Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference

The Association of Moving Image Archivists is the professional organization for those who are involved with preserving and making accessible film and video. I attended the recent conference in Austin, TX and came away with a couple of good tools:

Hannah Frost from Stanford University presented this new tool, the AV Artifact Atlas, for understanding video and audio technical issues. The goal is to create a reference work with examples so that non-technical folks will be able to identify what is wrong with their video, learn the cause of the problem, and confirm if there is anything that can be done to correct it.

The tool is actually a wiki and will eventually be open for additions from the audio-visual community. As someone who is coming to film and video preservation without a technical background this is a fantastic guide to help me talk to media experts. For instance, I’d never heard of “quilting” other than as a hobby but now I know how to recognize it and sadly, that it can’t be corrected.

The National Archives has made public their guidelines for reformatting materials and the context for the digitized items that they produce. I’ll be looking at these documents with a goal of updating Dartmouth Library’s digitization specifications and to develop a media preservation guide. This will also build on the ideas Helen picked up at DLF, detailed in the session notes from Strategies for Film and Video Digitization.

Finally, clips from “The Orozco Mural Quetzalcoatl” were shown both at the Reel Thing technical session and Archival Screening Night. Russ Suniewick of Colorlab showed some before and after footage to demonstrate how they were able to restore the film to its original color after it had experienced magenta dye-fade; I showed a four-minute clip at Archival Screening Night as a teaser for the Spring 2012 world premier. Watch this blog for that announcement.

Written by Barb Sagraves

Guest Post from Intern Arini Esary

Hello, this is Arini Esarey, the current book conservation intern from North Bennet Street School. I graduated from North Bennet in June and am thrilled to have these several months at Dartmouth to practice what I’ve learned in school and learn new treatments. One of the many interesting things about this lab is that Deborah and Stephanie got their bookbinding and conservation training from places other than North Bennet, so some of their methods are slightly different than what I learned. Perfect! That’s exactly what I hoped to find by studying with different people after finishing school.

Recently, Deborah and I sat down and talked about the course of the internship; what I have already completed and what lies ahead. There’s been immense freedom here to work on projects of personal interest and I’m so grateful for that. We made a two-page list of treatments to get through and are steadily checking them off. They range from basic to complex repairs of items from General Collections and Special Collections. To list a sampling: pamphlet resewing, Japanese tissue hinge repairs, spine repairs, board tacketing, production/batch work, paper deacidification, Ultrasonic encapsulation, disbinding books, and housing unusual items.

Some of the more memorable projects I’ve worked on have been treating a brittle volume of A Parody on Iolanthe; a printers proof copy of Indiana Home, written by a distant relative of mine, Logan Esarey (that was a thrill to run across); disbinding volumes of early 19th Century Medical Theses from the Dartmouth Medical School; housing a splinter of a wooden goalpost from the 1935 Dartmouth vs. Yale football game; and more recently, a set of cloth rebacks repaired using the method Todd Pattison detailed in his presentation at the Guild of Book Workers Standards of Excellence Seminar.

A Parody on Iolanthe
Some of the pages were very brittle and others were not, so we decided to deacidify all pages, encapsulate the brittle ones, and leave loose the others. I rebound the book in its original boards with some modifications to account for the larger size of the encapsulated pages.

Cloth Rebacks
Pattison’s technique is interesting because the original spine pieces are torn off, rather than cut. This helps to make a more seamless, subtle repair. The outermost layer of Japanese tissue is toned on the book with acrylics to get a perfect color match. Doing these four in quick succession got me over my fear of coloring on the book and I quite like it now.

Medical Theses
Some of the handwritten scripts in the medical theses are gorgeous. Aren’t the title flourishes beautiful?! I’m a little bit jealous that they could hand write such short theses (they are anywhere from 2-20 pages) with no citations or references. Stephanie found one today that even included a postscript. Oh, how times have changed.

I should mention that in addition to conservation work this internship includes individual meetings with staff from different departments and tours of departments and libraries on campus. As much as I do love bench work, it’s been valuable to step away and see how conservation work fits into the larger scope of the library. For example, I’ve sat in on meetings with Special Collections to determine treatment plans for items in the library and met with others to learn how Preservation Services fits into the current digitization projects.

We’ve also had special guests come to us. Malcolm Summers gave us a daylong tutorial on gold tooling and Anna Embree spent a few days with us showing us conservation tricks, how to repair our board shears, and general shop talk. There has been a great sense of community here in the department, the library as a whole, and region. My time here has been filled with bench work, hands-on demonstrations, lively discussions, and good music. Thanks everyone.

Written by Arini Esarey

Digital Library Federation Fall Forum 2011

I had the honor of attending this year’s Digital Library Federation Fall Forum a few weeks ago as a Forum Fellow and I wanted to share a little of my experience on the blog.

First of all, I am so grateful to the DLF for giving me the opportunity to attend. There were three fellows this year and each of us was paired with a mentor for the conference, which was fantastic. My mentor introduced me to a bunch of people and gave me some excellent advice about career planning and working in the field. It was also great to meet the other fellows and learn more about their experiences and paths into digital librarianship.

