Preservation Services at Dartmouth College

Mark Your Calendar: Quetzalcoatl

2012-02-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

If you are a regular reader of this blog you may remember a post about the project to preserve the film Quetzalcoatl. The long awaited world premier will be on April 25 at 7pm in the Arthur M. Loew Auditorium here in Hanover, NH.

The press release from the Hood Museum notes that the film interprets Jose Clemente Orozco's monumental Dartmouth mural The Epic of American Civilization with a spare commentary and a commissioned music score. It was written, produced, and directed by Robert Canton, Dartmouth Class of 1958.

A discussion led by Mary Coffey, Associate Professor of Art History, will follow the film screening. The event is co-sponsored by the Hood Museum of Art and Dartmouth College Library in conjunction with Preservation Week.

Written by Barb Sagraves.

Digital Preservation Reading List

2012-02-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

One of the challenges of learning about digital preservation can be finding good information on the subject. When I was just starting to learn about the field, one of my research strategies was to find syllabi for graduate courses in digital curation and copy the course reading lists. I found a lot of great resources that way (and many thanks to the professors who made their syllabi publicly available online). In order to help make it easier for others to find good sources of information, here are some of my top resources on the topic of digital preservation:

Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies for Long-term Problems
This tutorial created by the ICPSR is a fantastic, incredibly detailed breakdown of the issues involved in digital preservation. It covers major concerns, foundational documents, and explains how institutions can plan and build a sustainable long-term digital preservation program.

Digital Preservation Handbook
Published by the Digital Preservation Coalition, this handbook gives a broad overview of issues and strategies surrounding digital preservation. It has sections specifically intended for non-specialist target audiences (such as institutional administrators) with content that could easily be pulled and used to advocate for digital preservation initiatives.

DCC Curation Lifecycle Model
This model (in graphic, colorful format!) demonstrates how digital materials can and should be managed over the course of their lifecycles, from creation onward. It can help explain why digital preservation is always an ongoing management process, not just a one-time event. It also highlights the various levels of involvement, from identifying and describing the bits to community-based review and assessment of concerns and solutions.

The Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography (2010)
This massive resource, available in an open-access PDF version, provides a comprehensive list of publications on digital preservation issues. The contents are arranged by categories such as formats, metadata, and policy. If you’re looking for a reading list that will keep you busy from now until the end of time, this is your one-stop shop for all things digital preservation.

While those resources are great comprehensive overviews, it's also nice to gather information about digital preservation in smaller, bite-sized pieces. To that end, here are some of my favorite recent blog posts relating to digital preservation:

Written by Helen Bailey.

Not All Pretty

2012-02-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Being located in a rural area has its perks in regards to natural beauty, but when it comes to gifts and donations to the library from local collections, these items can carry some serious baggage. Case in point are two collections that were clearly stored in a barn or shed where the storage container was used as alternative housing for some little furry friends.

Challenge Number One:

Ryland holding an unopened tube.

This was one of two tubes. The first one had been unrolled for a quick look and unveiled a few fluffy remnants, some chewed edges and urine spots, hinting at what might be in this tube.

When unsure of the contents of boxed items that have been stored in dubious locations, we always take extra precautions, including opening items in a fume hood or contained area (or even outside), wearing protective masks and gloves, and proceeding slowly in case something nasty comes out.

Fortunately the occupants had long gone away; unfortunately it appeared they had stayed for a bit of time. These blueprints having been rolled suffered multiple layers of damage.

The first goal was to get the items unrolled and flattened. At the same time preliminary surface cleaning was done using a brush and soft towels. Care was given to cleanliness and washing the brushes afterward. Animal secretions can cause negative reactions in people.

Chewed and stained.

This piece took a hard hit and seems to have been quite the favorite for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

The prints were weighted down for a few days then put in an oversized folder. The decision on what to do with them will be deferred.

Challenge Number Two:

Not only were these papers stored in a barn but they were housed in very acidic wooden boxes with the lids nailed shut.

Again proceeding with caution, I was able to fit a box inside our fume hood and carefully pry off the lid.

Working with these items did make me feel squeamish as I had no idea what I would find besides the papers in the boxes.

This box was well lived-in and was made quite comfortable by its occupants.

Luckily, in all the boxes I found essentially an empty house with no one home either deceased or alive, much to my relief. After removing the papers and discarding all else, the papers were surface cleaned and put into acid free folders so they could be processed at a later date.

So when dealing with items that have previous dubious storage conditions it is helpful to examine them in a separate dirty room if possible, wear protective clothing and gear, and take caution.

Written by Deborah Howe.

Jan Merrill-Oldham Professional Development Grant

2012-02-07T08:00:00.000-05:00

I am delighted to share the news that Helen Bailey, Preservation Specialist, has been awarded the first ever Jan Merrill-Oldham Professional Development Grant.

This award is given by the ALA ALCTS Preservation and Reformatting Section, and is sponsored by the Library Binding Institute. It supports travel to the ALA Annual Conference and is intended to encourage and support librarians and library staff that are new to the preservation field.

The grant was established in 2011 to celebrate the life of Jan Merrill-Oldham, who passed away in October of 2011. Merrill-Oldham was internationally recognized for her leadership on a wide number of areas within the field of preservation, areas as diverse as commercial binding, mass deacidification, digital reformatting, and digital preservation were influenced by her thoughtful and pragmatic approach. Archival Products News dedicated their first issue of the new year to Jan.

Beth Doyle, chair of the selection committee, stated in the award announcement that Helen was recognized as embodying "many of the qualities that Jan herself looked for in her own professionals, a dedication to the field, a passion for continuing education, a willingness to share her knowledge, and an infectious curiosity that infuses her work." Those of us who know Helen wholeheartedly agree.

Congratulations to Helen!

Written by Barb Sagraves.

Obadiah Oldbuck, Mr. Vieux-Bois and the First Comic Book

2012-01-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

Hello! From Baker Berry Library this is Ryland Ianelli, the newest staff member down here in Preservation Services. I am, first and foremost, a cartoonist, and I received my MFA at the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2010. While I spend about half of my time in Preservation, the other half is spent in Digital Production, and working here these past few months I’ve found that the convergence of these units gives me a unique perspective, especially when my personal passion of cartooning is added into the mix.

When many consider the phrase "comic book collection", images of long cardboard boxes, Mylar sleeves and perhaps a dank parents’ basement come to mind; a far cry from the gorgeous, well-lit and spacious Rauner Library. Yet here Dartmouth holds some of the earliest examples of the comic medium, a crucial part of the DNA of both the American and European comic traditions.

The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, aka, La Historie de Monsieur Vieux-Bois

First and foremost in the collection is "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck" by Genevan artist Rodolphe Töpffer. It was written under the title "Historie de Monsieur Vieux-Bois" in 1827, and went through several iterations before arriving stateside over a decade later. Töpffer grew up in a highly artistic and academic environment; his father, Adam-Wolfgang Töpffer, was a well-known painter and early practitioner of the art of caricature, and young Rodolphe studied art in Paris before being appointed Professor of Literature at the University of Geneva in 1832.

Page from the 1827 manuscript

In 1837 Rodolphe began drawing a printable version of Vieux-Bois by the process of autography, a form of lithography. In addition to changing much of the story, Töpffer extended the page width and used only a single tier of panels. He coined the term la littérature en estampes (literature in prints) to describe it, though the term was eventually dropped in favor of bandes dessinées (designed strips, or commonly, comic strips). Töpffer implicitly understood that he needed a new vocabulary, both literal and visual, to adequately describe his goals.

Page from Töpffer's 1839 edition

The books themselves were distributed by Töpffer personally among a network of bookshops across Europe. The differences between this edition of Vieux-Bois and its later versions are certainly fascinating, but the similarities tell us more. The pacing, storytelling, humor and whimsically exaggerated character design were the essential framework of Töpffer's project and its later iterations.

Cover image from Töpffer's 1839 edition

These iterations are where the subject becomes a bit tricky: after the tiny initial print run ended, bootlegged copies began appearing in Paris bookshops. And, keeping in mind that Xerox technology was still to be developed, this meant the bootleg copies were completely redrawn versions, copied from the originals by a different artist and sold without Töpffer's knowledge.

The first French bootlegged copy came out in early 1838, and later that year Töpffer himself redrew the book, selling it in direct competition with his own bootleg. There was not much of a contest between the two; the bootleg was far more crudely drawn, and omitted many of Töpffer's details, while Töpffer's newer version refined the storytelling and added details. However, when an English publisher decided to make his own version it was the French bootleg that was used as a basis instead of the original.

Cover image from French bootleg edition

As it turned out the English copy-of-a-copy was a good sight better than its source material. This was the version that was eventually brought to America by Wilson and Company Publishing, with the name changed to "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck." The unknown English artist added far more atmospheric flourishes than the French version, while the overall layout and pacing of Töpffer’s originals carried through both versions. "Obadiah Oldbuck" also has the impressive distinction of being the first comic book available in America.

Page from Obadiah Oldbuck

These complications arising from multiple authors and print runs are a common thread throughout the history of comics scholarship, highlighting the importance of preservation. Such disposable pamphlets are notoriously ill-cared for, and a multiplicity of versions means one edition of the same comic could be considered disposable while another essential. Entire comics histories have been lost due to lack of perceived value. Rauner and Preservation Services have done a truly exceptional job in restoring and making this fascinating piece available.

"Go, little book, and choose your world, for at crazy things, those who do not laugh, yawn; those who do not yield, resist; those who reason, are mistaken, and those who keep a straight face, can please themselves."
-Rodolphe Töpffer, 1839

If you're interested in reading more about Rodolphe Töpffer, here is an excellent article on him by Patricia Mainardi: http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/spring07/145-the-invention-of-comics. Also, scholar David Kunzle's books on Töpffer are indispensable.

Written by Ryland Ianelli.

Guest Post: A Final Internship Experiment

2012-01-24T08:00:00.001-05:00

This is the final guest post from our intern and North Bennet Street School graduate, Arini Esarey. Her last project in Preservation Services was an experiment with a new technique for creating a conservation-friendly leather substitute to be used in bookbinding and repair. Our thanks to Arini for her excellent work and positive energy in the lab over the last few months, and best wishes to her as she leaves us for new adventures in the book arts. To contact Arini or learn more about her work, please visit her website.

The following experiment is based on the technique described by Grace Owen and Sarah Reidell in their presentation at the 2010 American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works Annual Meeting in Milwaukee, Synthetic Leather for Book Repair: Experimenting with Cast Composites. In this activity I am not attempting to match existing leather for a specific book repair, but am merely curious to see how the technique works.

Materials

Japanese tissue (Hiromi Paper; HP-10B Kaji Natural, 24.5 x 39 inches, 26 g/m2, kozo fibers)
Acrylic Paint (Golden Fluid Acrylics in Burnt Sienna)
Silicone mold made from an existing piece of leather or cloth. (The one I used was already made by others in the lab. Owen and Reidell suggest a Room Temperature Vulcanizing (RTV) silicone mold kit available at art stores.)

Round 1
Undiluted acrylic paint was brushed lightly onto the silicone mold. Care was taken to apply as light a coat as possible while still achieving an even, opaque coat. Even so, not all brush strokes were eliminated, as you can see in the samples. Then Japanese tissue was laid over the mold and tamped down with a stiff brush. The tissue was left on until dry and then peeled away.

Sample 1: dry tissue
Sample 2: tissue dampened with water before application to mold
Sample 3: tissue dampened with Methyl Cellulose before application to mold

Round 2
In this trial, the acrylic paint was mixed with Methyl Cellulose before application (in a roughly 60/40 water to MC ratio).

Sample 4: dry tissue
Sample 5: dampened with water before application to mold
Sample 6: dampened with Methyl Cellulose before application to mold

Of the six samples, numbers two and three show the most promise for use in leather or cloth repair. Sample two has the most even application of color and texture with no signs of brush strokes. Sample three could be useful if the tissue is toned beforehand with a wash of light acrylic paint to add depth and richness of color to the final result.

Round 3
In this round, undiluted acrylic paint was dabbed onto the silicone mold using a piece of cheesecloth. The tissue was left to dry, then given a layer of Methyl Cellulose before putting the tissue onto the mold. After removing the tissue from the mold, half of the surface was given a bit of SC6000 and Klucel-g to mimic the treatment one might give in a repair treatment. Then, on the lower portion of the sample I under-painted a layer of black and burnt sienna to see how that would alter the appearance of the tissue.

Sample 7: tissue brushed with thin wash of burnt sienna, raw sienna, and water

Detail view of the sample with toned tissue, under-painting, and SC-6000/Klucel-G mix

Round 4
This time, I combined the elements I liked best to use for covering a scrap piece of board.

Toned tissue with thin wash of burnt and raw sienna, let dry
Dampened with methyl cellulose
Applied undiluted acrylic paint into silicone mold using cheesecloth
Under-painted the tissue with black and burnt sienna
When dried, applied to piece of board with PVA
Then, SC-6000 and Klucel-G applied to tissue

In the end, I’m pleased with the results of Round 4.

When attempting to match tissue to an existing piece of leather or cloth, the under-painting step may not be necessary, depending on what colors you use for the color wash and mold. In this demo, I liked the richness that layer of paint gave, even if it did add an extra step to the process.

This cast composite technique was introduced to me by Helen Bailey at the Dartmouth conservation lab in Preservation Services and Henry Hebert, currently a second year student at North Bennet Street School. Thanks to Stephanie Wolff for her guidance and support in the lab while working with this technique.

Thanks, Dartmouth Preservation Services for the chance to learn, experiment, and participate in the book conservation field. The internship was wonderful!

Written by Arini Esarey

A Look Inside: The Early Medical Thesis Disbound

2012-01-17T08:00:00.001-05:00

This past fall we were asked to disbind a set of Dartmouth Medical School theses from their heavy half-leather bindings and return them to their original form as separate items, whether a stack of single sheets or a folded pamphlet. The disbinding of these volumes will allow for increased accessibility to the material due to their new storage arrangement and cataloging enhancements.

The medical school at Dartmouth was founded in 1797, and until the fall of 1882 required a thesis of its students for graduation. For those interested, there is a short history of the medical school, as well as a more detailed history of the first one hundred years in the Historical Address by Phineas S. Conner, M.D., LL.D. published in the volume Centennial Exercises, Tuesday, June 29, 1897. Conner discusses the medical volumes that might have been part of the original donation founder Nathan Smith made to the library. His list includes a number of volumes that Dartmouth’s Rauner Library holds, such as:

To disbind the thesis volumes, we cut away the cover and released the textblock from the boards. Then we wet-cleaned the spines with wheat starch paste. Once the spine was clean, the sewing was cut to separate the signature or individual thesis’ gathering of pages.

