One of the best parts of the formation of our joint lab was the addition of a full time conservator. The University of Cincinnati lab had been performing a variety of conservation repairs or mends on general collection items for years. Tip-ins, tears, tape removal, sewing and spine repairs were all familiar types of mending to those of us who had been working in the existing UC lab. But when our joint lab began and our new conservator, Kathy Lechuga, started we quickly began to see that not all our repairs or mends were up to par. Kathy had a vast knowledge of conservation, including best practices that were more up-to-date. Even straight forward repairs like spine repairs (or re-backs) that haven’t changed much in the last 30 years needed some minor tweaking. But one repair stuck out as needing a major update, a paper hinge repair we had been doing for years and years.
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Category Archives: Collection Care
Odd shaped item? No problem!
For library items that cannot stand by themselves because of their shape or size, placing them in an enclosure is a good solution to the problem. In this case we made a custom clamshell box with filler because the item, a book on monograms, is shaped like a spade.
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Paper, how do I cut thee? Let me count the ways…
A few years ago if someone had asked me what I cut paper with I would have said, “A pair of scissors, of course.” Then I came to the Preservation Lab.
We cut a lot of paper here. It can be in big sheets, little sheets or tiny scraps. It might be heavy or lightweight, made of short fibers like the ubiquitous wood pulp paper or long fibers such as Japanese kozo paper. We use it for different things too. Heavy board for book covers and boxes, corrugated board for different boxes, light board for folders, paper for pages or repairing spines, Japanese paper for mending tears and making hinges, newsprint for waste paper to catch adhesive overflow. With so many variables it helps to have a few options for cutting the paper.
Probably the tool we all use most often for cutting paper is a scalpel. We each have a least a couple at our work station. My go-to scalpel is the #11 which has a fine tip and straight, angular blade. The #23 with its curved edge is good too, depending on the particular task. Scalpels are great when we need to make a nice clean cut trimming excess paper from a repair, or we use them with a metal straight edge when we need to make a long cut that wouldn’t be straight enough if cut with scissors.
Preservation Week 2013
In honor of Preservation Week, the lab threw the doors wide open to the UC and PLCH communities for a Preservation Lab Open House. Colleagues from both libraries came to find out a little bit more about what lab staff do to keep our collections healthy and patron-ready.
We pulled out all the stops to give our guests a tour of our home away from home.
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…a massive and impressive contraption
One of the (many) great things about our collaboration, and the State Library of Ohio grant that funded our collaborative lab, was being able to purchase new equipment and supplies. With grant funds, the lab purchased an additional board shear, a humidification/suction table, a ductless fume-hood, additional map cases to store paper and many other wonderful things. But there were certain unique and very specific items that we couldn’t find through outside vendor s, and that’s when UC’s talented group of carpenters came to our aid. The UC carpenters were essential when it came to renovating our existing lab, adding a second bench area for the conservator and two conservation technicians, and a second sink by the new work benches. But one of the most massive and impressive contraptions they constructed was multi-compartment structure to hold binders board, corrugated board, foam, and other various odds and ends. It’s mammoth, sturdy and expertly crafted. And more importantly offers an excellent storage solution to some of the new supplies we were ordering.
Yet, after the first year of our new created collaborative lab there was still one area where we still need some organization help…bookcloth and buckram storage. For ages we had been storing our bookcloth and buckram in an oversized laminate bin.
Imagine this but jammed full of three times the cloth and buckram.
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