Tag Archives: choir book

Fun with PhotoDoc – X-rays and CT scans, Oh My!

An alternate title to this blog could be, “That time we X-rayed medieval choir book at the UC Medical Center, and then the pandemic happened I forgot to write a blog post about it”. Oops!

X-ray image of an oversized medieval book

Let’s rewind the story back to mid-2019, when our Associate Conservator, Ashleigh, expressed interest in radiography on a beautiful, oversized choir book from the Classics Library. I, at the time, was the Photographic Documentation Specialist and had never carried out or assisted with any radiography projects, so I was very keen to start reaching out to anyone I could think of on West and East campus who might have access to such equipment. The most logical answer, UC Health, proved to be the winning one when finally the Director of Diagnostic Radiology put me in contact with the Enterprise Director of Imaging, who said yes to my request, and ultimately put me in contact with my main contact for the project, the Radiology Manager at UC Medical Center.

The date was set, October 22, 2019. Ashleigh, Holly and I packed up the heavy, choir book and carefully transported it from West campus to East campus to be imaged. The UC Health staff were beyond friendly, and I think they got a kick out of imaging the oversized leather volume. The technician really worked with us to adjust the intensity of the radiography depending on what we were trying to capture, whether it was the cover, the sewing and the supports, or the illuminated text (which was a little harder to capture with their equipment).

Overall, we discovered…a lot of nails, split thong supports, and on the lower board, four mends to the wooden board that appear to be bracing a split in the wood that is running vertically.

Red arrows indicate metal braces adhered to the wooden boards
The larger red arrows indicate metal braces while the smaller red arrows indicate the crack in the wooden board.
X-ray image of the spine
Image of the spine which allows you to see the split thong supports and you can even see the tattle-tape security strip!

Then following the radiography session, they were kind enough to ask if we would also like to place the volume in the CT scanner. Since the scanner could easily and safely accommodate the volume while keeping it wrapped in foam, we jumped at the chance!

We received all the imaging files on two CDs from UC Health, and then I went about making heads and tails of it. The radiography images were fairly straightforward. For the most impactful imaging, namely of the spine, upper and lower boards, I created composite images using the panorama feature in Photoshop to merge the images. For example, each cover consisted of four separate images.

With the CT imaging, the CD came with a reviewer software (Sorna) to view the files. Frankly, the CT scans were a little bit harder to comprehend, but nonetheless interesting. Ultimately the CT scanner allows you to view the various materials within the object. Whereas normally for the equipment that was used that would mean bones, organs and tissues, for the choir book that meant metal material like brass, leather, ink and pigment. Within the viewer function there was also an interactive component to the CT data as well, which allowed you to manipulate various levels to see various intensities, but even after a lot of trail and error and experimentation I found it very confusing, though I did get some interesting, and some less impactful, results. Let’s just say, I do not have a future as a CT technician!  I’ll stick to my day job.

  • Still image from CT scan
  • Still image from CT scan
  • Still image from CT scan

Jessica Ebert – Assistant Conservator

Partners in Crime: Digitization Meets Preservation

Book & paper preservation and digitization seem antithetical in many ways; the former focuses on the physical and the hands-on, while the latter hones in on the digital and the technical. Even though there are differences between the fields, I like to think of them as partners in crime. Both preservation and digitization work to ensure that books filled with precious knowledge are around for learning well into the future; they just take different (often intersecting) paths to get there.  

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to digitize a beautiful choir psalter from the UC Classics Library. This large book is theorized to have been used as a choir book in 15th century Italy, possibly the north-eastern area of Veneto. Its knowledge laden parchment pages and mysterious past rendered it the perfect candidate for both preservation and digitization. After it received treatment from the Lab’s conservator, I whisked it away to be digitized.

A book this distinguished required the care and attention of more than one person (it had nothing to do with how heavy it was… really). I was joined by the Lab’s photographic documentation extraordinaire Jessica, and that’s when the collaborative magic between preservation and digitization happened. Jessica and I sprinkled in some preservation-oriented photographic documentation as we digitized, allowing us to get a closer look at the materiality of the book while we had it on the copy stand. One of the most impactful imaging techniques we used on the antiphoner was that of raking light. 

Raking light involves the use of one lighting source to illuminate an object from a low angle, highlighting texture and depth. Using this technique on the choir book allowed us to see and feel the true age and history of a book that survived centuries of use; the mountains and valleys of each aged page suddenly revealed themselves in the same places they hid in normal illumination.

The normal illumination used to digitize allows us to read the book as it was meant to be read, and preservation-focused raking light allows us to experience the materiality of the object. The combination of both techniques allows for those who cannot physically interact with the book to experience (almost) all it has to offer. While there’s really no substitute for seeing the antiphoner in person, we’d like to think we can replicate the experience a little better by utilizing tools provided by our partners in crime: preservation and digitization. 

You can read more about the research done on this choir psalter in the Classics Library’s blog post, “Mystery at the Library”.

Also, make sure to check out of our Instragram (@thepreservationlab) where Jessica will be sharing some conservation photography of this beauty.

Sidney Gao [UCL] – Digital Imaging Coordinator