Tag Archives: video

How to Make a Collapsible Punching Cradle: New Video on Our YouTube Channel

We’ve reached the end of Preservation Week and what better way to celebrate than with a fun how-to video on our Lab’s YouTube channel?!

This video goes over how to make a collapsible punching cradle, step-by-step. Punching cradles are a useful bookbinding tool to have on hand in your toolbox. They allow you to create uniform sewing stations in your signatures or gatherings when you are preparing to sew a textblock. Best of all, this type of punching cradle is fully collapsible and easy to store while not in use; especially when you make one of these simple slipcases to hold all the pieces.

Here you can see a collapsed punching cradle stored in a paper slipcase made with marbled paper (left) and a punching cradle assembled and ready for use (right).

Don’t forget to “like” our video and subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay in the loop when we post new videos to the channel. If you decide to make your own punching cradle, we’d love to know what you thought of the video or, even better, tag us in a photo of it on Instagram (@thepreservationlab).

We hope you’ve enjoyed celebrating Preservation Week 2021 with us! We look forward to celebrating our 11th annual Preservation Week next year…maybe even in person this time?!

Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Tech & Photographic Documentation Specialist

Button Hole Stitch Binding

Every year our staff, students and volunteers look forward to our Student & Volunteer Appreciation day, which we affectionately call “fun day”. It generally takes place in late November or early December, always before finals week. It is a time to show our appreciation for all the hard work our students, volunteers and staff do throughout the year, while having an opportunity to come together and learn some new bookbinding or book arts technique. In the past, we’ve done paper marbling, made handmade paper, created German long stitch binds, and more.

I have been coordinating our student & volunteer appreciation days for almost as long as I’ve been in the Lab, so for at least 12 years now. I love it because I am the type of person who enjoys planning these types of things, but also I love watching a student, volunteer or staff member just get really excited about something new. You never know if it’s going to be that quiet new volunteer who just can’t get enough of paper marbling, or that student who doesn’t have any art background but just does the most amazing pulp paintings ever! So after all these years, the thought of 2020/the pandemic ruining everything and not having any sort of student/volunteer appreciation day was just unacceptable!

I immediately thought, “What types of activities could we do virtually that would be no cost to the lab and would give everyone a couple hours to come together and decompress?” After a little brainstorming with Holly, we came up with a Button Hole Stitch binding (which I had recently learned) and a simple dissolving view. With the help of my wonderful student staff member and cohort buddy, Lexie, I prepped kits for our virtual event, as well as prepared a step by step video on creating a button hole stitch binding.

Here are some of the beautiful creations that came out of our little virtual fun day:

If you would like to make your own Button Hole Stitch book check out our video on the Preservation Lab MediaSpace channel:

For the dissolving view we used Green Chair Press’ handy template, which you can find here in their blog post on dissolving views.

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

Historic Structures with Julia Miller

For Preservation Week, we decided to treat ourselves to the best staff development imaginable: a five day intensive workshop with Julia Miller on early historical structures. We learned so much from Julia and we are beyond grateful for her to coming to the Lab for this workshop! What an amazingly knowledgeable instructor and wonderful human being; thank you Julia for sharing your knowledge with us!
We will probably share a more in-depth post about what we learned later, but for right now I created a compilation video of time-lapse videos I captured during our workshop. Hope you enjoy!

Jessica Ebert [UCL] – Conservation Tech/Photographic Documentation Tech

Making the Perfect Wheat Starch Paste

As I’m sure anyone in a book & paper lab will attest, good wheat starch paste is key to most, if not all conservation treatments. And achieving that perfectly smooth and lump-free paste is often easier said than done. So when the Preservation Lab crew returned from UC’s winter seasonal days off, the first thing on the docket for our resident paste maker, Veronica Sorcher, was to make a brand new batch of wheat starch paste to start the new year off right! My purpose in documenting her through this process was two fold: first, it’s been ages since I’ve made paste myself (because Veronica almost always does it – she loves it and we love her for always making it!) and I could use a refresher, and secondly, I thought it would be interesting to show the making of (or behind-the-scenes, BTS, if you will) of something so core to the day-to-day conservation in the lab. To give those who might not understand how much attention is put into the quality of every aspect of what we do here in the lab. Plus, I thought it might be fun! I hope you enjoy…

A huge thank you to Veronica for being the paste making master she is and allowing me to film her and to Catarina for allowing me to film her while she strained and used the lovely paste that had just been made.
Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician

NEW! Preservation Lab Channel on UCL MediaSpace

The Preservation Lab now has its own channel on the UC Libraries MediaSpace, a YouTube-like media platform powered by Kaltura! You can find the Lab’s channel, here.

