Tag Archives: Ashleigh Schieszer

Connections. Collaboration. Community. Oh My!

Each year, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) holds an annual conference bringing together colleagues from over 120 countries to experience international librarianship.  Past conferences have been held in Istanbul, Singapore, Berlin, and Bangkok.  In August of 2016, IFLA hosted their annual conference in Columbus, Ohio titled, Connections.  Collaboration.  Community.
On August 19th, as part of the University of Cincinnati Libraries tour, the Preservation Lab was honored to welcome our international librarian colleagues for a visit to our lab where we discussed our role in collaborative preservation within Ohio – and locally as a conservation lab serving two institutions.
During our 40-minute tour, we highlighted treatments for special collections and discussed the importance of treatment documentation.  Ashleigh invited guests to see in-process treatments and demonstrated filling paper losses using leaf casting techniques on a suction platen.  Jessica walked visitors through the lab’s treatment documentation process in the conservation lab’s digital photography studio.  Teaming up on preservation were Holly and Hyacinth who showcased preventative storage enclosures and exhibition mounts.  They worked in conjunction with Veronica who carefully hot-stamped bookmarks to make keep-sake souvenirs for guests to take home from the lab.

IFLA 2016

Conservation Technician, Jessica Ebert discusses conservation photographic documentation during an IFLA Langsam Library Tour.


IFLA 2016

IFLA tour guest communicates with Alex Temple, lab volunteer, with translation assistance from library staff member Yu Mao


We’re absolutely honored to have participated on this year’s American IFLA post-conference activities and were delighted to present about the work our collaborative lab conducts to preserve both academic and public library materials.
Next year, IFLA’s annual meeting will be held in Wroclaw, Poland.  Click here to learn more about this international professional library association.
If you’re interested in hearing more about the Cincinnati IFLA tours, check out the UC Libraries blog and Ohio Library Council’s website.

Tiny Tomes – Now on Display!

There’s an exciting new Public Library exhibit located in the Popular Library in the Main Library building downtown. It’s titled, Tiny Tomes  and includes over 50 small books that are part of the reference library collection. There are a variety of subjects, binding styles, and time periods represented. Topics include sport flip books, lichens & ferns, children’s books, and many more!
This past week, the Preservation Lab assisted with preparing the books for display. Once the layout of the show was established and pages were selected for display, I helped strap bindings with soft polyethylene strapping and showed staff how to use various supports made out of Vivak and archival mat board. These supports were made beforehand in our lab by lab technician, Chris Voynovich.  Since we knew the overall size of the books were generally 4 x 6 inches, a variety of general supports were constructed out of lab scraps rather than custom fitting the supports to each book. This greatly expedited the process of making the book cradles.
Out of approximately 40 constructed supports, every single one was put to use!  There were V-shaped supports used to hold books open while lying flat, U-shaped supports to lift up books, triangle shaped supports to act as cradles, and other supports to hold books safely upright.
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Some books were too fragile to be opened or had more than one page to exhibit. As an alternative to displaying interior pages, some of the books were scanned by Digital Services and surrogates were printed. These images are also available online, located here: http://cdm16998.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16998coll52.
The exhibit runs from Jan 18th to March 13st. While you’re at Main Library, be sure to check out the Smallest Book on exhibit in the Cincinnati Room, located on the 3rd floor!
Ashleigh Ferguson Schieszer (PLCH) – Book and Paper Conservator

Mounting a Microscopic Book

One of the treasures I was recently asked to prepare for display was a book called The Smallest Book in the World. The library owns two copies printed by German typographer, Josua Reichert. The tiny book contains typography that was uniquely designed specifically for the binding. Each page contains a CMYK colored alphabet letter in an exquisitely designed font. While not currently the smallest book in the world, it is probably the smallest traditionally printed edition!