As we worked on this project, cleaning spines and snipping threads to release the sewing, we noticed titles and topics, language and names, penmanship and design. Over the span of the project as we pulled these pages and text caught our eyes, we would read out interesting turns of phrase or title, and occasionally stop to take a photograph of an outstanding title page, diagram or illustration. In an age where the mark of the hand is not always present in our forms of communication, it is a pleasure to see the variety of penmanship between doctor-scholars in a given year, as well as between years. It appeared to us that some title pages may have been prepared by someone other than the particular student. In a given year several title pages looked nearly identical to one another with only the titles and authors varying between them. We include here some photographs from the pages of these volumes. Aside from one or two penmanship examples of texts, along with a variety of title pages, we include an image from the only thesis we found with photographs.

We are not the only admirers of these pages. In the winter of 2008, Dartmouth Medicine published a story about undergraduate research in these theses, and they too noticed the wonderful handwork in the pages of these manuscripts as well as in the student notebooks of the period.

We will leave the conclusions to others regarding what these theses have to tell us about medicine, medical education, and penmanship. Instead, we will show you a small peek inside - to whet an appetite for delving into them further or merely to enjoy as a visual curiosity.

Written by Stephanie Wolff and Arini Esarey.

Papyrus: A Delicate Issue

2012-01-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

One well-loved item in our Special Collections is a set of five papyrus fragments. Papyrus is a key material used to illustrate the unique beginnings of a writing substrate similar to that of paper. These fragments are often used in classes held in Special Collections, and therefore receive heavy use. One of the fragments was sandwiched between old acidic cardboard and glass, the others in Mylar sleeves. The curator requested something a bit more substantial and presentable for housing.

Knowing that my colleague, Leyla Lamb at the University of Michigan, is one of the foremost experts on the repair and housing of papyrus, I contacted her and inquired what my approach should be since I had not dealt with papyrus previously. With enthusiasm and willingness she provided me with guidelines and directed me to her web site that outlines in simple clarity the care and repair of papyrus.

One of the papyrus samples on acidic board with glass.

Fragment housed in Mylar.

Our fragments were clean and free of mud and dirt, however they had been poorly stored and had become folded and compressed. One of the first things I did was to humidify and relax the fibers of each piece using a mist bottle. With careful manipulation I was able to realign the fibers and set the fragment to its natural size.

Fragment after being relaxed.

Japanese paper tabs used to reconnect a broken section.

To adequately protect the papyrus, archival glazing is used and sealed around the edges with Filmoplast SH.

After sealing I put each sample in a simple labeled folder to help with handling.

The five samples were placed in a double-walled clamshell box along with two sets of glazing for possible future acquisition of new papyri.

This was a great project with a very satisfactory learning curve. My thanks goes out to Leyla for her encouragement and help.

Written by Deborah Howe

The Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center

2012-01-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome back everyone. We in Preservation Services hope you all had very happy holidays! It's a new year (happy 2012!) and here at Dartmouth we're fortunate to have a brand new facility on campus. The new Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center is AWESOME!

I was able to tour the facility with some of my colleagues and was blown away; it is magnificent in every way. The building is energy efficient, has beautiful public spaces, fabulous lab space, and state of the art classrooms that maximize interaction.

Much has been written about the energy efficient building, the flexible and innovative classroom design. Here are a few photos help tell the story:

The research labs.

Public space.

Window view.

Smart displays guide visitors through the building.

There is a greenhouse on the top floor.

This classroom is ringed with white boards and large monitors so that students can gather around the monitor, attach a laptop, and collaborate on a project.

The tour got me thinking back to when Preservation Services and other collection services departments moved in 2000 from Baker Library to the current location in Berry Library and what a tremendous difference it made on our day to day work. Our new home in Berry Library was purposely designed to link Acquisitions and Cataloging so that our staff could easily and effortlessly consult one another. When we were in Baker Library a simple question could involve traveling upstairs, through study stacks, or other connecting routes. From the first day that we moved into Berry and our department spaces were connected, the work dynamic changed. We found that by being physically closer, collaboration and communication effortlessly increased.

A well-designed building can enhance the work-life of its inhabitants. Walking through the Life Sciences Center got me thinking again about space dynamics and the differences they can make if thoughtfully planned.

Now, how to get a greenhouse on the top floor of Berry Library...

Written by Barb Sagraves. Photos provided by David Seaman and his iPad.

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

It's the holiday season and we're all looking forward to spending time with our families, playing in the snow, and drinking hot cocoa by the fireplace (but never while reading a library book...cocoa and paper do not mix!).

Unfortunately, due to the holiday break, there won't be any new blog posts for the next two weeks. For some holiday-themed reading while we're gone, be sure to check out this post from last year about an internship project to conserve a Rudolph-the-Rednosed-Reindeer scrapbook.

Happy holidays from everyone in Preservation Services! We'll see you in 2012!

Binding the Collected Works of Liszt, Part 2

2011-12-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

Reporting from the commercial binding desk, it’s time to follow up on the progress of the Collected Works of Liszt project. Last I reported, I had sent out twenty-nine music scores for rebinding from the Collected Works of Liszt. Some volumes were in worse condition than others but all were considerably dirty and at risk of pages yellowing and becoming brittle. Some volumes had torn or loose pages and others had broken bindings.

All twenty nine Liszt scores were delivered back to Preservation Services right on schedule. I checked them in right away to confirm there weren’t any missing volumes. The Liszt scores were rebound in yellow book cloth (chosen by the staff at Paddock Music Library) and with flat spines to allow for the fullest opening when being used. Finally I attached a barcode sticker to each volume. Barcode stickers correspond to electronic item records in the library database which allows for fast and easy search and tracking of each volume.

At this point the Liszt scores are ready for stage two, mass deacidification. Because I am working with so many volumes at once, they will be shipped out as a group to a vendor, Preservation Technologies. Deacidification is a process that utilizes chemistry to neutralize the pH of book and paper materials to prevent or slow deterioration caused by acidity.

With page repairs, rebinding, and barcoding already complete it was simple to prepare the Liszt scores for this process. I packed the volumes into crates, following instructions provided by the vendor to pack books spine down. I included a packing slip listing each volume, corresponding barcode, total number of volumes, and total number of crates. From this point it won’t be long until they are back on the shelf. Upon return from mass deacidification I’ll give one final check and send them along to Paddock Music Library.

Written by Elizabeth Rideout

Preserving Licensed Electronic Resources, Part 2

2011-12-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

In my previous post on preserving subscription-based electronic resources, I talked about some of the challenges of ensuring long-term access to these materials. I talked a little about our participation in Portico and LOCKSS, and I also mentioned that for some of our e-resources, we manage the archival content ourselves. Here are the details about how we’re handling that here at Dartmouth.

For many electronic resources, including e-journals and digital collections, the publisher sends us a backup copy of the content, which usually arrives on DVDs or on external hard drives. This content consists of a large set of files, generally in XML, PDF, and/or image formats, although we occasionally receive other formats as well, ranging from document files to proprietary database files.

We run this data through a series of programs to check for viruses (just in case…it’s better to be safe than have our machines corrupted by a virus) and identify and validate the file formats of the content. We’ve been experimenting with tools for the file format identification, including DROID, JHOVE, JHOVE2, and FITS, which actually combines DROID, JHOVE, Exiftool, the National Library of New Zealand Metadata Extractor, and the Windows File Utility. We’ve found FITS to be great because it provides such comprehensive information about our data.

Then we use the BagIt packaging tool to create packages, or “bags”, containing all of the content. BagIt creates a manifest for each bag, which lists all of the files within that bag, along with a checksum for each file that we can use in the future to verify that none of the data in the file has changed over time. We also add some additional metadata about the content…mostly to help our future selves remember what the content is, where it came from, and what we’ve done to it.

Finally, we move the content to redundant external hard drives and store them in secure locations. The purpose of the redundant hard drives is to ensure that there are multiple copies of every file we’re preserving, in case something should happen to one copy (basically, backups of our backups).

Of course, having a copy of these files sitting on hard drives across campus is hardly a sound preservation strategy! So we take some steps to ensure that the content will be accessible and usable over time. This includes periodically retrieving the hard drives and checking the data to make sure it’s still valid, accessible, and usable. Over time we might migrate some of the data to new file formats, add new information to the metadata files, or even de-accession the backup files if we no longer need to preserve them.

It’s a time-consuming process, but an important one if we want to make ensure that we can provide access to these materials 10, 20, or even 100 years from now. Looking forward, we’re hoping to automate the majority of this process to save time. Digital preservation is an ongoing work-in-progress!

Written by Helen Bailey

Beasty Beasts and Mystery Mammals

2011-12-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

The historie of fovre-footed beastes ... Collected out of all the volumes of Conradvs Gesner, and all other writers to this present day. By Edward Topsell.

There are some texts that get used in Special Collections all the time, and "The Historie of Fovre-Footed Beastes" is one such book. It is filled with fantastic illustrations of animals from far and wide, often drawn from written description, which results in a very literal translation of the rendering. Therefore the rhinoceros has truly a coat of armor and the fleeting unicorn is in full view.

The book needed conservation work because the board attachment had become weak and the boards were no longer attached to the text block. The condition of the boards was poor with compromised corners and overall weak inner strength, so the decision was to rebind. Because of the larger size of the book and the knowledge that it receives heavy use, I chose to rebind using a split board construction.

The frontispiece was weak from wear, the paper soft like a paper towel and solid. I surface cleaned and then sized it with a weak solution of methyl cellulose. I have done this on a few occasions and have been very satisfied with the resulting reconditioned\resized page.

Next I attached extended linen tabs, did a base sewing then sewed on a split board style endsheet. To make a split board endsheet, I tip down a cloth hinge to a folio with the pretty side of the cloth glued.

Place the hinged folio inside another folio. This is the endsheet which will be sewn through the inner folio when sewing to the text block.

I placed an inner Japanese paper hinge on the text block before sewing the endsheet, and after the endsheet is sewn on I tip it to the paper hinge. The endsheet is kept larger so that I can trim it to size after it is firmly attached to the text block. Here I have placed a strip of release paper to prohibit the hinge from sticking to itself while drying.

Weighing down the endsheet after being attached to the inner tissue hinge:

Trimming the endsheets to size:

After the endsheet is trimmed the linen tabs get glued down to the outside folio. Then the front edge of the outside folio gets glued back onto itself up to the base of the joint.

This laminate of the two layers of paper with the linen tabs in between gets trimmed back to about 2 inches, resulting in a flange that will be inserted into the split board. The exposed cloth hinge will be glued down to the inside of the board after they are attached. The area at the head and tail is cut back to accommodate the turn-ins of the spine covering material.

The split board is made of a laminate of binders board and 10point folder stock. An area of about 2 inches is left unglued to allow for the insertion of the flange. This is all glued up so that the boards are firmly attached. I allow for a French groove so that the board clears the shoulder when opening.

I’ve chosen a colored linen cloth to cover the spine. Instead of sewing on new endbands I have placed a filler cord inside of the head and tail turn-ins. The spine gets tied up so the cloth remains adhered around the cords. After drying, the sides are covered, the inner cloth hinge gets glued to the inside board and then I attach the doublures.

I have salvaged the title from the old spine and mount it to the new binding:

Now the Beasty Book is ready for many consultations.

Written by Deborah Howe

Association of Moving Image Archivists Conference

2011-11-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-22T08:00:00.001-05:00

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

2011-11-15T08:00:00.000-05:00

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

2011-11-08T08:00:00.002-05:00

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

2011-11-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

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

Helen Bailey: 2011 DLF Fall Forum Fellowship Winner

2011-10-31T09:35:00.001-04:00

I am very pleased to announce that Helen Bailey, Preservation Specialist, was selected to be a 2011 Digital Library Federation Forum Fellow for the upcoming Fall Forum. The DLF, a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), is a network of libraries and related agencies pioneering innovative uses of information technologies and community expertise to extend collections and services.

Helen was one of three fellows selected from an international application process and will receive complimentary hotel, travel, board, and registration (up to $1,000) for the 2011 DLF Fall Forum in Baltimore, MD. The Fellowships are awarded to a librarian or LIS student new to the profession, based on strength of application essay, nomination, and resume. This is our second success in this prestigious fellowship program: Mina Rakhra was also a DLF Forum Fellow in Fall 2004.

Helen first joined the Library as an intern in Preservation Services, while finishing her MSIS degree (2009-10), a year later she was the successful applicant for the Preservation Specialist. She has been an active member of a number of Library teams working on digital library issues, most notably the Library's Digital Projects and Infrastructure Group (DPIG), which has just completed a digital program plan, including our first digital preservation policy, to guide our digitization efforts moving ahead.

To read more about Helen and the other 2011 Fall Forum Fellows go to: http://www.diglib.org/archives/2372/

Written by Barb Sagraves

Coloring Japanese Tissue for Repairs

2011-10-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

In my conservation work I often repair loose boards using the Japanese Tissue Board Reattachment method devised by Don Etherington. I also use Japanese tissue to cover a board tacket at the repaired hinge. Moriki is the Japanese tissue generally used for both repairs, and while it comes in a variety of colors, for the most part these colors do not match the (often) irregular color of the damaged book’s leather. In an effort to make the repair visually disappear, I tone and mark the paper prior to its application on the book.

I approach the toning in two ways—coloring a smaller piece of paper designed for an individual book, as well as toning larger pieces as “stock” for future repairs. The toning of these “stock” pieces creates a basis for additional alteration in color or visual texture as needed for a particular volume. This is how I color Japanese tissue:

I start with a generous piece (oversized for the particular repair or large enough for multiple future repairs) of moriki Japanese tissue in a base color, usually a mid-range brown. I cut a piece of Mylar larger than the paper as a work surface. Using FW acrylic inks, I drop small puddles on the surface of the Mylar, creating spots of a variety of colors over the area where my paper will go. Some basic colors we use in the lab include: burnt umber, antelope brown, red earth, sepia, and Payne’s gray.

Once enough of these puddles are on the Mylar, I use a wet brush to blend them, brushing in vertical strokes, taking care to maintain the variation in ink color and avoid uniformity.