In addition to all the professional socializing inherently involved in conference attendance, I attended several really great presentations and workshops, but for the sake of brevity I’ll just highlight a few:

UDFR: A Semantic Registry for Format Representation Information
This brief but informative session gave an update on the development of UDFR, the Unified Digital Format Registry. This registry will combine the existing PRONOM and GDFR registries to give a comprehensive, interactive listing of file formats, along with their significant properties and preservation risks. I can’t wait to see the result, which should go live in early 2012.

Digital Preservation Cloud Services for Libraries and Archives
This session outlined some of the ways in which cloud services could be a solution for ongoing digital preservation needs among library and archive institutions. Cloud-based services can answer some common technological needs, including:

• Scalability – cloud services allow for quick resource provisioning and are generally pay-as-you go.
• Cost-efficient maintenance – cloud services can maximize resource use thanks to economy of scale.
• Configurability – levels of service can be defined according to institutional policies and need.

However, there are still issues relating to cloud services, particularly in terms of reliability and security. I actually heard someone in a different session mention that they had lost data during transfer to and from a cloud storage provider, so…keep that in mind if you’re considering cloud storage as a primary preservation solution. (Also keep in mind that this was just one person at one institution. Many other cloud service users may have had excellent experiences. Please share if you know of research in this area!)

Strategies for Film and Video Digitization
This 3-hour working session covered so much information that I have pages and pages of notes, so I’ll just mention the topics that were discussed:

• Media preservation plans – their importance, and an example from Indiana University
• File formats and digitization specifications
• Digitization as a preservation strategy - this was really interesting, with examples of current practice from Northwestern, Indiana, and Stanford Universities
• Storage methods
• Workflow issues

A Google Doc with detailed notes from this session can be viewed here if you’d like to see more detail.

I also attended the post-forum Project Managers Meeting, in which I learned a lot about project management practices. In addition to some excellent discussion, the highlight of this meeting for me was Tito Sierra’s presentation on the Project One-Pager. His slides from that presentation can be found here, and I highly recommend looking them over if you’re interested in project management.

All in all, the forum was fun and informative, and I’m really glad I was able to attend. Thanks, DLF!

Written by Helen Bailey

Visit from Professor Anna Embree

On October 5th and 6th, we had the pleasure and expertise of Anna Embree in the lab. She is an Associate Professor in the M.F.A. in the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama. And she was recently awarded the 2011 Emerging Educator Award at the College Book Art Association's national meeting.

Anna came by way of the Guild of Book Workers (where she is Vice President) Standards of Excellence Seminar, which just took place in Boston. We were very fortunate to have the timing work out so she could visit.

Last summer Anna took a two-week class with Don Etherington, learning different techniques in conservation, and she was happy to share with us what she learned there and what her experiences have been working at the Iowa conservation lab. It was a refreshing time looking back to the basics and discussing why we do what we do and why we might not do something.

We started off by that foreboding topic that can go on and on, “paste”, and adhesives in general. We also discussed cleaning spines, linings, and options for re-casing. Anna showed us how she makes microwave paste, the critical point being to soak the powder for at least 20 minutes. We used Zen Shofu. She also will vary the ratio of powder to water depending on how hot the microwave runs and what she will be using the paste for. In general she uses a 5 to one ratio.

Once the paste is cooked it’s covered with water. When paste is needed she will strain it a few times then start adding water to thin it out. This is done gradually with lots of swirling with the brush. In the end we had some very beautiful paste.

Perfect!

The next thing we learned was how to make a portable light table, although this was more like an anti-light table. Constructed from a 40 pt. board, a black piece of paper and a sheet of mylar this nifty set up allows for excellent matching of paper repairs for fills.

40 pt., Black paper, Mylar

Tape all three together.

Put your item under the Mylar.

Put your Japanese paper on top of the Mylar and water-tear or use your awl to outline the loss.

And voila! A perfect fit. Thank you Don! Thank you Anna!

We then proceeded onto sewing and using a concertina:

Anna reminded us to make sure your supports are at a right angle to the frame (these little details can make all the difference).

Next the Japanese tissue concertina material is wrapped around the first signature and up and over the cross bar.

To start folding the concertina, place a dowel on top of the preceding signature.

And fold the tissue back around toward the sewing supports. Define the crease from the inside using your finger.

Then gently crease along the fold but not so much as to make a sharp crease, as the signature needs to fit nicely into the concertina.

We practice the herringbone stitch.

Here is Helen having a go at the project.

It is so rewarding being able to host guests. There is a great interchange of learning and ideas between both parties. It was such a pleasure to learn new things and at the same time have confirmation that what you are doing is also being done in the field at large. Anna, come back any time!

Written by Deborah Howe

Dartmouth College Library Digital Preservation Policy

I am very pleased to announce the creation of the Dartmouth College Library Digital Preservation Policy. This policy is a critical first step in the Library’s goal of ensuring long-term access to digital resources. It identifies the scope of digital objects that the Library will commit to preserving long term, the principles that will guide preservation actions, and the strategies that will be implemented to ensure preservation.

The policy was heavily influenced by similar documents from the Wellcome Library, Columbia University Library, and Yale University Library, as well as the Digital Curation Centre, JISC, and the OAIS Reference Model.

Kudos to Helen Bailey, Preservation Specialist, who collaborated with me to develop the policy, guided it through numerous drafts, and tirelessly revised the document to reach this final version.

The policy may be viewed here.

Written by Barb Sagraves