (the 112 medieval manuscripts are excluded from this count) and the remaining 2,407 were done by the General Collections staff.  Of the total, the breakdown as to category of treatment was:

Level I: 905

Level II: 244

Level III: 137

Enclosures: 1,090 (does not include Kasemake enclosures)

Miscellaneous: 124

The Lab experienced a significant increase in materials from the Fine Arts Library [FAL] including a number of items from the FAL special collections and Artist’s Book collection.  These are usually items for which custom enclosures are made.

There were 1,545 enclosures made using the Kasemake box making machine.  This number has been decreasing in recent months.  The decrease can be attributed to (1) the original backlog of materials that were in the work queue has been eliminated; (2) staffing changes in the Lilly Library which resulted in a temporary slow-down of requests (this has recently changed and the number of requests has begun to return to normal); and, (3) we have changed how we think about materials being placed in ALF II and do not necessarily build an enclosure for all items that might benefit from such service but rather wait for an item to circulate and be returned before putting it in an enclosure.

Bindery Prep processed 4,377 items during the quarter.   Of these, 1,852 were serials and 1,754 were for items from the William & Gayle Cook Music Library.  In addition, there were 591 paperback items that were processed by the Bindery Prep unit.

The primary work of the Lilly Library Conservation Technician has been, as is normal, with exhibit preparation although she regularly spends 20-35% of her time working on projects, usually making custom enclosures, in the Lab.  Installations included: Literary Sketches, Science Fiction, Pregnancy & Childbirth, Mathematics & Play Puzzles, Preservation Week exhibition in Wells, The Music Man, MacAuley at Oldfields, and six student exhibits.  Fifty-two phase boxes and eight clamshell enclosures were constructed for the Lilly Library collections in addition to 23 phase boxes and forty trays (with handles) for the Puzzle Collection.

The Good News

You have discovered, or remembered, that you have a box of family photos.  Maybe one of your cousins heard that you were working on the family tree and sent you their family photos.  Whatever the source you are now the one entrusted with preserving these images from your family’s past.  This article will provide you with some basic steps you can take to help ensure that these photographs will last at least a little longer than they might if they were just left in a box in your attic.

The Bad News:  Almost all film deteriorates

When you look through your collection of family photographs, some of which may date back several decades, you will notice that there is a wide variation in their condition.  Some of the oldest may be in better shape than those taken more recently.   When the film was manufactured, who the manufacturer was, whether it was color or black and white, and how it was processed all factor into how well the photos have survived.  However, even “good” film if it has been stored improperly will show signs of deterioration.

For example, Kodachrome color film, dating from about 1938, will retain its colors for about 40 – 50 years if it has been stored in dark conditions.  Kodacolor film, which was introduced in 1942, will show noticeable signs of color loss within five to seven years.[1] By the 1960s color prints were showing some improvement but will still show 30% loss in their dye within ten to fifteen years for prints stored in average room conditions (75 degrees/40% relative humidity).[2] By the 1980s film had improved even more and consumers could expect that prints would last up to fifty years in normal room conditions.  Working as a preservation librarian and as a genealogist I personally do not think fifty years is all that long – it is better than the ten years that had been the norm, but not by much.

Causes of film fading

Controlling temperature is the first line of defense in film preservation.  One way to think about the chemicals in your photographs and how heat impacts them is to compare the photo to a pot of water you have put on the stove.  As long as it is cool the water is calm and the cooler the calmer.  As the water heats up it begins to move and change.  The same happens with the chemicals in your photos but at a lower temperature and over a longer period of time.   Normal room temperature is enough for the chemicals in your photos to start “bubbling” and within a few decades some of the colors will have “evaporated” much like the water in the boiling pot.  For storing film cooler is better.

The second guideline is to avoid excessive dampness, i.e., avoid storage conditions that exceed 50% relative humidity.  Excessive dampness is the most damaging condition for all color photographs as it can cause dye fading, mold growth and softening of the gelatin used on the photographs.[3] Mold growth and gelatin softening can happen within a period as short as a few hours if the conditions are right.

So, how important is controlling the temperature and humidity?  Studies by the Image Permanence Institute on color photographic materials have shown that film stored in an environment that averages 90 degrees and 50% relative humidity (for example your attic) will show noticeable deterioration within ten years.  The same photo stored at 70 degrees and 40% RH will take 60 years to exhibit the same loss.  If you can reduce the RH to an average of 30% it will last for 100 years.[4]

Things you can do

Decide what is important and how long you want to keep those important items.  You may have 50 photos of your father dating from World War II but are all of them important enough to spend the time and money on to preserve in their print form?  Pixels are cheap.  Perhaps the preservation strategy for the less important photos is to scan the photos.

After you have narrowed down your collection to those you want to preserve, evaluate the images and decide if the copy you have is “good enough” or if it needs to be worked on.  How faded is it?  Is it cracked?  Is it brittle or flaking?  Is it stained or showing signs of mold?  You might have a photo in which all of the above are true, but it is the only photo of the individual so it is important regardless of its condition.

