Your Preservation Week Daily Tip: Care & Handling

One of the simplest tips to help preserve paper and other materials is to wash your hands before handling them, and to take special care when you do open or move them around. Avoid using excess stress to open books, and don’t “crack the spine.” When you move books, don’t slide them on a table, pick them up instead. Delicate pieces of paper can be placed in folders or on top of sturdier paper to support them when lifted. Keep food and drink away from these items. For more information check out the Northeast Document Conservation Center at http://www.nedcc.org

Preservation Week at Dartmouth College Library is part of an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness of preservation issues and solutions. For more information visit our website.

Your Preservation Week Daily Tip: Storing CDs

Many listeners have migrated their music CDs to their computers. Care for the computer music files as you would all digital files. For those who still maintain a CD collection, store your discs vertically as in a bookshelf in their original packaging. Protect discs from scratches and fingermarks by handling with care and put back in their cases after listening. If creating your own music discs label them with a non-solvent pen created for this purpose rather than a label. For more information check out www.cool.conservation-us.org/bytopic/audio/

Preservation Week at Dartmouth College Library is part of an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness of preservation issues and solutions. For more information visit our website.

Your Preservation Week Daily Tip: Backups

Keep those digital treasures safe! Schedule automatic backups through your operating system. Back them up using an external hard drive or Internet storage! Avoid long-term storage on CDs, DVDs, and flash drives. For more information check out the Library of Congress at http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/

Preservation Week at Dartmouth College Library is part of an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness of preservation issues and solutions. For more information visit our website.

Your Preservation Week Daily Tip: Photo Captions & Metadata

In today’s world of digital and traditional photography, thorough knowledge of the preservation options for the format you use is helpful. For paper-based materials write relevant caption and date information in pencil on the back of the print photograph. For digital photographs, add this information (metadata) in the space provided for it in your software program, and consider naming images with meaningful and specific file names. Choose archival storage means for both, whether acid-free albums or boxes for one or a digital back-up system for the other. For more information check out the Library of Congress at http://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/photo.html

Preservation Week at Dartmouth College Library is part of an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness of preservation issues and solutions. For more information visit our website.

Your Preservation Week Daily Tip: Paper Storage

Store your paper materials in an environment with relatively low humidity, away from direct sunlight, and on shelves not on the floor. Whether you have books, maps, letters or other items made primarily of paper, a good environment will contribute a lot to their future condition. For more information check out the National Archives website http://www.archives.gov/preservation/

Preservation Week at Dartmouth College Library is part of an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness of preservation issues and solutions. For more information visit our website.

Preservation Week -- ALCTS Webinars

Preservation Week, April 21- 27, is an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness of preservation issues and solutions. The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is hosting a number of free webinars that week. Here is a roundup of the events:

The Preservation of Family Photographs: Here, There and Everywhere
April 23, 2013

All webinars are one hour in length and begin at 11am Pacific, noon Mountain, 1pm Central, and 2pm Eastern time.

For additional information and access to registration link, please go to the following website: http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/pres/042313

Presenter: Debra Hess Norris is Chair of the Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware, and Professor of Photograph Conservation.

Description: This presentation will offer basic guidance on the care and preservation of family photographs from 19th-century tintypes to contemporary color prints. The webinar will address the fundamental physical and chemical properties of photographic print and negative materials, including albums and scrapbooks, and the causes and mechanisms of their deterioration. Strategies for preservation, such as proper handling, storage and display techniques, will be shared.

Registration Fee: Free but registration is required.

ALCTS thanks Archival Products for sponsoring this webinar and supporting Preservation Week.
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Personal Digital Archiving
April 24, 2013

All webinars are one hour in length and begin at 11am Pacific, noon Mountain, 1pm Central, and 2pm Eastern time.