We currently have 8 videos on the MediaSpace, most of which relate to RTI. But I recently created this fun little time-lapse video of sewing conservation endbands on a Classics collection item. (If you enjoy twangy bluegrass music, then make sure to turn your volume up!)
Stay tuned for future videos from the Lab!
Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician

Fun with PhotoDoc – RTI Viewer Video (Edition 6)

In my last “Fun with PhotoDoc” post I discussed the my recent RTI training with Cultural Heritage Imaging at Yale University. If you missed that post you can check it out here. In that post I discussed our first RTI capture session on a book entitled, Aller Bücher und Schrifften des thewren, seligen Mans Gottes Doct. Mart. Lutheri …, which is part UC’s Archives & Rare Books Library’s collection and is the eighth volume in an eight volume set. The binding is most likely age-hardened alum-tawed leather (though possibly vellum) on wooden boards with embossed paneled decoration that is barely visible under normal illumination. In that first RTI blog post I shared some snapshots of the various RTI modes you can explore within the RTI Viewer software, but I knew that I ultimately wanted to create a video capture of the RTI Viewer in action. I was finally able to do that using a free software called TinyTake.

This video can also be viewed through UCL Media Space: https://stream.libraries.uc.edu/media/AllerBucherUndSchrifften_i17632730_VideoCaptureRTI/1_s13c9opc
In this video we explore the following modes built within the RTI Viewer as the light position is moved around the object:

Default Mode (HSH)
Specular Enhancement Mode with color removed (HSH) – notice the “1571” inscription that becomes more apparent. This volume was printed in 1568, and we believe that 1571 was when the publication was bound.
Normals Visualization Mode (HSH) – allows the human eye to better determine is convex and concave on the surface of the cover.
Diffuse Gain Mode (PTM) – This mode is ideal for visualizing surface abrasions and losses. Take notice of the “ID” inscription that becomes more visible, and when we switch back to the default mode you can see that this “ID” inscription is virtually invisible to the naked eye.

I have to say, Catarina and I really enjoyed the capture process for this binding, but when we found that “ID” and then looked at the physical binding and could barely see anything…we were kind of giddy! I’m hoping to create more RTI Viewer video captures like this as we carry out more RTI capture sessions for collection materials. When I do, I will make sure to share them here.
Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician

Fun with PhotoDoc – RTI (Edition 5)

At the beginning of April I was lucky enough to attend a RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) workshop offered by Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI) at Yale University. CHI is a non-profit organization that shares and teaches RTI and Photogrammetry technology with cultural heritage institutions around the world. The class I attended was a 4-day NEH grant sponsored course taught by three RTI experts from CHI, and it was amazing!

This is a composite image of all the highlight points from one RTI section. The software uses these highlight points to map the surface shape and color of your object.

So, what is RTI? CHI describes it on their website as “a computational photographic method that captures a subject’s surface shape and color and enables the interactive re-lighting of the subject from any direction”. For highlight RTI, which is the least expensive and most accessible method for most institutions and what I was taught in the class, you basically take a series of 36 to 48 images of an object where everything is constant (settings and position of objects, camera and spheres) except for the light position. With a reflective black sphere (or 2) set up next to your object, you move you light source around the object at varying angles. Then, you take that set of images and plug them into the free RTI software provided by CHI and the algorithm detects the sphere(s) and the highlight points (from your light) captured on the sphere(s) and voila!…you have an fun and interactive way to look at your object’s surface texture.
Before I attended this fantastic training opportunity, our conservator and I knew right away what the subject of our first capture would be when I returned…a 16th century German Reformation text by Martin Luther with a highly decorated cover that is practically invisible under normal illumination.

Here’s a time lapse video of our first (and second) capture in the Lab…
That day (Tuesday) were were able to capture the upper and lower covers of the Reformation text (from ARB), the original silk cover from a 17th century Chinese manuscript (from Hebrew Union College) and an illuminated page from a German vellum prayer book (from PLCH). And here our some snapshots of our results from two of those captures (click on the thumbnails for a larger view of the image)…

This possibly 13th century German Prayer Book has a full stiff vellum binding and an illuminated first page. The varying modes highlight condition issues like worn/abraded parchment and flaking gold illumination, as well as the overall surface texture of the illumination.

I hope you’ve enjoyed getting a little sneak peek into RTI. I will be demoing and discussing in further depth this afternoon from 1:30 to 3pm at the Lab’s annual Preservation Week Open House. I also hope to do more RTI captures/processes in the future and share them here.
Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician

Fun with VideoDoc: Lining a Oversized Map (Edition 3)

Before treatment photo, map with cloth lining.

A couple months ago the lab received an oversized map from the Public Library’s collection. The map is from 1863 and depicts the businesses of downtown Cincinnati at the time. The Public Library would like to digitize the map, however when it arrived in the lab it had a variety of creases, stains and losses. It was also previously lined with cloth. Conservator, Ashleigh, and Sr. Conservation Tech, Catarina, began the work of removing the map from the prior cloth lining, washing the detached sections of the map to assist in removing the prior cloth lining adhesive, and locally humidifying and flattening the creases and distortions in the paper (caused when the map was previously lined).
Next up, lining the map with kozo fiber tissue and a mixture of wheat starch paste and methyl cellulose. For this, Ashleigh and Catarina created a make-shift light table, since the Lab’s was not large enough and began piecing the sections of the map back together. I couldn’t not document this climactic part of the treatment, so I went a little crazy, threw my go-to documentation equipment out the window (i.e. our Nikon DSLR), grabbed my iPhone and made a little video to illustrate the process. I hope you enjoy it!

*Please note, portions of this video have been sped up to shorten the length of the video…Ashleigh and Catarina work quickly, but not THAT quickly!
Jessica Ebert (UCL) – Conservation Technician