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Just Can’t Get Enough

For some of us here at the Lab it’s not enough to work with books all day, we even work with them in our spare time!
The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County collaborates with the Cincinnati Book Arts Society every year to put on Bookworks, an exhibit celebrating the work of book artists. We’re thrilled that four staff members (we’ll always think of Pat as staff, no matter how long he’s retired!) have pieces in Bookworks XVI .
Pat Schmude’s leather-bound “Zombies,” made with techniques learned from bookbinder and conservator Jeff Peachey during a 2013 workshop at the Lab on Eigteenth-Century French Bookbinding.Zombies“The Red Door” is a piece Pat worked on over many years, adding a detail here and there when the inspiration came to him. All of us at the Lab fell in love with it. Don’t you just want to walk through that door and see what new world it takes you to?
RedDoorJessica Ebert’s “Curiosities Behind Glass” shows off the carousel form we learned during our December “fun day” to great effect.
Curiiosities Behind GlassAshleigh’s “Study of Impermanence of Early Contact Printing Photography” is research and binding skill rolled into one!ImpermanenceStudyShe also saved neat old spine linings she had to remove during treatments over her years as a student worker and turned them into a nifty and whimsical documentary for “Spines.”
SpinesMy own wee accordion book, “Wholehearted” uses techniques I learned for toning paper for treatments.Wholehearted
If you’re in the area check out the show in the Atrium at the Public Library’s Main Branch. It’s up from June 10th to September 6th, 2015.
Veronica Sorcher (PLCH) — Conservation Technician

Housing the Public Library's historic stained glass

When the original Main Library at 629 Vine Street opened to the public in 1873, three beautiful and intricate stained glass windows graced one of the reading rooms in the building. In 1955, when the building was demolished, the windows were sold at auction, later to resurface as part of the decor of the Old Spaghetti Factory on Pete Rose Way. After the restaurant closed to make room for Paul Brown Stadium, the Library purchased the windows and began making plans to return them to the Main Library for the appreciation and enjoyment of our customers and staff. Thanks to the generosity of the Friends and the Annabel Fey Trust Fund, the three windows have now been re-created and restored to their original glory and will be on permanent display in the Main Library.
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18th and 19th century leather: A Conservation Challenge!

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of handling special collection materials, you may have noticed that some books stand the test of time better than others.
In particular, why is it that some older leather books that date to the 15th century still function well, while other leather covered books from the 1700’s and 1800’s fall apart and turn to powder in our hands?
The reason is twofold. Books made in the Carolingian, Romanesque and Gothic periods were highly engineered luxury items that were made with high quality materials. Later, as books become more of a household commodity, quality was sacrificed to meet rising production needs, leading to books being made cheaply with poor quality materials. The common degradation we find in 18th and 19th century tightback leather bindings is a direct result of poor construction combined with the use of poor quality materials.
What exactly is causing this later leather to degrade? There are many reasons such as environmental factors, but two of the most common condition issues are caused by the type of animal skin used, and the materials used to tan the leather.
For example, sheepskin leather exhibits characteristic degradation of shearing away in layers while calfskin does not. This is essentially because sheep have a thicker undercoat of fur. The roots of the sheep’s undercoat grow in-between the lower corium and upper grain layers of the skin, and after the hair is removed during the tanning process, a microscopic void is left between the layers of skin. As a result, the leather becomes vulnerable to delamination overtime (see photo below).
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Traveling Objects on Loan for Exhibition


This week we had the pleasure of assessing the condition of some unusual objects not often found in a book and paper conservation lab.  The objects, owned by the Winkler Center for the History of Health Professions at UCL, consisted of a child’s leg brace, a box of polio specimen slides from the 1960’s, and a group of honorary medals.

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Conservation – a Complex Profession

“WhAsleighat is it that you do, exactly?” is a question conservators are often asked when met for the first time.
As an emerging conservator, sometimes it’s difficult to quickly describe the daily work I perform. When many people hear the word conservation, they immediately think of protecting wildlife.
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