For additional information and access to registration link, please go to the following website http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/pres/042413

Presenter: Mike Ashenfelder, Digital Preservation Project Coordinator, has worked for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library of Congress since 2003. Mike has a Bachelors degree in Music Education from the Berklee College of Music and a Masters in Music History from San Francisco State University.

Increase your understanding of common digital files – digital photos, recordings, video, documents, and others – and learn what it takes to preserve them. Technology changes rapidly. If you don’t actively care for your digital possessions you may lose access to them as some technologies become obsolete. Learn about the nature of the problem and hear about some simple, practical tips and tools to help you preserve your digital stuff.

Registration Fee: Free but registration is required.

ALCTS thanks The MediaPreserve for sponsoring this webinar and supporting Preservation Week

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Archival 101: Dealing with Suppliers of Archival Products
April 25, 2013

All webinars are one hour in length and begin at 11am Pacific, noon Mountain, 1pm Central, and 2pm Eastern time.

For additional information and access to the registration link, please go to the following website: http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/upcoming/webinar/pres/042513

Do you need to purchase archival supplies for your organization or even yourself? Are you confused by the terminology and not sure about the differences between the various vendors? Not finding exactly what you are looking for and unsure about adapting different products?

Presented by Peter D. Verheyen, Head of Preservation and Conservation at Syracuse University, Archival 101 is designed to demystify the archival product market for the layperson and non-preservation specialist. The presentation will provide an overview of the conservation and preservation issues facing libraries, cultural organizations, and individuals; describe the terminology in use; discuss products and offer buying tips on the different ways these can be used. A list of links to other resources will also be provided.

ALCTS thanks Gaylord for its generous support of this webinar and Preservation Week.

Help us celebrate Preservation Week 2013!

Preservation Services at the Dartmouth College Library presents a behind the scenes tour of the conservation facility, as part of the American Library Associations Preservation Week. The tour will be held on Thursday, April 25th, at 11am, noon, and 1pm. Please gather at Berry Information Desk a few minutes before the tour and you will be escorted to Preservation Services. Highlights of the tour will be conservation for digitization, digital preservation, film assessment and disaster recovery.

Each tour will last 60 minutes. This event is free and open to the community.

The event is part of a national celebration initiated by the ALA to raise awareness of cultural heritage preservation within the community. Please stop by and help us celebrate ALA Preservation Week 2013 - without preservation, our past will be forgotten.

Dust in the Machine

In the last year since the Digital Production Unit was added to Preservation Services we've grown and adapted to many challenges. One of our most resource-heavy projects is the Dartmouth Photo Files, a project to scan and collect the college's photographic records currently being held in Rauner Special Collections Library. So far we've scanned and uploaded nearly 8,500 photographs; merely one-tenth of the estimated total. We realized quite early that a project of this scope and type has different requirements than the smaller projects we regularly take on. This post will address the recurring issue of dust in the scanner.

While flatbed scanners like our Epson Expression 10000XL merely require the occasional spritz of glass-cleaner to maintain, our feed scanner, the Kodak PS810, is far more demanding due to its complicated internal mechanism and heavy amount of use. A piece of dust on a flatbed scanner is quite difficult to notice, and usually does not produce an unusable result (at the very worst it will catch the reflection of the scanner's lamps and discolor a few pixels). However a piece of dust inside the feed scanner will leave a quite noticeable mark on the image in the form of a colored (usually green) streak across the image. This happens when a piece of dust is trapped on the scanner lamps and the image is dragged over it, producing a line, like this:

Dealing with this dust starts at the beginning of every scanning session. Every day we use it the Kodak PS810 (as well as its surrounding area) is thoroughly cleaned. The feed rollers are wiped free of dust and the lamps are cleaned off with special polishing wipes. At the end of this process a "transport cleaning sheet" is fed through the scanner; this sheet has a sticky surface and is designed to pick up the last stray bits of dust. Afterwards the machine is ready to scan.