If you have a scanner, some basic photo editing software and the only thing wrong with the photo is it has started to fade or the colors are off then you can make significant improvements in the overall image with only a minimum of effort.  I use Photoshop but most of the photo editing software share several basic features.  The original photo on the left was scanned.  Next to it is the image after a basic curves and levels adjustment has been applied.

I usually scan my photos in TIFF format and save the original file while working on a duplicate.  However if the photo is in good shape and needs little or no editing I may scan it as a high level JPEG.   Since both TIFF and JPEG are open formats I am relatively confident that the files will be able to be read by future generations of the software.

Once I have done whatever editing and cleaning-up of the photo I need to do the image is saved as a JPEG.  Both the TIFF original and the edited JPEG are assigned keywords.  I use Adobe’s Lightroom for this but other programs will work as well.  The images are then put into electronic folders.  My filing system is organized as follows:

My Photographs

Genealogy Photos

FAMILY

Individual

So, for example, if I am looking for a photograph of my maternal grandmother (Elfelda Marrett) I would open My Photographs, look in my Genealogy Photos folder, find the Marrett Family, then find Elfelda Marrett.

Next, you need to decide what to do with the original photograph.  One of the questions to ask is whether the photograph is important as an artifact.   The following example may help.

This photograph, taken in about 1900, shows my wife’s great grandfather and other members of the coast guard life saving station where he was working inside the station and surrounded by the tools of their trade.  The original photograph is very faded and the housing is showing signs of brittleness and is also probably somewhat acidic.  However this has high value to the family as an artifact.  I was able to scan the original and bring out more details as shown on the copy on the right.  The scanned image is one that will be shared with family while original will be stored for safe keeping.

I have other family photographs, many of which are half a century newer than the above, that are in much worse shape physically.  They may have sections of the image missing, have been folded, stuffed in envelopes, or generally mishandled.  The content of the photos can often be saved through digital restoration but the original photograph cannot be repaired so it could be discarded after scanning.

Those original images that pass your “preserve for posterity” test should be put into protective enclosures.  There are several companies that make preservation quality materials for photo storage.  Two that have long been used by libraries, and which also have good web sites and that sell to individuals are: Hollinger Metal Edge [ http://www.hollingermetaledge.com ] and Gaylord Brothers [ http://www.gaylord.com ].     Once the photos are safely enclosed, the enclosure itself needs to be stored.  Two good options for this are either an archival quality album or archival dropfront box.  If a dropfront box is a better choice for you given the size and number of prints you are saving then rather than using plastic sleeves you could place the photographs in the box and separate each layer of photographs with acid/lignin free paper or with sheets of Tyvek.  Both types of material are available at most framing stores or from many online sources.

The albums should be stored in as good an environment as you can find.  For me, this is a rarely used walk-in closet.  There are no windows and no HVAC ducts so the temperature is fairly constant and is as good as I can get for what I can afford.  If I find that the humidity levels are more than I would like I can add some sort of absorbent such as activated silica gel to the enclosure.  However, I know that if I had a cooler place to store the photographs that would be better.  For example, assuming that the closet averages 70 degrees and 40% RH the photos will last about 60 years before showing signs of color loss.  In the archival vault used by the Indiana University Libraries, materials are kept at 50 degrees and 30% RH.  Photographs stored in that type of environment would take 300 years before they exhibited the same level of loss.

In the short term I am more concerned with loss due to fire or water damage.  To address this I follow a trend used in academic libraries called LOCKSS which is short for Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe.  For my photos, this means that once the digital copies are the best I can make them then they are shared with other family members.  I also have a portable hard drive that has my important digital files that is kept away from my home.  While neither of these are ways to keep the original image safe, they do help to insure that copies of the images are likely to be around for the foreseeable future.

Finally, as a librarian as well as a photographer I am a proponent of print.  I just happen to like the idea that owning a copy that takes no more effort to view than having a light source is not a bad option.  Printing a family album using a service like Shutterfly, MPIX or Blurb is a reasonable approach.  Each of these printers offers printing on acid-free stock using archival quality ink.  These family books could be given as gifts and handed out at family reunions.

Reilly, James M.  Storage guide for color photographic materials [Rochester, N.Y.]: Image Permanence Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, [1999];

https://www.imagepermanenceinstitute.org/resources/publications

— Lynn Hufford —

January – March 2011

The General Collections Conservation section treated 2,853 items.  Of these, 1,042 were Level I treatments, 88 were Level II, and 119 were Level III.  Another 1,604 were items that were put into an enclosure.  An additional 99 items were stabilized so that they could be sent to Heckman for rebinding.

The Paper Lab performed treatments on sixty-nine items.  Of these 35 were Level I of which 33 of these were from GIMSS, one for University Archives and one for Lilly.  Twenty-one items received Level II treatment.  Geosciences had two of these, GIMSS had sixteen, Lilly two, and Music one.  There were 13 Level III treatments performed by the Paper Lab.  Four were for GIMSS and nine were for Lilly.