I hold my paper at the top and bottom (vertically) and dip it into the ink, in a sort of rolling motion, dropping one side down into the ink and immediately raising it up as the next area dips into the ink. The porous nature of the dry paper allows for the ink to wick into it quickly with an even distribution and a variation in color, but without brush marks.

If the ink doesn’t absorb throughout the paper I re-dip into the remaining ink until the paper is thoroughly covered. Sometimes I must dab with the brush to get stubborn dry areas to take the ink.

Once the paper is saturated, I hang the paper to dry, either with clothespins or occasionally taped onto the side of a workbench.When dry, the paper can be further altered by direct applications of ink or with Prismacolor Premier art markers. (The art markers are another Etherington trick passed along to me by conservator Eric Alstrom.) The art markers allow for very specific marks, such as a few irregular spots. The ink can be sprayed over the dry paper using a brush (or toothbrush) to create a sprinkled leather look.

After the paper is dry, it is ready to use in these repairs, such as the finished one pictured here. Many conservators make further color and blending adjustments after the tissue’s application to the book, but I prefer to do my coloring off the book. My approach for toning paper is loose and somewhat serendipitous, much like the variations in the leather on the volumes themselves, but the method seems to work when used for these repairs.

Written by Stephanie Wolff

Welcome, Ryland!

2011-10-20T08:00:00.000-04:00

I am pleased to announce that on Monday, October 24, Ryland Ianelli will begin work in Preservation Services as a Project Specialist for the U.S. Congressional Serial Set/Readex Project.

Ryland has a Master of Fine Arts in Cartooning from the Center for Cartoon Studies and a Bachelor's degree in Art History from Reed College. He also has several years of experience working as a Collection Assistant in the Reed College Visual Resources Collection.

In addition to his work on the Serial Set project, Ryland will be helping with digital production and preservation assessment projects.

Please join me in welcoming Ryland!

Helen Bailey
Preservation Specialist

Preserving Licensed Electronic Resources, or - What to Do if You Don’t Own It

2011-10-18T08:00:00.002-04:00

In addition to the myriad challenges of preserving digital content, which I outlined in my previous posts on digital preservation (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), ensuring long-term access to subscription-based resources presents additional challenges. The issue with subscription or license models for electronic resources (such as e-journals, e-books, and databases) is that rather than purchasing the content outright, we instead pay for online access to the content. That access is provided to Dartmouth students and faculty either by the publisher or by third-party platforms.

From an access point of view, this is often an excellent acquisition and delivery method. We can license much more content than we would easily be able to manage ourselves, and we can rely on the publisher to handle many back-end technical aspects of getting content to users (although, even under a subscription model there is considerable work on the part of our collections services staff to ensure seamless access from our Library catalog and webpages).

However, from a preservation standpoint, all of this licensed material is content that we do not own or manage. If the publisher were to go out of business or stop providing access to content (and yes, while infrequent, this does happen), our scholars could lose access resources that are very important to their research. Of course that would be quite a problem, and it’s one we want to avoid if possible.

Fortunately, there are several methods we can use to ensure access over the long-term. One method is participation in a membership-based e-journal archiving service. We are currently members of two such services, Portico and LOCKSS, both of which exist to preserve electronic content for the library community. I won’t go into the details here, except to say that these services give us peace of mind for a significant number of electronic resources to which we subscribe.

Another method is to negotiate with the publisher and verify that they have ensured long-term preservation of their content, either through a different third-party service or using their own preservation strategies. While this can be effective and is sometimes the only option, it’s not ideal because, again, the publisher could go out of business and then long-term access isn’t necessarily guaranteed.

The final method is to obtain copies of the digital content and manage it ourselves. This is a more involved process because…well, because we have to do the work of managing the content! So I’ll continue with a detailed description of exactly how we do that in a later post. Stay tuned for more info…

Written by Helen Bailey

Home Movie Day

2011-10-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

Celebrate Home Movie Day in the Upper Valley this Saturday, October 15th! The Howe Library will be holding continuous screenings and film assessment from 10am - 5pm. For more information visit their Facebook page.

Book of Hours

2011-10-11T08:00:00.000-04:00

Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis ad usum Parisiensem

This lovely little Book of Hours manuscript came to the lab for repair due to a badly damaged cover.

The cover is probably from a late 19th century rebinding. My guess is that the catch plate could have been from the original binding. The current cover seemed to be covered with leather that has been re-purposed, given the odd embossing and color decoration on the surface. The text block was in good condition and did not need to be re-sewn.

It did have poor flexibility:

Here is the opening before treatment:

And after treatment it opens wide enough to see the entire page:

I used laponite to clean the spine as it affords a “dry clean” so the worry of moisture penetrating into the parchment was avoided. The spine was wiped well with a damp cloth to remove any residue from the laponite and lined with a medium weight Japanese paper. This reinstated a decent amount of open-ability back into the text block.

The spine was lined with extended Japanese tissue and the red endbands were reattached.

There was serious deliberation on how to proceed after the spine was cleaned and relined. The ideas varied as I discussed different treatment options with fellow conservators and the curator. One thought was to rebind it in a contemporary historical binding of vellum and keep the leather covers separate but stored with the book. But since the leather covers were still in good condition I finally decided to keep it in the covers I received it in.

In order to help reattach the text to cover I put a light-weight paper hollow tube on the spine:

Once the text block was prepared I addressed the needs of the boards and missing clasp. Even though the boards were in good shape they were a bit soft so I soaked off the paste downs and lined the boards with a piece of 10 point Bristol.

Collaborating with a colleague who worked in the Claflin Jewelry Studio on campus I drew an outline of the needed clasp and she was able to produce a perfect fit!

This was then attached to a new strap made of a leather\vellum laminate.

Using the old tacks and holes I mounted the new strap and clasp to the back board:

I then created a new spine for the cover and cased in the text block. The old spine was remounted and a little touch up with acrylic paint and methylcellulose pulled it altogether.

Written by Deborah Howe

Book Arts Program News - Digital Printing

2011-10-04T08:00:00.006-04:00

The final new development for the Book Arts program this year (see developments #1 and #2) is a fantastic new digital printing set-up for use by participants in both the letterpress and the bindery studios. It includes a computer, software, scanner, and printer so students can explore the artistic possibilities of digital printing without leaving the studio! We’re really excited about this, and we hope it gets a lot of use in this year’s workshops and College Course 11, the Book Arts Studio Seminar.

We don't have any specific workshops focused around digital printing yet, but we're open to new ideas and suggestions, so let us know if you have any thoughts on classes you'd like to see us offer. We can't wait to see what creative projects students come up with using this new equipment!

New Offering: Oct. 4 Letterpress Open Studio

2011-10-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

A new Letterpress Open Studio session was added to the list of Book Arts offerings. To register for the October 4 session go to this link.

Binding the Collected Works of Liszt

2011-09-27T08:00:00.000-04:00

It’s been over six months since I joined the team here in Preservation last January and about time I shared some news from the commercial binding desk. On a continual basis serial titles (journals, magazines, and music scores) make their way to my desk to be processed and sent out for binding at Acme Bookbinding in Charlestown, MA. This is an ongoing task because the library is always acquiring new issues of print periodicals. It’s fun to have such a wide variety of material pass through my hands from popular music and art magazines to academic journals in psychology, law, geography, and more.

In addition to the standard flow of serials going out for binding, I’ve been working on a special binding project for Paddock Music Library. It may not be obvious but in terms of preservation, music scores get hit hard by repeated use and often need rebinding. The most recent example of this is Paddock’s set of Franz Liszt’s collected works, which was identified as being in especially poor physical condition. Because of its age, the bindings are falling apart and paper is becoming brittle causing loose and easily torn pages.

Once all the volumes of Liszt’s works arrived in Preservation, the process for rebinding began. I checked each volume in and examined it for page tears and other damage to make note of. I actually discovered there was a missing page in one book and in another a whole section was upside-down. With a complete list of repairs, I headed to the bench with heat-set tissue (the conservator’s iron on patch) and tacking iron in hand. The paper repairs went smoothly and I was on to the next step, entering each volume into the Acme bindery database. For a set like this every volume has a unique title and in this case the title is in German. I entered all the spine information for each book including composer, title, call number, and special instruction (‘upside-down pages to be righted’ for example), and printed a binding slip to be tucked inside the cover.

All twenty-nine volumes, now ready for rebinding, were checked one last time and then packed for shipment. They won’t be gone for long though. In a short two weeks I’ll be unpacking them and prepping the set for part two, deacidification. Stay tuned!

Written by Elizabeth Rideout

Book Arts Program News - Bindery Studio Core Classes

2011-09-22T08:00:00.001-04:00

The second big change for the Book Arts Program this fall (see here for the first one) is taking place in the Bindery Studio. Previously, we have offered a rather random assortment of workshops on various book structures. While that was fun, after listening to feedback provided by our students, we thought we'd try out something a little different this year.

In addition to our structure-based workshops such as the long stitch and the piano hinge binding, we're going to start offering "core classes" that teach some of the fundamental techniques used in hand bookbinding and the book arts. These will include skills such as proper equipment use, measuring and cutting paper, sewing and casing-in a standard hardcover book, and making decorative paste paper and bookcloth to use for your bindings. The core classes will be based around different themes each term, such as "basics", "adhesives", "color", and "repair".

This fall the theme is "basics" and we will hold three core classes throughout the term:

Check out our fall bindery workshop schedule for more information about these classes. You can register with our new online registration system either from the bindery schedule page or from our events page on EventBrite. We hope you're excited to learn some of these bookbinding fundamentals, and we look forward to seeing you in the bindery this fall!

Book Arts Program News - Online Registration

2011-09-20T08:00:00.018-04:00

We’re gearing up for the fall term at Dartmouth, which means the Book Arts Program will soon be open again. This program is housed in the library and managed by Preservation Services, and it is one of the best hidden gems on campus. There’s a letterpress studio and a bindery studio, each of which offers workshops and open studio time. The best part is, the workshops and studios are free to use by anyone…students, faculty, staff, and we also welcome community members not affiliated with the College.

But as awesome as the Book Arts Program is, we thought it could get even better. So we’re introducing some new developments this fall which we'll be highlighting in the blog over the next few weeks. We'll kick things off today with the introduction of a brand-new online registration system for our workshops.

Registration for bindery workshops, letterpress orientation sessions, and letterpress open studio sessions will now be done through our events page on the EventBrite website. In addition to making our lives a little easier, this system offers a few great new features such as:

Anyone can follow our RSS event feed to learn about new workshops as soon as they’re posted.
You can view all of our upcoming events and register for them in one place.
All of our event pages have social media links, so you can email, tweet, or like our events to share them with your friends!

As with all of the Book Arts Program workshops, although these are open to the general public, priority is given to Dartmouth students. Non-students will be able to register for any of the workshops one week before they take place, assuming there are still seats available.

We think this registration system will be a great improvement for the already-wonderful Book Arts Program, and we hope you do too! If you have any questions about registration, feel free to contact us. Stay tuned for more information about the rest of the upcoming changes to the Program!

Written by Helen Bailey

Nothing Like Production

2011-09-13T08:00:00.034-04:00

One of the advantages of treating general collections material is the similarity of treatments that can be performed en mass. This not only expedites and streamlines completion of tasks but enhances the conservator's work experience by offering a chance to practice speed and set time goals for large groups of material.

Here is my colleague Stephanie getting ready to place down inner tissue hinges after completing basic cloth rebacks. As you see she has pre-cut the tissue so now all she has to do is paste them in.

Here are the books having just received tissue inner hinges with the boards open for drying.

And here is a satisfied worker with a stack of finished repairs. Often Stephanie will pick books of one color such as red.

Before...

...and after.

It’s rewarding to see the finished set!

Written by Deborah Howe

Personnel News: Arini Esarey

2011-09-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

Preservation Services welcomes Arini Esarey, a recent graduate from North Bennet Street School. She has completed 2 years of bookbinding classes and will serve a 3-month internship to learn more about preservation in the context of libraries and to practice conservation techniques learned at school.

Arini has also worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Graduate School of Design Library at Harvard. One of her bindings is included in the One Book One Chicago exhibit, on view at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago through April 2012.

Welcome!

Orozco Film Color Corrected

2011-09-06T08:00:00.005-04:00

Last year Dartmouth College Library was awarded a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve and make accessible an instructional film from 1961, “The Orozco Mural Quetzalcoatl”. The film has a special relationship to Dartmouth in that it tells the myth of Quetzalcoatl as depicted in “The Epic of American Civilization” frescos painted by José Clemente Orozco in Baker Library. The film was written, produced, and directed by Robert Canton, a Dartmouth graduate from the Class of 1958.

Colorlab is conserving the film and I expect the project to be completed by the end of the summer. Once it is back on campus, a public viewing will be offered. Watch public postings around campus for details.

Colorlab shared some before and after stills of the film conservation and I must say the change in image quality is remarkable. I was unable to locate the original negative reel so Colorlab was working off of three print copies that the Library owned. Working from the best copy they digitized the film, which had faded to magenta, and corrected the color as much as possible back to the original. A brochure, “Orozco at Dartmouth," which was made possible by the Manton Foundation, provided the technicians with color photos of the murals that they could use as their guide.

Here are two after and before images of the film.

Written by Barb Sagraves

Flood Damage Recovery Information

2011-09-02T12:00:00.000-04:00

Tropical Storm Irene passed through New England on Sunday leaving parts of Vermont flooded and personal collections water-damaged. It is important to attend to paper-based materials quickly to prevent mold growth, however recovery of damaged materials should never be attempted if personal safety cannot be assured.

The following are useful resources for disaster recovery of books and paper-based collections:

Dartmouth College Library Preservation Services FAQ: How to dry a wet book and what to do about mold.
Heritage Preservation: How to Save a Wet Book, video instructions for rinsing dirty and muddy books, drying damp & wet books as well as freezing books (a great technique if there are many books and little time to dry them all).
Northeast Document Conservation Center: Emergency Salvage of Moldy Books and Paper.
Finally, the Library of Congress offers information about recovering from a disaster.

Manton Digital Production Manager

2011-09-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

We have exciting news in Preservation Services! A new position, funded by the Manton Foundation endowment, has been created to manage the Library’s growing digital production capabilities. The Manton Digital Production Manager will report to the head of Preservation Services, and the successful candidate will take charge of the production workflows and processes for our developing digital library program.