However, dust does not simply stay out of places that have been cleaned once, and in the Photo Files project we found that many of the photos themselves are responsible for dragging dust into the scanner's inner workings. In most cases where this occurs the dust stays on the lamp for several photos until it is dragged off, producing a sequence of photos all with the same green line across them. Needless to say, this is problematic for our finished product.

After attempting a few solutions to this problem, the best one we came up with was a spot-dusting of every photo before it goes through the scanner using a squeeze-duster like this:

While the procedure isn't perfect, it does lower instances of this problem drastically. Remaining dusty images are caught during our quality-assurance step and rescanned. Some photo scanning software claims to be able to remove this effect through digital manipulation (including Kodak's own software, which we do not use), however we chose not to adopt this in our procedures in order to maintain the integrity of the original, unaltered image. The result of such process is as claimed, removing the green dust lines, however it accomplishes by distorting the parts of the image directly above and below the dust, creating a blurred effect that is noticeable upon close inspection. While this is probably a good solution for a hobbyist, we intend to ensure the best possible condition for our scans in the long run. In this case the old saying holds true: a pinch of prevention saves a pound of cure, and by ensuring best practices at the scanning phase we can drastically reduce the need for rescans.

Written by Ryland Ianelli.

Preservation Week is Coming!

Preservation Week, April 21- 27, is an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association to raise awareness of preservation issues and solutions.  We will mark the occasion at Dartmouth College Library with guided tours of Preservation Services on Thursday, April 25 at 11 am, noon, and 1pm.  We will also feature a daily preservation tip on our blog.

For more information about Preservation Week including disaster recovery information, preservation tips for military families, and answers to your preservation questions follow this link:  "Preservation @ your library"

Personnel Announcement

One of the great benefits of working at Dartmouth is that I am surrounded by very talented people and one of those talented persons is Elizabeth Rideout, Project Technician for the U. S. Congressional Serial Set Project.  This week Elizabeth is teaching "Calligraphy & Decorated Letters" at Penland School of Crafts.  Penland is located in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains and offers students of all ages the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in studying crafts and creating beautiful things.

Elizabeth earned a diploma in hand bookbinding at the North Bennet Street School and has shown her work at numerous galleries in New England and the eastern seaboard.


Written by Barbara Sagraves.

A Book with the Blues: Railroad Plans

One of the pleasures of my job remains the variations of material on which I work, and the fun of seeing volumes within our collections that I might otherwise miss. Such a volume recently came in for repair:

Standard Plans / New York Central & Hudson River Railroad Company contains the blueprints for the information necessary to construct a railroad. From the roadbeds, tracks, and stations to the spikes, signs, and crossings, the plans are in this book.

In addition to the regularly bound material, a letter is tipped in from the Fifth Vice-President of the Railroad, a Mr. W.J. Wilgus (whose signature and title of Chief Engineer graces many of the individual plans) presenting the bound volume to the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth in 1904.

This book suffered from the hollow tube breaking apart, releasing the text block.

To repair this volume I first repaired and flattened the endsheets, adding a Japanese tissue hinge that I later attached to the cleaned spine.

I removed the spine lining and the existing stuck-on endbands, then cleaned the spine with wheat paste.

Once the spine was clean and the endsheet hinges attached, a new Japanese tissue liner with extended flanges went on top. Later a new hollow and the old endbands were also applied.

On the case, I removed the paper from the old hollow in the spine area and reinforce that section with Japanese tissue. One the exterior, I added Moriki tissue over the worn areas at the joints.

Once the two parts were completed I reattached them by gluing the tube and the case, aligning the spine hollow to its corresponding area on the case. Eventually the extended Japanese paper flanges were attached to the interior of the boards. An additional tissue hinge covers the interior joint area, blending with the tone of the paper in addition to adding attachment strength.

Now that the book is back together, these blueprints will continue to be protected from the light, and their deep blue color ought to remain, allowing interested readers to access this information for years to come.

Written by Stephanie Wolff.