Monthly Archives: March 2023

Online Treatment Presentation: Join us April 10th!

To celebrate the upcoming festival of Passover, please join Hebrew Union College and the Preservation Lab for a virtual presentation about the treatment of one of the earliest printed illustrated Haggadot in the rare book collection of the Klau Library.

Tzafun: The Behind the Scenes Work of Repairing the 1526 Prague Haggadah

  • Overall of opening before treatment
  • View of broken sewing and poorly aging repairs before treatment
  • Overall view of leather binding before treatment

Dr. Jordan Finkin, Rare Book and Manuscript Librarian and Co-Director at Hebrew Union College Press will kick off the talk with a discussion about the significance and history of the Haggadah in the greater context of Haggadot Jewish book printing.

Ashleigh N. Ferguson Schieszer, Rare Book and Paper Conservator, will follow by describing the intricate process required to restore the binding and its contents. In this session, Ashleigh will discuss how she met the challenges facing her with this amazing historical work to reverse earlier poorly-done repairs. These treatments were conducted over several years, and included preservation of handwritten songs later added to the Klau’s copy.

Please join us at 11 am on April 10th, 2023 for the hour-long session by registering for the event here.

Check out the recorded session, now available on the HUC-JIR YouTube channel here.

This project was funded by the generous donations of Dr. Valerie Hotchkiss and Dr. David Price.

To learn more about Hebrew Union College (HUC) and to check out their ongoing events, please visit HUC’s website at https://huc.edu/libraries/library-events/.

Ashleigh Ferguson Schieszer, Conservator [CHPL]

A New Home For the Madisonville Scrapbook

We’re excited to announce that the Madisonville branch is in its final stages to re-open their newly renovated space! Please join the library for the opening event March 18th! At the event, the Genealogy and Local History Department staff member, Chris Smith will talk about Madisonville’s history from 3:30 pm – 4 pm.

During the event, the Madisonville scrapbook will be on view for festivities March 18th.

Because this material is HUGE and considered a rare irreplaceable item, both the book and cradle were hand delivered from one building to another by Preservation Lab and Madisonville staff. Below are “behind the scenes” images showing the delivery of these oversized materials.

View of book in its prior home location, recently cleared of books:

Scrapbook & cradle in room empty of books
Cradle in prior location
Scrapbook cover
B

For transport, the oversized book was stored in a lightweight (but strong!) custom enclosure:

Two flaps of foam were first sandwiched under a flap of board
Chris Voynovich closes all flaps
Flaps were secured with integrated cloth ties

The custom enclosure consists of multiple light-weight layers and flaps of foam, all tied together with cotton ties, as shown in Chris’ schematic. This enclosure will be used both for transport and for long-term storage.

Once packaged, both the book and cradle were hand delivered to their new home next door:

Cradle hand delivered next door by Terry Barnum and Chris Voynovich
Bottom view of cradle
Book strapped to dolly
Book is oriented spine edge down for safe transport

The book now awaits the re-opening event while staff continue unpacking the rest of collections!

Boxes being unpacked in new space
Children’s area is coming together!

We hope to see you there!

Ashleigh Ferguson Schieszer [CHPL] – Rare book and paper conservator

To read about the conservation of the scrapbook and construction of the book’s cradle, please see the treatment documentation and a prior blog article titled, Madisonville Scrapbook.

As a bonus, to celebrate the completion of the oversized treatment, Chris created a comic you can fold from an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. Check out the printable file below! Instructions on how to fold can be found on the Preservation Lab’s YouTube channel video titled Preserving Scrapbooks beginning at the 10:42 time stamp.

ScrapbookOnePgWonder_CV_withInteriorDownload