To view the position description go to Dartmouth jobs.

Review of applications will begin 15 September 2011, and will continue until the position is filled. Dartmouth College is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Applicants must demonstrate a commitment to diversity and to serving the needs of a diverse population.

Food for Thought from the Library of Congress

2011-08-30T08:00:00.010-04:00

The Signal is a fantastic new digital preservation blog by the Library of Congress. It’s only been operating for a few months, but they’ve already had some really great posts on various digital preservation topics, including this one on the challenges posed by creating a digital time capsule.

This is a really interesting conundrum, and one that most people probably wouldn’t think about unless they happened to be building a time capsule (and when’s the last time you did that?). So let’s imagine that Dartmouth College wanted to create a time capsule of the year 2011, to be opened in 2061. What would we want to include in such a capsule? For starters, we might want to include video or audio footage of this year’s commencement address by Conan O’Brien. We’d probably include pictures and maybe the poster from this year’s Winter Carnival. How about press releases from campus events? What about a working copy of the soon-to-be-departed Blitzmail system?

Now, as The Signal’s blog post asks, how would you ensure that these items will be usable in 50 years? All of these objects originated in digital form...even the posters would have been created on a computer. Some, like the posters and the photographs, could be printed for easy encapsulation. Others, like the video and the Blitzmail software, would present a much greater challenge.

You could burn the video to a DVD, but the life expectancy of even the best-quality DVDs is only 20-30 years when stored under ideal environmental conditions. Can we guarantee that our time capsule will remain at 77 degrees and 50% relative humidity until it’s opened? And even if we can, what if DVDs are completely replaced by Blu-Ray or some other new technology by the year 2061? Such things have happened before.

The software offers a real challenge, though. Do you simply save a copy of the installation disc, and hope that it will be readable by the computers of 2061? Do you save an entire working computer and just hope that it will still function properly after not having been touched for 50 years? Neither one of these seems like an ideal solution.

I certainly don’t have answers to these massively complex digital preservation questions. The Signal offers some good suggestions for managing time capsule files though, so be sure to check out the blog. And if you have any ideas, please share them in the comments! Collaboration is the key to digital preservation success.

Written by Helen Bailey

Scrubba-Dub-Dub

2011-08-23T08:00:00.105-04:00

Every time it's my turn to write a blog post I can't help but feel mystified by a technique that I've learned while here at Dartmouth. 'But Beth,' I hear your cry, 'how can there really be something that amazing every month?!' I promise you, I can explain no further than 'there just is!'

This month's new trick of the trade is something I love to tell my friends and family about because it makes their jaws drop. It made mine drop too, the first time I saw this done! Washing paper. That's right, dear readers, I've spent numerous hours this week scrubbing 1800's dirt and grit out of the pores of paper. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't for all paper. We spent a lot of time making sure the ink wasn't going to bleed or run or act strange when introduced to water and here in Dartmouth's Preservation Services, we have a SUPER WATER FILTER that removes everything except two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, I'm talking about H2O, ladies and gentlemen.

A quick word of caution: The following conservation treatment was performed under the direction of a trained conservator. Please do not attempt to put valuable paper materials in a bath without guidance from an expert. If you want to practice this nifty process, we ask that you use discarded items such as yesterday's newspaper. For treatment of artwork, historical materials, or treasured family documents, please consult a qualified conservation professional. Thanks! Now back to the post...

There is something oh-so-strange about dipping and submerging a piece of newsprint paper from 1800's in a bath of water, but you get used to it! This particular volume had a lot of glue and over-sewing so when we took it out of its binding, it wouldn't lay flat! After some deliberation, Deborah Howe (Conservator) decided that the fastest and safest way to remove all the glue would be to wash each folio. And that's where I come in!

Before I can start introducing paper to water, I have to make sure everything is ready to go to assembly-line the process. With a lot of glue to clean off, the more streamline the easier it is on me and my schedule! So that being said, I draw up a bath of the filtered water, and introduce a little bit of Isopropyl alcohol. The Isopropyl will help open the pores of the newsprint up so that the water can get in and the dirt can get out. Then I fill up a kettle of just the filtered water and heat it up just below boiling and pour that into the bath until the bath is more warm than it is cold. The heat just helps the glue loosen up faster. I mean, come on, I don't have all day to be scrubbin' this paper down.

Finally, it's time to begin! Each folio is opened flat on a sheet of Hollytex and sprayed down with the filtered water (otherwise known as 'wetted-out') so that we don't shock the paper when it's introduced to the bath. Then, carefully, I grab the diagonal corners and dip the Hollytex and folio into the water. Slowly with my hands I "walk" from the edges of the paper toward the middle to allow the water to cover the folio completely. Once the folio is submerged we do it again! I keep piling them in until I run out of room or Hollytex, whichever comes first.

Now there are about 20 to 30 folios in one bath, I let it sit for about 7 minutes, after which I go back and stick my hands in and agitate the water. This simply means gently pressing the folios down and tapping lightly to move the water around in the bath and between each layer. Then I repeat one more time.

By now the water in the bath is getting a little dark, and that's not doing anyone any good. So by applying pressure to one corner of the stack I can hold them in place while I dump the water. After it's all poured out, I fill the bath back up but with just water this time. Let sit for 15 minutes, and now it's time to remove the items!

When there's glue involved it takes a little longer because for each issue I need to examine the fold and sometimes literally scrub the glue off. EWWW!!!

Or sometimes I have to put stuck text back in place. I've even had to peel off old repairs that are hindering rather than helping. Below is a sequence of photos showing the issue that is stuck to itself, making the text un-readable. I used my spatula to ease the chunk of text off one side and back to the other, eventually separating the two sides from one another.

Once the issue has had alien items removed from it, I carefully grab hold of the paper and the Hollytex at one end and pull up slowly, making sure nothing loose is going to fall off. Once out of the water, I tip it a little to allow for the water to run off. I then place it on a piece of blotter, and pat it down with another piece of blotter. Then holding on to the diagonal corners again I can carry it to the drying rack. Repeat until everything is out and drying!

As I pass the torch of Blog Wrangler to Helen Bailey, dear readers, I just wanted to say 'Thank you' for a great run and keep tuning in. And that, my friends, is all she wrote.

Last Post Written by the one and only Beth Hetland

Still Sewing After All These Years: From Hawatha to History of Beasts

2011-08-16T08:00:00.010-04:00

My colleague at Northwestern recently sent me this photo (above). It was taken around 1986 or 1987 soon after I arrived at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. The other day, as I was sewing the History of Beasts book, I felt frozen in time, thinking how some things never change.

But change they have. One of the most rewarding aspects of being in the conservation field for such a long time is the enjoyment of retrospection and looking at all the changes that have happened over the past years. All the talented people I have worked with at the beginning of their careers are now the ones I go to for help, information and inspiration. The generous people I have studied with are now part of a professional network that I can easily access for problem solving as well as sharing techniques and practices. These people have now become a reliable resource of colleagues and close friends.

From this vast community, there are always new things to learn, new perspectives on treatment options and of course new people to meet. I get to work with curators, book artists, students and coworkers all who all contribute to an enriching growing and learning dynamic. What more could one ask for?

In June, I was in Philadelphia and was treated to three wonderful tours of Conservation Labs. The Conservation Center for Historical Art and Artifacts, The American Philosophical Society, and The Library Company of Philadelphia where Jennifer Rosner, Head of Conservation, showed me some beautiful veneer bindings in their collection that she is doing some research on.

So change or no change, I feel fortunate to be part of a professional field where people are consistently generous and change is for the good.

Written by Deborah Howe

Learning New Things-- The 2011 Digital Preservation Management Workshop

2011-08-09T08:00:00.008-04:00

I recently attended the ICPSR Digital Preservation Management workshop, held in June at SUNY Albany. This amazing course is a jam-packed five-day program on the intricacies of developing and managing a digital preservation program within a library or archive setting. No small task, but the amazing instructional team led by Nancy McGovern and Kari Smith was certainly up to the challenge.

The workshop actually started several weeks prior to the first day, with some pre-requisite “homework” to build a good foundation in core digital preservation concepts. If you’re seriously interested in digital preservation and you haven’t read these documents, do so immediately! Yes, some of them are very long and detailed, but this is important stuff and it’s well worth the time.

Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS)
Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities
Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet: Ensuring Long-Term Access to Digital Information. Final Report of the Blue Ribbon Task force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access
And of course, the ICPSR Digital Preservation Management Tutorial

I had already read these documents, some of them in great detail with a highlighter, and some of them with just a quick skim, so this was a nice refresher on some of the concepts we need to focus on as we build our digital preservation infrastructure.

I got so much out of this workshop that it’s hard to pare down my notes (see picture below of the giant binder-o-information we received on day one).

But if I had to sum it up in a sentence, I’d say the most useful outcome (other than meeting a bunch of really great digital archivists and librarians) was that I now have enough information to formulate a plan. We’ve been talking for a while about what we need to have to support digital preservation; now we know how to get there.

And, in addition to the awesome binder-o-information, I now have a full-color composite model of the OAIS Functional Entities that lives on the wall above my desk.

Nerdy, yes, but I love that I can look at it every day and see the ultimate goal right in front of me.

Written by Helen Bailey

Adios & Happy Trails!

2011-08-03T08:00:00.005-04:00

Sad news around the bunk house. Our Blog Wrangler, Beth Hetland, is heading west to a new job. Beth will be returning to her alma mater, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to teach comic art!

Beth has been the energy behind our blog, pushing us to meet deadlines so that we could have something fresh to post each week. Without Beth riding herd our good intentions to write up impressions of a conference or to share a conservation technique we'd wander astray.

Not too worry folks, a new Wrangler is taking over and I know she'll keep us moving. Helen Bailey, Preservation Specialist (and author of a dang good five part digital preservation series) is climbing into the saddle.

August 5 is Beth's last day and we wish her all the best.

Happy trails, Beth, until we meet again!

Written by Barb Sagraves

Visit to Readex!

2011-08-02T08:00:00.016-04:00

A few weeks ago the Serial Set team here at Dartmouth went down to Chester, Vermont for our annual Serial Set Project meeting and got to spend most of the day with our partners at Readex! I was able to go down in November shortly after I started here in Preservation Services, but this was Elizabeth Rideout's first visit. So we got to go on a nice tour.

At any given time, Readex is undergoing several different projects, while working toward putting out into the world an assortment of databases jam-packed with information from a variety of sources. My particular interest with Readex is with the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, as this is the set of books that myself and Ms. Rideout work on. So while Readex has many different aspects of production, I'm going to focus selfishly on what I consider to be my favorite.

Readex Operations, disguised by a humble New England exterior, but what lies behind these walls is nothing short of astounding. Pictured from left to right Elsa Lamphere (my direct contact at Readex), Elizabeth Rideout (my partner in crime), Deborah Howe (the chief, directly oversees any and all repairs by Elizabeth and me), and Vicky Gardner (Vice President, Editorial).

After some warm 'Hellos' we're taken into the depths of the Readex production line. This is where the process starts.

A temperature and humidity controlled holding room for the Serial Set to rest in while they wait to be scanned, packed or double checked. Each truck arrives, is checked in and is assigned a special number that only Readex knows.

Elsa explains to Elizabeth the way that each volume is flagged and tagged throughout the scanning process. (Look at all those Serial Set books in the back ground! Readex sure is working hard!)

Once the Serial Set volumes are flagged and given their unique ID numbers, they are scanned, one page at a time by an incredible piece of technology! A KIRTAS Machine! (Watch this amazing video to see how it actually moves! Video NOT taken at Readex)

The technician places the volume in the machine and lines up the clamps just right, this way the machine can do its thing without a lot of re-adjusting and without damaging the book.

The machine then takes over for the most part. There is a vacuum arm (with yellow around the edge) that reaches over and turns the pages, at the top of the machine is a camera and two mirrors that photographs each page when the book is open. The cradle that the book is resting in is adjustable and the technician does just that as the pages are turned and weight is distributed differently. This prevents any stress on the spine as well as unnecessary strain on the shoulders and boards of the volume. There are several other features that the Kirtas utilizes to keep the process going smoothly including a small air jet called a 'fluffer' that blows to keep the pages from sticking to each other, small clear clamps that hold the book open, and direct download to a computer as the machine photographs.

The following is the sequence as the machine turns a page!

After the volumes are scanned, the images are checked by technicians for quality control. Sometimes there's a hand in the scan, sometimes they missed a page, or sometimes the camera just didn't photograph the right side. Once all the images are okay, they send these to the Index-ers. These folks READ all of the Serial Set books and index the content! Incredible! The product goes through several more steps to insure its accuracy and usability, and then it's released to the customers.

Thank you so much for the tour, Readex! As always, we here at Dartmouth had a wonderful time.

Photos and Writing by Beth Hetland

Get it Flat: Keep it Flat

2011-07-26T08:00:00.008-04:00

We often get books with boards that seem to be ready to fly off the book because the boards are bending out of shape. In this case we got a set of vellum covered books that had been exposed to a humid environment. One of the books was clearly affected as you can see from the photo below.

The boards were flattened by lightly dampening the outside of the cover in tandem with lining the inside with two layers of bond paper that had been wetted and pasted out. It was then allowed to dry under pressure, with frequent fresh blotter changes.

The big question was: “Will the volume maintain its new sleek profile?" To insure that it would, I designed a quick and simple “straight jacket” using 40 and 20 point board, book cloth and Velcro. With this design the spines remain exposed and the Velcro straps ensure that the volumes remain flat.

Open, showing the cover made from the 40 point and the inner flaps
made from the 20 point board, with the cloth straps.

Closed, ready for shelving.

Written by Deborah Howe

DigCCurr Professional Institute

2011-07-19T08:00:00.011-04:00

DigCCurr* Professional Institute is an IMLS funded program of the School of Information Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the past three years Professors Helen Tibbo and Cal Lee, along with other internationally recognized experts, have hosted a one week professional development class on the theory and practice of digitial curation for the digital object lifecycle.

I was a student in the May 2011 session and it was an amazing week!

There were about thirty of us representing a broad range of organizations (university, government, and business archives; academic libraries; museums; historical societies) and a wide range of responsibilities (digital managers, catalogers, archivists, preservation librarians, directors, access services librarians). Each day was filled with lectures, hands-on labs, and discussion.

