Tag Archives: outreach

Celebrate Preservation Week with Us!

In celebration of ALA’s annual Preservation Week (April 24th-30th), Preservation Lab staff will be offering live demos and show & tells this week and next, both at UC Libraries and the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library:

Each session will be unique, with different staff members showing off different aspects of preservation and conservation!

Jessica Ebert [UCL] – Sr. Conservation & Photographic Documentation Specialist

Create Your Own Protective Paper Slipcase

In case you missed last night’s Facebook live event “Preserving Your Personal Library”, you can still watch it here on Facebook or on our MediaSpace channel:

Kasie, Catarina and I had a great time doing our first live event, although to be honest we were a bit nervous, however we thought it went quite well!

Part of the livestream included a step-by-step demo on how to create a simple paper slipcase at home. It requires no special tools and is really so easy to make that we encourage you to give it a try! You can find the full instructional video, complete with closed captions on our MediaSpace channel…

We want to send our deepest gratitude and thanks to Austin Winters for guiding us through this livestream and for coordinating everything for us. It was an absolute pleasure working with you, Austin! Also, we want to thank everyone who joined the livestream and for all your wonderful comments; it really means so much to us. And I want to personally thank my co-presenters, Catarina and Kasie, who are truly wonderful colleagues and collaborators.

Jessica Ebert [UCL] – Conservation Tech/Photographic Documentation Specialist/Student Supervisor

Upcoming Facebook Live event – “Preserving Your Personal Library”

Join Preservation Lab team members, Kasie Janssen, Catarina Figueirinhas, and Jessica Ebert for a special Facebook Live event hosted by our parent institutions: the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the University of Cincinnati Libraries. The event, entitled “Preserving Your Personal Library”, will take place on Tuesday, June 16th at 7pm.

Kasie, Catarina and Jessica will be discussing at-home preservation concerns like temperature, humidity, pests, light damage and storage. They will be providing tips and tricks on how to address these concerns in a practical way, and Catarina will be offering up step-by-step instructions on how to make a simple yet protective paper slipcase at home! You can access the event via the Public Library’s Facebook events page: https://www.facebook.com/events/317097016118724/.

We hope to see you there!

Prepare Yourself for Preservation Week: Virtual Edition

Despite working from home right now, we here at The Preservation Lab are getting very excited for ALA’s Preservation Week, which starts on Monday, April 27th!  If you are familiar with us at all, you know we love to host our annual Preservation Week Open House.  We truly treasure opening the doors of our lab to the community to talk about our work caring for the collections from both the University of Cincinnati and the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.  And of course you might remember those delicious cookies we like to share too! 

Well, I hope you are stocked with your cookies at home this year, because while our in-person open house is cancelled, we will be fully celebrating Preservation Week virtually this year! 

Stay tuned throughout all of Preservation Week as we post a daily blog (right here!) to highlight some of the great things we are working on.  We’ll cover the digitization of an antiphonary (and if you don’t know what that is, be sure to check out the post!); share some content and media we have been creating while working from home; have a blast from the past with a look at past Preservation Week Open House events; and more! 

The Lab and our annual Preservation Week open house were recently featured in Cincinnati Magazine. You can read more about it via Twitter and on Cincinnati Magazine’s website.

Remember to follow us on Instagram @thepreservationlab, if you aren’t already!

Kasie Janssen (PLCH) – Senior Conservation Technician

2019 Preservation Week Open House

Chris Voynovich discussing papyrus and paper with attendees


We celebrated Preservation Week (a week late) with our Annual Preservation Open House, and we want to thank everyone who was able to stop by!  This year we took a step back through time to share a brief history of the book, starting with some examples of cuneiform tablets and ending with a modern e-reader and computer technology.  By displaying our staffs‘ models of book structures through time, visitors were able to take a hands-on approach to understanding how these structures were made, used, and evolved.  This is information we use to inform the work we do in preservation every day.

Examples of early codices, including clay tablets, single quires, multi-quires, wooden tablets, rolls and scrolls


14th to 19th century models


We were also able to show recent conservation projects, including a two-volume set of a 17th century German bible, which highlighted what one volume looked like before treatment and what the other looked like after treatment.  Another item in the lab for treatment is an oversized missal, which received RTI to offer a closer look at the metalwork on the binding. 
 

“An obscenely abbreviated History of the Codex by The Preservation Lab” one-page wonder


 
 
Visitors were invited to make a “One Page Wonder,” which covers an obscenely abbreviated history of the codex.  We hope this little book and the hands-on interaction helped spread preservation awareness and inspire a deeper love of the book! 
 
 
 
 
 
If you missed us this year and want to see what all the fuss is about, check out a live video posted to our UC Library Page.  We hope to see you all again at next year’s Preservation Open House! 
 
Kasie Janssen (PLCH) – Senior Conservation Technician