The Kasemake operator constructed 1,804 boxes in total.  Of these 491 were puzzle boxes for the Lilly Library’s Slocum collection and 367 were for general Lilly Library materials.  The general collections conservation unit added 87 requests; there were 119 from the other general collections and 40 from the paper lab.  In addition there were 700 boxes constructed for the film collections that are being moved to the ALF2.

The Lilly Library conservation technician oversaw the construction of 85 phase boxes, 44 corrugated boxes and four clamshell enclosures.  She also made 40 corrugated boxes for the puzzle collection.  For exhibition she made 137 labels.  In general treatments, the Lilly technician worked on 21 additional items

Bindery Prep processed 2,896 items.  Of these, 1,766 were serials, 226 were monographs and 357 were paperback sent to Heckman.  The remainders were miscellaneous items.

Other projects:

The General Collections Conservation unit hosted a tour for the College Books Arts group; gave a tutorial on the assembly of box-with-lid to the ALF staff, gave advice to a staff member at the University of Missouri and updated the text to the online preservation manual.  Harrison experimented with a way to deodorize paper.

Hufford, Harrison, Nelson, Salkola-White completed LYRASIS training in three online workshops:  Caring for Originals during scanning; Preservation and Salvage of Audio-visual Materials; and, Caring for Scrapbooks.

The staff in the Paper Lab gave a half-day workshop to participants from the Society of American Archivists student conference and another half day workshop to participants from the College Book Arts Association conference.  Sanders spoke to a SLIS class on cataloging terms associated with describing paper-based materials.

Sanders and Hufford viewed the Library of Congress web presentation “Assessing Options for Large Collections.”

McBride worked with Sanders to design one-off enclosures using the Kasemake design software, designed a new layout for film storage enclosures, and worked with the Lilly Puzzle Curator to design storage trays for the housing of the puzzle collection.

Steiner was involved or led the following projects at the Lilly Library:

EXHIBITS

Main Gallery

Lincoln Room

Slocum Room

Ball Room

Foyer

Indiana Memorial Union

School of Fine Arts Gallery

IU Cinema

Music Arts Center (MAC)

Installed:         Offset Artist Books (91 items)

12 students for Manuscripts Class (141 items)

Artist Books Jim (≈90 items)

John Ford (64 items)

Assorted supports (Jillian’s)

One Book One Bloomington (26 items)

Chapbooks (44 items)

Politics and Propaganda Puzzle (64 items)

CBAA Juried Artist Books (25 items)

Cinema John Ford (14 items)

Faust at MAC (9 items)

Deinstalled:    10 students (Cherry’s Class)

Artist Books (Jim)

John Ford

Chapbooks

Politics and Propaganda Puzzle

CBAA Juried Artist Books

Faust at MAC

SPECIAL PROJECTS

• Check in items at ALF (162)
• Check out items at ALF (121)
• Restretch & Rehang wall panels in Main Gallery Wall cases
• Wrap and label “Gilding” books for President’s office and IU Foundation (348ct)
• Scheduled and Unscheduled meetings for Manuscripts Class (33ct)
• 2/11/11 extreme RH cleanup and maintenance (Broken Fan)
• 3 of 4 parts for Legal Compliancy
• STEPS Access Class
• Approximately 10hrs on layout for Preservation Week Exhibit
• 4  assorted meetings regarding Preservation Week Exhibit
• Lyrasis – Caring for orginals during the scanning process
• 3 assorted meeting regarding puzzle tray orders

Hufford attended the midwinter meeting of ALA including meetings of the CIC Preservation Officers and the Preservation Administration Discussion Group.  He continued to serve on and attend meetings of the IUL Budgetary Advisory Committee, ALF Internal Processing Committee, Senior Managers Group.  He attended the Handheld Librarian web conference.  He worked with McBride and Harrison on a proposal for IU to perform enclosure construction for Brown University and meet with McBride and Lilly Library staff to discuss the construction of special boxes for the puzzle collection.  He met with the vice president of Bridgeport Binding to discuss the possibility of IU changing vendors for its binding operation.

In preparing for preservation week, we’ve taken the time to look back on our recent work, and it’s really gratifying to see not just the breadth of material that the library collects but also the variety of conservation treatments that we are able to perform, thanks to our fantastic facility and the support of our administration. With these tools at our disposal, we make decisions that take into account nearly every facet of the library’s needs. Of course the condition of the item speaks most directly to the required conservation treatment , but we also use that professional judgment to take into account the context of the collection to which the material belongs. Every new treatment we add to our repertoire enables us to more completely and consistently treat the collection as a whole, while maintaining the care that individual condition assessment entails.

As the library continues to fill the growing demand for digital access, the Preservation Lab works to stabilize materials for digitization and to restore the paper copy to a usable condition when the digitizing efforts have caused damage. We work to preserve those items that have already been recognized as unique, rare or special to the research needs of the University and stand poised to do the same for the material whose significance will be recognized by our scholarly community in years to come. Join us in celebrating the excellence of IU by recognizing the role of preservation plays in achieving the University’s mission and that of libraries across the nation.