Manfred Thaller gave an overview of the PLANETS software and a tool to stimulate digital aging. It was a lot of fun to see how far you could corrupt a file and still get a usable document -- and at the same time discover file formats that need very little change to be un-openable.
Nancy McGovern spoke about OAIS and the need for digital curation program development.
Seamus Ross walked us through the DRAMBORA audit tool.

At the end of the week we were assigned to develop a project based on what we had learned at DigCCurr and implement the project during the next six months. Come January 2012 we will meet again in Chapel Hill to report on our projects, celebrate our successes, and console one another on imperfect implementations.

My project is to use the DRAMBORA tool for a risk assessment of our digital preservation policy. I'll post my experiences with the tool as the work moves forward.

Two other items related to DigCCurr:

-One of the program goals is to develop a community of digital currators. To that end Professors Tibbo and Lee have developed the Digital Curation Exchange. The DCE is a web based community open to anyone interested in digital curation; DigCCurr uses it as a home base for students to share information, however, anyone may join. If you haven't visited the site take a few minutes and look it over.

-Our class attended a Durham Bulls Baseball game and I discovered a new fried food: potato chips on a stick.

*Pronounced dij-seeker

Written by Barb Sagraves

Digital Preservation Series, Part 5 – Resources to Help Us Figure it All Out

2011-07-12T08:00:00.008-04:00

Ok, now that I’ve covered some of the concerns, causes, and solutions related to digital preservation, I’m going to stop talking and let the real experts take over. There are many organizations doing fabulous work on the digital preservation front, so I’ll just link to some of the resources that Dartmouth College Library refers to and participates in. If you know of other great tools or resources for digital preservation, please list them in the comments!

Digital Preservation Resources

Membership-based services:

Standards:

Tools:

General Information

And to end this post with something a little more lighthearted, here’s a great cartoon by Digital Preservation Europe that explains some of the basic concepts of digital preservation. Check out their YouTube channel for more awesome videos from this series!

Written by Helen Bailey

Paper, paper everywhere...

2011-07-05T14:13:00.009-04:00

One of the techniques I was able to show in an earlier blog post was paper repair with heat set tissue. But sometimes heat set isn't the right way to go. It can be a little too abrasive with some of the more delicate papers. Delicate papers like... newspaper!

What I'm going to show you is a step by step walk through of a paste and Japanese tissue paper repair on newspaper. This particular newspaper's issues were once bound into one big volume, but it was decided that it needed to be disbound. During that process the folds, which were already delicate, tore slightly or created larger holes where the cords used to hold it together.

Once out of the bound edition they looked something like this--not exactly pretty.

In order to assess the damage fully, the issue needed to be completely flat. Thanks to the use of these little weights that was easily accomplished.

This one has a hole that's a little too big, but don't worry, I'm going to patch that right up!

Next, I cut strips of tissue that were just a little bit longer than the height of the newspaper. This saves on time if you cut a bunch first rather than as you go. With a brush, I pasted up the strip of tissue and placed it over the tear.

To keep the issues from sticking to each other while they dry, there is a small layering process that keeps everything separate and dry. The layers are something like this: first table, then blotter, then Reemay, then newspaper, Reemay, blotter and a weight.

The blotter absorbs the moisture, the Reemay keeps the paste from sticking to the blotter, and the weight and the table keep the newspaper drying nice and flat!

Once everything is dry, it's time to fold them back up again.

And look at that! Good as new!

Written by Beth Hetland

DISASTER BEWARE!!!

2011-06-28T08:00:00.009-04:00

On May 24th and 25th , 2011, Collections Action and Response Team (CART) members assembled for a mock recovery exercise. Participants included Richard Langdell, Kerry Lazarus, Owen Mcdowell, Lisa Maxfield, Joy Weale, Joanne Messineo Lisa Ladd, Josh Lascell, Deborah Howe, Brian Markee, and Stephanie Wolff. Over the course of the two separate sessions, CART members put into practice: assessment and problem solving skills, working together as a team, and hands-on experience in salvaging material.

Note: No collections materials were harmed in this exercise; all items used were personal materials or had been discarded from the Library collections. All activities were performed under the direction of a trained conservator.

For more information on disaster recovery check out these sites:

Items awaiting the disaster scenario. Some books were given special labels in order to distinguish between possible variations in materials.

Sand and dirt were added, providing a more real-to-life feel to the event.

Layer upon layer of books and other media such as CD's and videos were interspersed with dirt mixture and lots of water.

Day one team members arrive at the scene to survey the damage, ascertain the situation and decide what to do next.

The supplies of course! The majority of disaster supplies are kept on shelves in Preservation Services. Each branch library has a disaster kit, which contains basic supplies such as plastic, flash light and gloves.

Collapsible crates are used to pack the wet books.

Once opened, the crates are stacked two high with a third crate dropped in at an angle. This configuration of the crates helps the packer by raising the height of the crate to be packed and keep the books tightly aligned.

When books are badly soiled they can be rinsed off in
a large bath of fresh water.

Joy tries out the rinsing method!

CART members soon fall into step, forming teams and a smooth work flow.

Books are wrapped in wax paper to impede sticking to each other and deter off-setting of colors, especially red books.

Meanwhile, members are informed that a leak has been found in the stacks and needs immediate attention. The team must decide who will go and address the new leak. Here Joanne and Brian remove books from the top shelf onto a cart.

Because of the configuration of the shelving, the sheets of plastic must be individually cut for each section of the range.

The area is expertly sealed off and the books will no longer be vulnerable to the leaky pipe.

After both sessions team members sat around our conference table and reviewed the exercise. A list of ideas and suggestions were compiled and will be used to improve the program. Thank you CART members for a successful event!

Written by Deborah Howe and photos courtesy of Beth Hetland

Personnel News: Stephanie Wolff

2011-06-21T08:00:00.006-04:00

Stephanie Wolff has completed the degree requirements for a Masters of Arts
in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College and was awarded her degree on
June 12. Her thesis, Blue the Sky, Blue the Sea: Indigo Across Borders, Across Time, is a study of indigo, its uses and trade over time. In partial fulfillment of her degree Stephanie created an artists book, A World of Blue, which is on display in the cases outside the Treasure Room in Baker Library.

Congratulations to Stephanie on this outstanding accomplishment.

Written by Barb Sagraves

Blog Wrangler Earns MFA

2011-06-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to our Blog Wrangler, Beth Hetland, who has successfully completed the requirements of a Master of Fine Arts from the Center for Cartoon Studies. Beth’s autobiographical thesis was entitled, “Fugue: a family in three parts” and explores her mother’s relationship with music and her three daughters. If you are interested in reading it Beth promises it will soon be available on her blog: www.beth-hetland.com

Well done, Beth!

Written by Barb Sagraves

Digital Preservation Series, Part 4 – Solutions, cont.

2011-06-14T08:00:00.008-04:00

To continue on my topic from the last post about solutions to the digital preservation conundrum, let me focus now on storage and digital preservation management.

Storage
This is one of the biggest questions that many people have about digital preservation. If storage media, such as hard drives and magnetic tapes, are bound to fail over time, what can we do to make sure the information on them isn’t lost? The first and most important answer is redundant backup. Digital content should never, ever be stored in only one location or on one type of storage media. For example, if one copy of a file is stored on a server in Florida, there might be another copy on a server in California and another copy on magnetic tapes in France, and another copy on a different type of server in Ohio. While this is perhaps an exaggerated example, storing identical copies of digital resources on different types of storage media (such as hard drives, tapes, and DVDs) and in different geographic locations (which could be as far-reaching as different countries or simply different buildings in a single town, depending on the kind of data being stored) helps ensure that if a disaster ruins one copy, there will still be another to use. The Library’s digital resources are stored on servers that are backed up in another location with its own generator in case of power failure.

The other important note about storage is that there are many different kinds of storage media, ranging from CDs and DVDs to very expensive liquid-cooled servers. When selecting a storage medium for digital materials, it’s important to choose a type and brand that has a reputation for good quality. While all media will fail eventually, higher-quality media will last longer and ultimately help reduce the cost of replacing media over time.

Of course, copies alone will not keep digital materials safe. Even if disaster is averted, there’s still the issue of bit rot to deal with. And that’s why we need a set of…

Preservation Management Activities
These are actions that are regularly performed on digital files to make sure they are still usable. There are many, many ongoing preservation actions, but some of the most important include:

Validation – checking to make sure the file is still exactly what its metadata says it is, and that none of its bits have been damaged or lost. If the validation fails, then another copy (thank goodness we have those redundant backups!) can replace the damaged one.
Migration – this includes both format migration, where a file is converted to a newer format if the software it relies on is becoming outdated, and migration to new storage media when old media are in danger of deterioration.
Maintenance of equipment – all of the hardware used to store and view digital resources, software necessary to view resources that can’t be converted to open file formats, and technical infrastructure such as networks and updates, have to be actively maintained all the time.
Security – it’s important to have security measures in place, such as encryption, active virus scanning, and strong firewalls, to prevent digital files from being inadvertently or maliciously damaged by other people. Just as you (hopefully) wouldn’t store your important family documents in an unlocked and easily accessible location, important digital files should be given the same measure of protection.

Ongoing Learning
On top of all the activities listed above, digital preservation managers have to constantly monitor the information science field to make sure they are following the latest standards, new technologies, and accepted best practices. We always have to know what’s happening now and what technical innovations are just over the horizon, because there are always new threats and new ways that old digital collections can be rendered useless to future researchers. In the words of Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody (Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire), “constant vigilance” must be observed to ward off any potential hazards.

Fortunately for us here at Dartmouth, we aren’t alone in the digital preservation boat. There are many organizations that are conducting research, defining standards, and creating tool to help preserve these relatively newfangled digital materials. In my next and final post, I’ll talk about some of the great resources out there that are leading the way in digital preservation.

Written by Helen Bailey

Pick a type, any type!

2011-06-07T08:00:00.007-04:00

Some very exciting news for the Book Arts Program letterpress webpage. This past week I've been working really hard to take the excellent type specimen books that we have in the letterpress studio, scan in each page, and compile a comprehensive collection of digital samples of our physical collection.

Each page was then chopped up into the individual fonts, labeled and separated, and uploaded to our website! Now, without leaving the comfort of your own home, you too can browse our collection. Whether in preparation, inspiration or to just spend time day-dreaming about that amazing project you're going to create, take some time to paroose our collection! You can gaze alphabetically by font name, or just click through each page as it is arranged in the books that you'll find in the letterpress studio. Click to behold the beauty!

Written by Beth Hetland

Photo Banner

2011-05-31T08:00:00.009-04:00

A few weeks ago I was contacted for information regarding an item shown in the photo banner of our department home page. The question was a surprising one but it made me think about the photos in the banner, the rationale behind them and the sometimes subliminal messages I am sending.

Looking from left to right there are six photos (actually nine but the last three are generic images of the Library) and each represents an activity or important relationship with other departments in the Library.

1. Digital conversion & digital preservation: A leaf from the Brut Chronicle being scanned. Preservation Services staff have worked hard to raise awareness of the need for pre & post digitization conservation. The Brut was taken apart for cleaning and rebinding, and in the middle of that treatment it was scanned. Preservation staff have also been responsible for the actual scanning of some materials and Preservation staff are collaborating across the organization to manage & preserve digital resources.

2. Conservation: Brushes symbolize book and paper conservation.

3. Non-book preservation: Our department is responsible for ALL of the Library's resources. This staged photo for a film preservation presentation is a graphic reminder of how NOT to handle film. This image is found on the slide show of our blog and is one of my favorites, the title of the film being, "Why I came to Dartmouth".

4. Conservation documentation: Each day Preservation staff repair books from the circulating collections and use their considerable expertise to repair items from the Rauner Special Collections Library. We typically document before and after treatments for items from that collection. This was also the photo that generated the question -- where to obtain the color bar.

5. New Book Processing: Preservation Services is reponsible for attaching book plates, call number labels, and security strips in all newly received items for the collection. The "hand model" is Maxine Cameron, who was a key member of the preservation team up until her retirement in 2010.

6. Circulation: The reason for our being. Access and preservation go hand in hand.

Written by Barb Sagraves

Conservation Road Show

2011-05-24T08:00:00.005-04:00

On April 7th, 2011, I gave a brief presentation on the history of book structure and materials, to Joy Kenseth’s “Book as Art: Renaissance and Baroque Illustrated Books at Dartmouth”. I find these opportunities a great source of enjoyment and a chance to educate the students in something they might never have contemplated. In fact this is how I came to be in the field. As a student at the University of Cincinnati, Gabrielle Fox, the then conservator there, came and gave a talk to our “History of Illumination” class. I was hooked and have never looked back. I’ve come full circle so it seems.

Below are images of the items I brought to the class to demonstrate the various steps and materials used in book construction.

A sewing frame with signatures to illustrate the foundation of the sewing structure.

This is a goat skin of mine which makes a regular appearance to illustrate the direct derivative of the parchment into a book covering material. The dark spots are the blood vessels which remain as a result of how the skin was prepared.

In Preservation Services, we have two cut away models that were executed by Stephanie Wolff. The two photos above show one model that features sewing on cords with the lacing pattern into the boards, along with hand sewn German style headbands.

Below the other model illustrates the case binding, with both linked and simple sewing on tapes.

These models have been extremely helpful in teaching book construction and are consistently being used for tours and talks. I highly recommend that time be taken to create such cutaways, not only will you have illustrated samples of book structure but making them will exercise the skill of the binder.

Gold leaf and finishing tools allow for the exquisite decoration of bindings.

I find it so interesting that the headband has remained a component of the book. In the era of wooden boards and the need for a serious connection between them and the text block, it made perfect sense to have the extra cord attachment. However, as it stands today, it’s purely a fashion accessory, having no structural or intrinsic value whatsoever. I have no theory as to why it has remained, but only in that it adds a decorative element to our literary companions.

And to the state of book construction today, the sample above shows how the book case is fabricated separate from the text block, a quicker and more efficient but less durable construction from the days of past.
I am hoping that this collaboration between the faculty and conservation staff will develop into a more formal dynamic and be part of the classroom experience on a more regular basis.

Written by Deborah Howe

Digital Preservation Series, Part 3 - There Are Solutions to This Problem

2011-05-17T08:01:00.007-04:00

There are many methods being used to mitigate the digital preservation threats I mentioned in my last post. I’m going to talk about some of them here, but the information in this post isn’t comprehensive…it’s just a sample of the actions we’re taking at Dartmouth College Library to preserve our digital collections, with ideas about similar actions that can be taken to preserve personal files.

