We recommend parking in Woodside Garage
(2913 Woodside Drive) connected to Langsam Library – where the Preservation Lab is located. The garage is located on the corner of MLK Drive W. and Woodside Dr. When you turn onto Woodside Dr., it will be the 1st parking garage on your right.
Once you park in the garage, take the stairs or elevator to the entrance of Langsam Library. Once you enter into the library, follow the signs down to the lab!
Welcome to the final day of Preservation Week. Though we were unable to have our traditional open house this year, the Lab staff (see our glamour shots below) hope you enjoyed our week of blog entries. Though a blog can’t replace the energy of meeting in person, we hope we offered new insights into the profession of preservation, the work we are currently doing from home, our individual research interests, and how we’ve come together to make The Preservation Lab a productive and collaborative team.
This year ALA’s Preservation Week marks its 10 year milestone. The Lab is proud to have participated since the beginning of our institutional collaboration in 2012. Our first few open house events were an opportunity for staff from both the public library and UC to see our facility, meet the lab team, and learn about the types of treatments and repairs available to them. As time has gone on, we have opened the event to the public and delved deeper into the research and expertise required to do our work, such as knowledge of historic structures, the materiality of the book, and photographic techniques that make the invisible visible.
We look forward to seeing everyone in person for next year’s Preservation Week. 2021 will be a banner year for the Preservation Lab as we will embark on our 10th year of collaboration, preservation, stewardship, and team work. Expect an open house celebration worthy of such an anniversary. And as always, there will be cookies. We have much to look forward to; hang in there!
We’ll say goodbye to Preservation Week with a walk down memory lane…Preservation Week Open House invites from 2012-present.
Wishing you all well.
Holly Prochaska (UCL) — Preservation Librarian
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!
Remember to follow us on Instagram @thepreservationlab, if you aren’t already!
Kasie Janssen (PLCH) – Senior Conservation Technician
Chris Voynovich discussing papyrus and paper with attendees
Examples of early codices, including clay tablets, single quires, multi-quires, wooden tablets, rolls and scrolls
14th to 19th century models
“An obscenely abbreviated History of the Codex by The Preservation Lab” one-page wonder
Secret Cincinnati: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure by Kathryn Witt recently came out and you wouldn’t believe who’s featured in it…
When you flip to # 72 you will find a great description of the Lab’s annual Open House, where the Lab opens its doors to the public and shares a little bit about what with do. Generally our Open House falls on ALA’s Preservation Week (the last week of April). However, this year it will be held during this first week of May due to a scheduling conflict.
So mark your calendars!
Jessica Ebert [UCL] – Conservation Technician & Photographic Documentation Tech
Were you unable to attend our annual preservation week open house at the end of April? OR maybe you did attend but didn’t get to see everything you wanted? Well, have no fear! I’ve created a quirky little video to encapsulate (fyi, that’s a scrapbook conservation joke) all the excitement, activity, and overall bombardment of information and cool stuff to your senses that our open houses generally entail.
A big thank you again to everyone who was able to make it and celebrate Preservation Week with us. This was definitely our biggest, most jammed packed year yet and it was so much fun! If you missed the event, definitely mark your calendars for next years’ preservation week, April 21-27, 2019 and stay tuned at the beginning of 2019 for an exact open house date. Until next time…
Our conservator, Ashleigh, ordered these GLOP custom temporary tattoos for all the staff members and we all couldn’t wait to sport them during the event! GLOP is our little nickname for our team and our preservation friends and it stands for Gorgeous Ladies/Lads of Preservation.
A big thank you to everyone who was able to attend our Preservation Week Open House last Thursday! It was a great success and we all had so much fun sharing what we do with everyone. If you were not able to attend, we wanted to share the awesome comic that our very own Chris Voynovich (conservation technician) created just for the event.
ScrapbookOnePgWonder_CV_withInterior
Attendees were able to create their own one-page wonder featuring this comic and then had a chance to flip through the Madisonville Branch Library’s scrapbook that inspired the comic. Those who attended were also able to explore various artist book structures by viewing and handling (and in some cases, just admiring from a far) collection items from the DAAP Library’s artist book collection. The evolution of the book was a central theme with attendees learning about pre-codex structures (like cuneiform tablets and scrolls), early codex structures (with a foray into medieval bindings and parchment), and modern structures like the ever complex scrapbook. Attendees were able to stamp their own book mark, featuring a quote by P.J. O’Rourke, and learn about RTI, how the lab has improved their capture process, and view the results from a recent RTI project featuring cuneiform tablets. And of course, attendees were able to grab a Busken cookie featuring our Preservation Lab logo. It was a great event!
Make sure to mark your calendar for 2019 Preservation Week (April 21–27) so you can come down, visit the lab, and see the cool stuff we’re working on. I’m also working on a little video of the event, so stayed tuned and check out our MediaSpace channel for updates in the near future.
Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician & Lead Photographic Documentation Tech
This past week the preservation lab hosted 3 classes with 3rd year fashion design majors.
The goal of the sessions were to familiarize the students with the basic parts of the book, explore different types of enclosures, and demonstrate how these simple structures can be “tweaked” to produce a wide range of compelling forms.
Veronica discusses a bound items with exposed sewing.