File Formats
Since the threat of obsolescence is always a concern, one of the first digital preservation strategies is to create files in preservation-friendly formats, or if we receive them in other formats, to convert them whenever possible. What makes a file format preservation-friendly? The most important characteristics of a file format are that it:

is a non-proprietary, open standard format, meaning that all the technical information about the format is published and maintained by a standards organization
is uncompressed or, if that isn’t possible, uses lossless compression
is commonly used (and thus more likely to be supported and documented)
allows embedded metadata, when possible
works with a wide variety of hardware and software configurations

Examples of file formats we prefer include XML for text and TIFF or JPEG2000 for images.

For personal digital materials, consider using file formats such as PNG and JPEG for images, PDF for text, and OpenDocument formats for office-related documents such as formatted text, charts, and presentations. See the Library of Congress Sustainability of Digital Formats page for more information on file formats.

Metadata
We also add metadata to our digital files, which ensures that we will be able to retrieve the information when we want it, and that we will know how to use it in the future. This metadata takes many forms, but some of the most vital pieces we include are:

What the content and context of the object is, such as the title, author, date of creation, and information about the source material if the item was digitized from an analog object such as a book (referred to as descriptive metadata)
Information about how the object was created, such as what file format it is and what software was used to create it (known as technical metadata)
How the object relates to other digital objects, for example, how a set of images should be ordered to correctly form the sequential pages of a book (structural metadata)
Who holds copyright for the object and how the object may be legally used (aptly named rights metadata)
And then there’s a category of information that includes results from validation (see preservation management activities below), the chain of custody of the digital object (so we know it hasn’t been altered, or if it has been altered, who did it and why), and identification numbers for the object that tell external systems (such as an online catalog) what the object is. This information is sometimes referred to as administrative or preservation metadata, although all of the metadata in this list is important for preservation!

When creating metadata, we always use standardized formats and terminology so that software developers can write programs that can interact with the digital objects based on a common language. Examples of standards we follow include the PREMIS and METS schemas, and the XML format.

Keep in mind that metadata use isn’t limited to library collections! You can add metadata to many of your personal digital materials. A file name, for example, is a type of metadata; if used correctly, the file name can provide a lot of information about the file without even opening it. It can often tell you the name or content description, the date it was created or edited, and the extension tells you what the file format is. But many files, particularly images, can also be given tags that contain some of this information as well. When tagging photographs, important things to include might be the date and location the picture was taken, who took the picture, and who or what is in the picture. Most cameras also embed some valuable technical information, such as the type of camera, color scheme, and other specifications about the image. Newer digital cameras can even embed the date, time, and location metadata if they are set up to do so.

There are so many digital preservation actions that I’m going to have to continue them in another post. Next time, I’ll talk about storage methods and ongoing maintenance activities that are necessary to keep digital resources from degrading. Come back soon for more information!

Written by Helen Bailey

A Chip off the Shoulder

2011-05-10T08:01:00.008-04:00

Well another month has gone by, and another batch of the volumes from the U.S. Congressional Serial Set has returned from its journey to be digitized by Readex. The majority of the 65 or so volumes that return at a time only need a little sprucing because Readex takes such good care of them. But every once and a while one of these little guys needs some extra love before he's ready to hit the shelves and face the lime light that is Dartmouth College Library Patrons.

This particular volume returned to me with its back board completely fine, but its front board and spine piece detached entirely.

A pretty clean separation to be honest. The fact that it was still attached firmly to the back board was a good sign too! At face value this repair seems very run of the mill ordinary. Until we look a little closer...

The shoulder of this particular Serial Set volume is rather high and thus the front board and joint don't have a lot of room to move around. This is very counter intuitive and probably the reason why there was such a clean popped off cover. With the guidance of the lovely Collections Conservator, Deborah Howe, she showed me a very sneaky and slick way of giving this joint some space to breathe and actually function the way it ought to.

Now what is kind of amazing about this job is that sometimes it feels like I'm a surgeon in training and operating on these books. I think you'll understand when I begin to explain how we maneuvered this tight joint. First, with a paper spatula, I created a space between the leather and the board right on the edge of the joint, about an inch or so in, with enough room to slide in this light green, very condensed board.

It's a little hard to see, but that green board is actually inside the book between the leather and front board. The purpose of this is to give support near the very weak spine piece, and to offer a surface that my blade will not cut through when I make an incision.

This next part is a little scary for those of you with tender hearts about books, but I assure you I'm a trained professional and sometimes you have to crack a few eggs. With the support board in place, and another book to create a saw horse-like set up, I begin cutting very lightly approximately 1/8" from the edge of the board. Since Davey board is so thick and this board is very old and therefore quite solid, this process takes several minutes. Not to mention of course, even though the support board is there, I need to be very careful not to slice through it, damaging the spine.

You can see the pieces that have been removed already, as well as what I have left to remove. Note that the incision does not go all the way to the edge of the board. It is important not to cut to the head and tail of the book, this would create more damage.

When the incision is complete, I remove the support board and let the front board and spine relax a bit. Next I attach a Japanese Tissue liner that is the width of the spine and extends on one side about a half inch. This liner will add support to the text block as well as be a very strong anchor for the front board.

Last but not least, I flip the front board and spine back up on to the text block. Apply some glue and let it dry open so that the book has a nice tight hinge, but not too tight!

Voila! Good as new! This volume is all set and ready to return to its booky-brethren.

Written by Beth Hetland

Preservation Week Wrap-Up

2011-05-09T08:00:00.005-04:00

Another National Preservation Week has come and gone! I hope you had an opportunity to benefit from our tips or attended the “Protect Your Treasures” event. If you missed it we had a great turnout: questions were answered, examples were shown, and many, many conservation supply catalogs were handed out.

We had experts to answer questions about photographs, digital objects, textiles, and books & paper. This photo shows a few of the items on display at the Books & Paper table. Notice the “Collections Care” catalog published by Gaylord. They very generously sent two-dozen copies along with their supply catalog; thanks also to University Products for their catalogs.

Special thanks goes to Helen Bailey, Stephanie Wolff, Deborah Howe, Beth Hetland, Elizabeth Rideout, and Margaret Spicer for making “Protect Your Treasures” a success.

The next Preservation Week is April 22-29, so mark your calendar!

Written by Barb Sagraves

End of a Long Journey:

2011-05-03T08:00:00.004-04:00

The Dismantling of the Guild of Book Workers "Marking Time" Exhibit.

On March 22nd, 2011 a group of volunteers assembled at the Library to dismantle the “Marking Time” exhibit that had been on display in Baker Berry Library since November of 2010.

Amongst the group, was Rutherford Witthus, one of the exhibitors. His book, Matan, Williams, Witten and Nagel, Crumpling a Thin Sheet, 2001, utilized the controlled spontaneity promoted by John Cage to produce crumpled pages. These are included in his book as well as beautiful printed scans of them.

It was a delight to have him here as we took a moment to have show and tell and he was able to illustrate how the pages were manipulated and handled.

For more information on Rutherford’s work visit his website.

After the show and tell and putting all the books back in their boxes, the team went to work with bubble wrap and packing material to get the books ready for shipping. Here students from North Bennet Street School busily match books with the right size shipping container and make sure the correct address is on the right box!

Elizabeth Rideout inspects the packages to make sure they are well sealed and RTG (ready to go).

McKey, loading the boxes onto trucks headed to the mail room for UPS pick up. It felt like an old friend was leaving after a wonderful visit. I hope all the binders were happy to finally get their books back.

Special Thanks to:
Linda Lemke, Rutherford Whittus, Stephan Stefanko, McKey Berkman, Arini Esarey, Erin Fletcher, Celine Lombardi, Anna Shepard. And most of all to the wonderful, thorough, and outstanding head of Shipping & Receiving, Jim Guay, without whom we would be at a complete loss.

Written by Deborah Howe

Preservation Tip of the Day #5

2011-04-29T08:00:00.001-04:00

Each day this week to celebrate Preservation Week 2011, we'll be posting a handy tip to preserving your own collections. Stay tuned, and check back tomorrow!

Mold: Beware!

Mold can cause irreparable damage to all types of family heirlooms, precious books, and documents and it is an indication that your storage environment is unsound. Conditions that are too humid and warm can trigger a mold “bloom”. To keep items safe they need to be kept in a location that is dry and cool with air circulation: out of damp basements or garages, where the potential for water damage is elevated.

If you do find mold on your documents and you do not want to part with the item, seal it into a heavy plastic bag, place the bag in a freezer away from foodstuffs, and immediately contact a conservator. After handling any moldy object wash your hands. For more information:
http://www.nedcc.org/resources/leaflets/3Emergency_Management/08SalvageMoldyBooks.php

Preservation Tip of the Day #4

2011-04-28T08:00:00.003-04:00

Each day this week to celebrate Preservation Week 2011, we'll be posting a handy tip to preserving your own collections. Stay tuned, and check back tomorrow!

File Naming!

Today’s tip regards file naming. Do you have files on your computer that look like this:

Awesome thing I totally love this lololololollollo.jpg
2007-04-03-085537.jpg
Collegeapplication#127version3.5draft1.doc

If so, you’re in digital preservation trouble! Two of the most important aspects of digital preservation are knowing what you have on your hard drive and being able to find something when you need it. Part of this requires that file names be clear, consistent, and representative of what they contain. Possible solutions to the above file naming disasters would be:

dancing_lolcat.jpg
hawaii_trip_snorkeling_20070403-085537.jpg (this includes both the date/time the photo was taken and some context regarding what’s in the picture)
dartmouth_app_draft_06.doc

In addition to identifying what’s in the file, it’s best to use lowercase alphanumeric characters and an underscore or dash instead of spaces. And make sure that file extension is visible, especially if you’re sharing files across operating systems. You always want to know what kind of file you have! For more information on best practices in file naming, see http://www.records.ncdcr.gov/erecords/filenaming_20080508_final.pdf

Preservation Tip of the Day #3

2011-04-27T08:00:00.005-04:00

Each day this week to celebrate Preservation Week 2011, we'll be posting a handy tip to preserving your own collections. Stay tuned, and check back tomorrow!

Photographic Preservation Tips: Caption and Storage Information
Whether digital or paper-based photographs, recording information about the photograph’s content and context is valuable for their future use.

When noting information on photographs or paper items, mark them with a soft lead pencil on the reverse of the item. Date, location and identification are useful things to record for later reference.

When storing photographs in paper envelopes or boxes, choose those that have passed the Photographic Activity Test (PAT). Consider the particular photographic process when determining which paper to use. Reputable dealers in preservation supplies often provide help in matching the photographic process to the appropriate storage paper. For more information see:
http://www.loc.gov/preserv/care/photo.html

For digital photographs, capture that metadata! Did you know that most digital cameras record the date and time of every picture you take? Even better, many cameras are now location-aware and can record where the picture was taken as well. This kind of information is invaluable for long-term preservation…without knowledge of a photo’s context, it is much more likely to be discarded or lost in a large set of digital files. So check your camera settings and make sure the date, time, and location are correct.

These simple steps will support both the longevity and usefulness of your photographs. Your grandchildren will thank you!

Don't forget to stop by our event today from 11am til 1pm in DCAL, at Baker-Berry library!

Preservation Tip of the Day #2

2011-04-26T08:00:00.002-04:00

Each day this week to celebrate Preservation Week 2011, we'll be posting a handy tip to preserving your own collections. Stay tuned, and check back tomorrow!

Back up your data!
Have you ever worked long into the night on a paper only to have your hard drive fail at 4am and lose everything? If you haven’t, be warned…this could happen at any time. So make sure your files are backed up to a cloud-storage system, external hard drive, or even DVDs if that’s all you’ve got. Here are some great, easy-to-use backup options:

Mac – Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) comes with a built-in backup program called Time Machine. Requires an external hard drive.
PC - Windows 7 comes with a built-in backup program called Windows Backup. Requires an external hard drive.
Cloud storage – There are several cross-platform, cloud-based storage systems that will back your files online so they are not only safe, but also accessible from anywhere. Look for one that syncs automatically and provides secure data storage (Carbonite and Dropbox are two examples). Requires an Internet connection to run.

Preservation Tip of the Day #1

2011-04-25T08:00:00.004-04:00

Each day this week to celebrate Preservation Week 2011, we'll be posting a handy tip on preserving your own collections. Stay tuned, and check back tomorrow!

Cleanliness First!
Always wash your hands before handling any item, especially precious or fragile ones. Clean your hands and dry them thoroughly or you may leave oil or food stains behind. This is especially true for photographs and textiles, which are very sensitive to the oils and dirt on our hands.

For more information about care and handling see:
http://www.loc.gov/preserv/familytreasures/ftprotect.html

Transformations

2011-04-19T08:00:00.001-04:00

Dartmouth holds a Winter Carnival every February and amid the snow sculptures and athletic contests, the Alumni Office invites class & club officers back to campus for a special event. The alumni program theme for 2011 was “Hidden Treasures” and if you know anything about the Library's Book Arts Program you know it is “hidden” in the southwest corner of Baker Library's basement and is an undisputed “treasure”.

I worked with Anne Peale, '11, to plan the event and we decided to have our visitors print covers for a keepsake pamphlet that they would sew themselves. Anne is a student instructor in the Book Arts studios and she came up with a wintery design printed with silver ink on “Dartmouth green” card stock.

Anne did a fantastic job explaining letterpress-printing technology to the alums and enthusiastically described the influence working in the studio has had on her life. I wouldn't want to embarrass Anne by announcing her career plans in a blog post but simply put, the Books Arts Program had a transformative impact.

It turns out, Anne's wasn't the first life to be transformed through the program. One of the Dartmouth alums who showed up for the tour had been a student employee of Ray Nash, the founder of the Graphic Arts Workshop and in whose honor the Book Arts Program was re-established. I was humbled to meet a "Nash student" and felt privileged as he movingly described his mentor, Ray Nash, and his mentor's influence on him. That day I formed my own "mental keepsake" as I watched a past student of the Graphic Arts Workshop nod his approval of the generation that has found a home in the Book Arts Workshop.

Photos by Sue Wiley Young '77
Written by Barb Sagraves

Digital Preservation Series, Part 2 – But Aren't Digital Files Permanent?

2011-04-12T08:00:00.005-04:00

To follow up on my first digital preservation post, I want to talk a little bit about why we need to spend time and energy preserving digital materials. After all, digital materials are just there, right? They don’t fall apart like books or become brittle like paper or warp and shrink like film. So they must be safe, yes? Oh, if only that were the case. Unfortunately, the example shown in the comic below is just one of the many ways that digital materials can become unusable over time.

by zipckr

Perhaps the biggest challenge in preservation digital materials is obsolescence. Obsolescence occurs when a digital object becomes unusable due to new developments in software or hardware. This is something nearly all of us have encountered with programs such as Microsoft Word. Ever noticed that a Word file created in 1990 will not open in today’s version of Word? That’s because the software has changed so much that it is incompatible with files made in previous versions, thus rendering those files obsolete. This kind of software incompatibility happens all the time, and the same thing is going on with new developments in hardware…have you tried to use a floppy disk in your computer recently? If so, you likely discovered that computers are no longer built with floppy disc drives, and so unless you have a computer from 15 years ago, the data on that disc is unreadable.

Another major problem with digital materials is that they do, in fact, deteriorate over time. While this deterioration may not be as evident as it is with photographs or books, it still happens. And again, nearly everyone with a computer has experienced this. Hard drives crash (often unexpectedly and at the most inconvenient times), CDs and DVDs get scratched, and magnetic tapes and other storage media simply lose data or fail altogether as time passes. Bits and bytes themselves, the actual pieces of code from which all digital files are built, can also be slowly damaged or lost over time. All of these forms of content loss due to physical degradation are known as bit rot, and they are a never-ending threat to digital materials.

by Velo Steve

One digital preservation conundrum that many people don’t consider is the problem of information retrieval. As massive numbers of digital resources are created, each containing hundreds or thousands of files, the ability to organize and locate those files becomes a complicated task, both for large institutions and individual people. Let’s say it’s 2057 and you’re looking for a particular file that you created in 2010. What is the file called? Where did you store it? How are you going to find it among all the other thousands of files you’ve created in the past 47 years? Do you know what format the file is, or what kind of hardware and software you’ll need to open it? Even if the data is not obsolete and the bits are all still there, without this kind of contextual information you won’t be able to use or even find the resource you’re looking for. Libraries and Archives are dealing with this problem on a massive scale.

A final issue that is not unique to digital materials, but is still of major concern, is the possibility of loss from disaster. This could be a natural disaster such as a hurricane, or a human-caused disaster such as a terrorist attack or the unfortunate accident like spilling a glass of milk on your computer. No matter how much careful planning goes into the creation and storage of those files, disasters can always come along and destroy them.

So, given all of these methods by which digital materials can be damaged, lost, or rendered utterly useless, it should be clear that there is a very real need for digital preservation action to be taken. I’ll talk about what those actions are in my next post, and what we’re doing here at the Dartmouth College Library to preserve our unique digital collections.

Written by Helen Bailey

Keeping it safe

2011-04-05T08:00:00.010-04:00

In the conservation lab we have a fume hood.

This is a large chamber that pulls air away from the person standing in front of it, allowing us to use chemicals such as acetone and toluene without breathing in the fumes. Mostly we use these chemicals to remove tape from documents.

It is important to keep the fume hood area clean and free of debris.

Once a year, as a requirement from Environmental Health and Safety, we get a checkup visit from B and V testing.

This year our visit was from Michael Maxwell. To measure the velocity of the air, he uses a wand called an air data multi-meter.

This will show a read out of the feet per minute of the air movement.

The required air flow must measure between 80-120 feet per minute, at this rate, the light weight air molecules, are pulled up and away.

Thanks to Michael, for checking in on us! We passed with flying colors.

Written by Deborah Howe

Preservation Week 2011

2011-03-29T08:00:00.011-04:00

Protect Your Treasures: Preserving Personal Collections

Dartmouth College Library presents a personal treasures preservation event as part of the 2nd Annual ALA Preservation Week. This event is part of a national celebration initiated by the American Library Association to raise awareness of cultural heritage preservation within the community.

Special One-Day Event, Wednesday, April 27, 2011 11am-1pm

Baker-Berry Library, DCAL Conference Room

Dartmouth College Library’s Preservation Services department is hosting a two-hour personal treasures preservation event. Faculty, students, staff, and community members are invited to bring questions about personal documents, family photos, and memorabilia for advice on how to best preserve those treasured items.

If you have a sample item from your collection, please feel free to bring it along with your questions. We will provide information about best practices in storage, handling, and general preservation guidelines for a wide range of materials, including:

Photographs
Books
Documents and art on paper
Film, video, and home movies
Records, tapes, CDs and other audio materials
Digital items such as documents, photographs, and other personal files
Textiles

**Please note: we will not provide any monetary appraisal of items. If you are interested in assessing the value of your treasures, we recommend having them evaluated by a professional appraiser.

Click here for more information!

Just a taste

2011-03-29T08:00:00.008-04:00

This week we have a very special treat! A guest blog from our very own Stephanie Wolff, Dartmouth Library Preservation Services' Conservation Technician. When faced with an interesting repair she offered to blog about it.

So without further ado, take it away Stephanie.

Every once in a while a book comes in for repair with damage from an animal chewing it. This often occurs at the corners of books, such as on this particular volume.

Though these pages are intact with no damage, it is important to fix the corner, so the cover can continue to fully protect the text block from any future accidents.

To repair the corner I first wanted to prepare the cover to hold a new piece of board. I made a straight cut at the edge of the damage, through the black paper covering material, so my new piece would fit well. I then evened out any bumps in the rest of the damaged corner. Then I took a piece of mat board about the same thickness as the book board and trimmed it to a triangle, with a square corner and slightly oversized. I peeled back some of this new board to evenly fit onto the remains of the old in an overlapping manner. After gluing these pieces together, I then glued both front and back of the new corner with paper, anchoring it onto the existing board at the same time. Once dry I trimmed the outer edges of the new corner piece to the final size.

Finally I covered the front of the new corner board with black paper, overlapping the old black paper slightly, and attached a new pastedown corner piece on the inside cover. Done and back to the stacks, with the board able to fully protect the text once again.

Written by Stephanie Wolff

Book Arts: Spring Schedule

2011-03-28T09:00:00.004-04:00

The Spring schedule for the Book Arts Program is now available. There are a number of binding classes being offered in addition to the Letterpress Intensive.

Digital Preservation Series, Part 1 – What Are We Preserving, Anyway?

2011-03-22T08:00:00.005-04:00

Given that I spend much of my time working on digital preservation, I thought it might be fun to talk a little bit about what digital preservation actually is and why it’s an important part of the work we do in this department. But when I started writing, I realized that “a little bit” isn’t enough to cover everything about the massive subject that is digital preservation. So I’m breaking it down into a series, and here for your reading pleasure is the series debut.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my post on the e-Resources Fair, Preservation Services is heavily involved in the process of digitizing materials from the Dartmouth College Library collections. I talked about the conservation work that is often associated with digitization, and I talked about the actual scanning and publishing process, in which Preservation staff are also participating. What I failed to mention before was the other preservation aspect of digitization, which is actually the one I’m most involved in…digital preservation. Yes, there is another whole stage of the digitization process, and it’s one that tends to get noticed least because if it works correctly, it is invisible to the researcher viewing this material on our website.

But why is digital preservation important? Well, let’s continue looking at the digitization process as an example. When we create digital versions of our physical collections, we end up with a lot of files. These include image files (like JPEGs, TIFFs, and PDFs), text files (usually in the form of PDF and XML documents), and even audio and video files (such as MP3s). And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. Digitizing a single book can produce hundreds of image files plus one or more text files. Digitizing a whole collection of manuscripts or photographs produces thousands of images.

These thousands of files not only take a lot of time and hard work to create, they also become a valuable part of the library collections. Preservation Services is responsible for preserving them, just as we are responsible for preserving the physical materials they are derived from. And the products of digitization aren’t the only digital files we’re concerned with. As I mentioned in my e-Resources post, the Library owns and subscribes to a huge variety of electronic resources, from e-journals to databases to streaming music. The sum total of these resources amounts to millions of files, each of which contains information that we don’t want to lose.

So the big question (from a preservation perspective) is what happens to all the bits, bytes, and files that make up these digital collections? How do we make sure all of this information remains accessible to our student and faculty researchers as technology changes over the next 5, 10, or even 50 years? To understand this problem, we have to understand what the potential risks are to our digital collections. But that’s a whole post in and of itself, so it will have to wait until next time. Stayed tuned for Part 2…

Written by Helen K. Bailey

A Cavalcade of Cartoonists

2011-03-15T08:00:00.017-04:00

On Friday, March 4th, Preservation Services had quite a collection of visitors. Candidates from the Master's Program at The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS) were invited to participate in a Book Arts Workshop created just for them to focus specifically on binding suggestions and techniques that could be applied to their Thesis Packaging that is due in May.

Since I am both a member of the Preservation Services staff and a Cartoonist at CCS, I wanted to bridge the gap between the two and give my classmates (and co-workers) a big treat. As community members we, the Cartoonists, have often attended the Letterpress and Bindery Studio workshops but because there is a limit to how many can participate at a given time, we have to stagger our visits and don't always make the cut, strictly due to space. But here in Preservation Services, we could happily fit all 10 of the participating Cartoonists and give one on one feedback more tailored to combining comics and book binding.

So with the aid of some creative carpooling, and collaborative curriculum planning, I met a group of excited Cartoonists at the Baker Information desk at 10am. After a brief tour and some introductions, there was no time to waste. Deborah Howe began to produce example after example to give just a small taste of the endless possibilities awaiting each Cartoonist's Thesis.

Then we jumped right in to a multi-signature pamphlet stitch.

Jon Chad, Faculty at CCS, uses a jig to puncture his signatures.

Two tables full of Cartoonists sewing their signatures!

Ben Horak (left) and Josh Kramer (right) giggle about starting a 'Book Binding for Men' club.

Betsey Swardlick completes her second kettle stitch, nice and tight!

Stephanie Wolff (right) helps Lawrence Derks line up his signatures.

Lena Chandok (right) starts folding her cover, while Andy Christensen (left) makes sure he's doing it right!

Cartoonists look on as Deborah Howe (far left) scores her cover lightning fast!

Gluing book cloth requires a LOT of concentration!

"I did good!"

Thanks Dartmouth College Library's Preservation Services!

Written by Beth Hetland

Digital Curation Conference

2011-03-08T08:00:00.007-05:00

Last December I had the opportunity to attend the 6th International Digital Curation Conference in Chicago, IL. The conference was a super fantastic two day event. Reviewing my notes there were lots of excellent presentations -- a few that stood out were:

Robin Rice (presenter) - "Research Data Management Initiatives at the University of Edinburgh". Robin mentioned the concepts of high and low curation:

High curation would be labor intensive and require human intervention (metadata creation would be a good example).
Low curation would be automated (for example checksums or file format validation).

As Dartmouth College Library moves forward with digital preservation these terms and concepts will be helpful in our conversations.

Catherine Ward (presenter) - "Making Sense: Talking Data Management with Researchers". The "Incremental" project was designed to improve research data management within the institution by focusing on providing better advice, training, and support for researchers. It's a very common sense approach and worth referring to as the College designs a program to support data management.

I also participated in a pre-conference, Digital Curation 101 Lite. It was led by Sarah Jones, Martin Donnelly, and Joy Davidson and used the Digital Curation Centre lifecycle model as the basis for the course. It included lots of good advice about knowing your audience and being mindful of language that might scare them off (i.e. data curation).

These notes just scratch the surface of the conference. If you are interested in minding your data and want to learn more about digital curation, follow any of the links in this post. Mark your calendar, the next conference will be held in Bristol, England in December 2011.

Written by Barb Sagraves

OCLC Research Library Partnership

2011-03-05T08:08:00.003-05:00

Dartmouth College Library has accepted an invitation to join the OCLC Research Library Partnership, an international coalition of not-for-profit organizations with research, educational, and cultural missions. This new organization blends OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership and represents a renewed commitment on the part of OCLC to research library development.

Being a member will gain us exclusive access to certain webinars, reports, and other research output, consultative access to OCLC program officers, assistance in user study design, and a voice in the development and priorities of the organization.

Guess what I learned!

2011-03-01T08:00:00.013-05:00

Since this is the closest thing to a professional job I've ever had, each day feels new and exciting. I used to dream of being able to work in such an astounding environment. I come to work, check in with my supervisor, like any other job, but then I'm assigned an incredible task where I get to learn new skills, handle delicate and fascinating material, discover hidden treasures and be completely overwhelmed by knowledge.

For each of my blog posts, I'd love to take you along on this journey with me. I am quickly learning a variety of techniques and being trained on several levels of repair and binding by both Deborah Howe and Stephanie Wolff. I entered this position (U.S. Congressional Serial Set Project Specialist) having book binding knowledge and a lot of experience in making multiples. Now that I'm exposed to all the people in Preservation Services and their wide range of backgrounds and accomplishments in fine binding, conservation and digitizing, it's apparent that you never stop learning, especially not in this department.

This week, as part of the repairs I perform on the Serial Set books, I was able to do my first heat set tissue repair on one of the many large scale maps that are part of this phenomenal collection.

Let's go through the steps!

First the map was removed from the volume, but when it's folded in the book it looks like this:

Then I laid it, face down, and applied small weights to help it relax from its folded confinement:

Almost all of the cross-sections where fold meets fold needed a little patch, so working my way from right to left I applied a small amount of the heat set tissue in each spot, took a tacking iron set to medium and gave each cross section a patch. As I worked I moved the weights to ease the tension on the map's already delicate paper.

Toward the far left of the map, there was a big tear right through California!

Since this is a map and we want to make sure all the lines match up, Deborah showed me this nice trick. We flipped the map over and with very tiny pieces (so tiny you can't even see them!) of the heat set tissue I made tackets to hold the map in the right places. Then we flipped the map back over and I laid out large tissue strips to cover the whole tear.

Once the heat set was able to cool we flipped it once more... good as new!

This map was then folded back up and tipped back into that particular Serial Set volume.

This map of the mineral deposits in the United States in 1866 is only one of the many incredible finds within the US Congressional Serial Set!

Written by Beth Hetland

Panel Discussion

2011-02-24T14:31:00.005-05:00

The Friends of the Dartmouth College Library invite you to attend a special panel discussion in conjunction with the Guild of Book Workers Marking Time exhibition currently showcased in Baker-Berry Library through March 20th, 2011.

Bound for Glory: The Hand-made Book as Aesthetic Object and Conceptual Process

Saturday, March 12th, 2011 from 2:00pm until 4:00pm in the Treasure Room, Baker Library.

Reception and tour of the exhibit and conservation lab will follow the panel discussion.

Panel participants:

Jeff Altepeter, Chair of the New England Guild of Book Workers
Richard Baker, binder in private practice
Alex Halaz, Professor of English, teaching History of the Book
Stephanie Wolff, Conservation Technician at Dartmouth College

This panel will discuss personal insights in creating hand-made books and the role of book arts in the academic world.

This event is free and open to the public, for more information, please call (603) 646-2236

The Physical Properties of the Digital Book

2011-02-22T11:00:00.003-05:00

Well...not much can be said for the sturdiness of those Kindles. Not too long ago, Conservation staff received this note along with a broken Kindle.

One of the Kindles' case connecting hooks had broken off so it was unable to attach to the protective case, leaving it vulnerable like a turtle without its shell.

As you would think, traditional repairs on paper based volumes are our daily dose so to get this high tech sister 'book' in the book hospital was quite ironic.

First the Kindle was evaluated.

Preparations made.

Ascertaining placement of the broken section: a dry run try.

Applying the adhesive.

Placing the piece into its proper place.

Using pressure and dwell time to "fix" the piece in place.

Fine tuning fit of broken piece.

Done!

All is well until the battery runs out and that we don't cover!

Written by Deborah Howe

Book Arts Survey

2011-02-21T14:10:00.003-05:00

In order to better serve our constituents we have prepared a survey to gather feedback about the Letterpress Studio and Bindery Studio. If you have a moment, please fill out this survey.

We appreciate your input.

The survey will be open from February 21 until March 9, 2011.

Data management web page

2011-02-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

Preservation Services now has a web page with a few useful links to understanding & writing data management plans. It connects to Research Computing's workshop on "Effective Data Management" as well as the College's Office of Sponsored Projects.

To view the page go to: Data Management

eResources Fair: a recap

2011-02-08T11:00:00.006-05:00

Last week I had the privilege of participating in the
Dartmouth College Library eResources Fair. eWhatses Fair, you ask? Let me explain.

As part of its many services to the Dartmouth community, the Library provides access to a HUGE number of electronic resources for Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff. These include scholarly databases, electronic journals, ebooks, streaming music and video, newspapers, and so much more. We have such a wide variety of eResources that it can often be overwhelming to try and navigate them all. Enter the eResources Fair.

This annual event is an opportunity for anyone on campus to come learn more about the eResources available for use through the library. They get the chance to learn about what eResources we have, talk directly with vendors about how a product can help with their research and find out exactly where and how to access these materials.

So what is a Preservation Specialist doing at the eResources Fair? Let me explain further. Part of my job is to coordinate the workflow between Digital Production and Preservation Services. Digital Production is the unit in the library that does in-house digitization of library collections. For most paper-based materials (books, manuscripts, photographs, etc.) the digitization process involves scanning the item, editing the scanned image, adding metadata, and publishing it online. That's a very simplified explanation, and more information on Digital Production can be found here. In any case, some of the Preservation staff spend part of their time in Digital Production doing this digitization work.

But digitization isn't only about scanning and publishing. Often items, such as books or manuscripts, need to be repaired prior to beginning the digitization process to ensure that they aren't damaged during scanning. The Conservation team within Preservation Services is directly responsible for those repairs.

Since I'm involved in coordinating many steps of the digitization process, from planning to repair to scanning, I'm very familiar with the kinds of materials that get digitized, how digitization works, and how the final digital product is made available online. And that's how I ended up at the eReources Fair, telling students and faculty about the wonderful collections that are now available for web access, anytime and anywhere!

To explore these collections yourself, visit the Digital Collections page at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/digital/collections/index.html

Written by Helen K. Bailey
Photography by Joseph Mehling '69 used with permission

BAW: Cancelled for Feb.1 & 2

2011-02-01T12:46:00.000-05:00

The Feb. 1 & 2 classes for the Book Arts Program are cancelled due to snow. Contact your instructor to learn if a make up date is planned.

We're Back!

2011-02-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

Hello and Welcome to the new and improved Preservation Services Blog at Dartmouth College! We are hoping to shed some light into our world known as Preservation and invite you to follow our blog to keep in touch with all our happenings within. How, you might ask, are we going to do that?

Well, first of all, we'll be updating once a week (every Tuesday) and as the newly appointed Blog Wrangler, I'll be your host.

Second, there will be guest bloggers including Helen Bailey, Deborah Howe, and Barb Sagraves, just to name a few. They'll be covering a wide variety of topics including special conservation projects, trips to conferences, special articles and reports about preservation, the wild world of digital preservation, the Dartmouth College Book Arts Program, disaster response and so much more.

And third, we want to keep you informed about what we're doing to protect the past, preserve the present and prevent potential pitfalls in the future.

So come on back every Tuesday for something new and exciting.

Written by Beth Hetland

Welcome!

2011-01-31T10:29:00.000-05:00

I am pleased to announce that on Monday, January 24, Elizabeth Rideout began work in Preservation Services as a Project Specialist for the U.S. Congressional Serial Set/Readex Project. Elizabeth has a diploma in Bookbinding from the North Bennet Street School and a Bachelor's degree in Art from Washington College. She is also the Chair of the Book Arts Guild of Vermont and comes to us with over four years of experience in hand bookbinding. Her experience as a book binder will be put to good use as we enter the final year of the project. In addition to her work on the Serial Set project, Elizabeth will also be helping with digital production and preservation assessment projects.

Please join me in welcoming Elizabeth.

Helen Bailey
Preservation Specialist

Written by Helen Bailey

Rudolph Gets a Makeover

2010-12-16T14:49:00.000-05:00

In the summer of 2010 McKey Berkman, the Conservation Intern from North Bennet Street School in Boston, took on the daunting task of conserving Robert May’s scrapbook which details the events and promotion surrounding Rudolph’s destined fame.

“In the spring of 2010, Dartmouth College Archivist Peter Carini discovered an uncataloged scrapbook in the Robert Lewis May Collection housed in Rauner Library. May, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the class of 1926, was the creator of the iconic Christmas tale Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The library holds copies of the original soft-cover book issued in 1939, mock-ups and manuscripts of the book, as well as subsequent printings and adaptations of Rudolph, Rudolph merchandise, and other children’s books by May. The newly discovered scrapbook is a significant addition to the collection, as its 54 pages chronicle the creation and success of Rudolph as a brilliant marketing scheme for Montgomery Ward, where May was a copywriter in the advertising department. “ McKey Berkman.

For a more detailed description of the history of the scrapbook and McKey’s conservation treatment please click here.

(Photo: Peter Carini and McKey Berkman with the May scrapbook.)

"Marking Time"

2010-11-05T13:41:00.000-04:00

The Guild of Book Workers traveling exhibition "Marking Time" is on display in Baker-Berry Library from November 5th, 2010 - March 20th, 2011. An Opening Reception is scheduled for Friday, November 12th, 2010 from 4-6pm in the Main Hall of Baker-Berry Library.

For the Guild's 2009-2011 traveling exhibition, members were asked to respond to the theme "marking time" and were invited to interpret the theme as narrowly or broadly as they wished.

In this exhibit of fifty works, traditional fine leather bindings stand alongside contemporary bindings that have been dyed, collaged, or incorporated with photographs or handwriting. Texts selected to be bound are as likely to be poetry or classics as they are science fiction or hard science. The show includes work in the codex format, complex folded structures, wooden constructions, hand-held toys, and sculptural objects. Text and imagery is produced by the most ancient and the most modern mark-making methods: calligraphy, painting, woodcut, letterpress, and digital output. In exemplary work, the artist's facility with craft, structure, material and content allows each individual to create a cohesive whole.

Our own Stephanie Wolff and Deborah Howe have bindings on display in this exhibit.

Welcome, Beth!

2010-10-22T08:53:00.001-04:00

I am pleased to announce that on Monday, Oct. 25, Beth Hetland will begin work in Preservation Services as Project Specialist for the U.S. Congressional Serial Set/Readex Project. Beth has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is in her second year of study for a Masters of Fine Arts at the Center for Cartoon Studies. She is also a skilled book artist and her experience as a book binder will be put to good use as we enter the final year of the project.

Please join me in welcoming Beth.

Barb Sagraves
Head, Preservation Services

The Book Unbound & The Book Arts at Dartmouth

2010-10-11T13:36:00.000-04:00

Baker Main Hall, Baker-Berry Library, September 7 - November 24, 2010

This exhibition highlights the book and the book arts at Dartmouth in anticipation of Marking Time, the new traveling show from the Guild of Book Workers, on display in the Berry Main Street exhibition cases from November 5, 2010 through March 20, 2011.

The Book Unbound & The Book Arts at Dartmouth was curated by Stephanie Wolff and Deborah Howe, with help from Barb Sagraves, Professor Alexandra Halasz, Richard Langdell, Laura Graveline, Joe Wright, Jay Satterfield, Pat Cope, McKey Berkman, Laura Braunstein, Book Arts Program participants and CoCo 11 students. Exhibit design by Dennis Grady.

Farewell, Richard!

2010-10-08T15:09:00.000-04:00

Richard Langdell, Readex Project Conservation Specialist, has transferred to another job in the library system, Records Management. Richard worked on the project for five years and was an important team member; he kept careful track of the thousands of volumes, was responsible for conservation repair of decades old volumes, and collaborated with John Cocklin and Matt Agnoli to identify and locate Serial Set volumes where ever they were in the stacks.

Thanks to Richard we have a web page that describes the project.

Farewell, Richard, and best of luck at Records Management!

Saving Wet Books Video

2010-09-28T13:48:00.000-04:00

A few times a year wet books are sent to Preservation Services for treatment. The books may have become wet while in the care of library patrons or there was an unexpected leak in a library building. Whatever the reason the method of treating the books is the same -- dry the book as soon as possible in order to avoid a mold outbreak.

Heritage Preservation has come out with some brief videos demonstrating book salvage techniques for wet books. These are the same techniques used in Preservation Services, including storing books in a freezer. The Library's freezer was made possible by a generous gift of the Class of 1931. If you have ever wondered how the department handles wet books or if you are looking for information to take care of your own books these videos are very useful.

Annual Report

2010-08-18T11:29:00.001-04:00

The Preservation Services Annual Report for FY10 is now available on our website. Some notable accomplishments include:

Completed the fifth year of the U.S. Congressional Serial Set Project.
Re-designed department web pages for a better user experience.
Celebrated National Preservation Week in May.
Successfully applied for a $6,350 grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve “The Orozco Mural Quetzalcoatl”.
Mass deacidified 24 volumes of Mendelssohn’s Collected Works with Baker Ingham Endowment Reserve funds. Performed 6527 conservation treatments and salvaged 44 wet volumes.
Commercially bound 3821 items; reviewed and withdrew 3 brittle monographs.
Hosted 2 Conservation Interns.

All of this work was accomplished through the combined outstanding efforts of Preservation Services staff. In a period of uncertainty and change (two retirements) each staff member projected a positive attitude and a willingness to work together to fill gaps. Their thoughtful contributions to re-organizational planning and preparation made for a department that will be equipped to confidently respond to the challenges of digital preservation and production.

McKey Berkman: Conservation Intern

2010-07-29T09:56:00.001-04:00

In the late spring Deborah Howe contacted the head of the book binding program at North Bennet Street School in Boston to explore the possibility of summer interns from NBSS working in Preservation Services. I'm happy to announce that our first NBSS intern, McKey Berkman, has been busy at work in the conservation since June.

McKey has finished the first year of the two year NBSS program and in our conservation lab is learning to put theory into practice. In her short time here she has learned treatment assessment, a variety of spine repairs, and developed skills in production oriented conservation.

McKey's last day is August 20.

(By the way, if you marveled at the peonies from Maxine's party, they were from McKey's garden!)

Deborah Howe at PBI

2010-07-29T09:41:00.000-04:00

Deborah Howe was selected to teach a workshop at this year's Paper and Book Intensive. The two week summer camp for book artists and binders is a highly regarded workshop so it speaks well of Deborah's teaching talents that she was recruited. Deborah taught "Readdressing the Built-In Groove Case.

She also took advantage of her time there to attend a week long session on late 18th century French binding structures. Drop by Preservation Services to see the beautiful exemplar Deborah created.

Preservation Specialist Announced

2010-07-21T08:10:00.000-04:00

I am pleased to announce that Helen Bailey started on July 19 as Preservation Specialist. In this role she will be responsible for assisting with work related to digital preservation and digital pre-production; she will also represent the department in TeCOR, serve as department web-master, and handle non-book media.

Helen may be familiar to many of you in her role as conservation intern for the department while she completed degree requirements from the School of Information, at the University of Texas at Austin. She comes to us with a solid background in preservation theory and practice as well as a strong IT background.

Please join me and the rest of Preservation Services staff in welcoming Helen as a member of the Dartmouth College Library.

Barb Sagraves
Head, Preservation Services

Dartmouth College Library Awarded National Film Preservation Foundation Grant

2010-07-12T09:27:00.000-04:00

The Dartmouth College Library has been awarded a grant of $6,350 from the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) to preserve and make accessible “The Orozco Mural Quetzalcoatl,” a 23-minute, color film written, produced, and directed in 1961 by Robert Canton,’58. The film’s purpose is to tell the myth of Quetzalcoatl as depicted in “The Epic of American Civilization” frescos painted by José Clemente Orozco in Baker Library. Using camera techniques such as pans, close-ups and long shots, and aided by Theodore Newman’s dramatic score and a minimal narration, Canton makes the murals come alive. The score was conducted by former “Tonight Show” conductor Skitch Henderson.

At its release in 1962 the film received three citations for Specific Excellence from the Boston International Film Festival. These citations were: outstanding use of the film medium for educational purposes; realization of inherent potential; and original musical score.

The NFPF grant will support the creation of a new preservation master copy and DVD. When the work is completed the film will be available on the Dartmouth College YouTube channel along with a silent clip of Orozco painting the test panel in Baker Library. A public screening of the newly preserved “Quetzalcoatl” will also hosted by the Library.

Barb Sagraves, head of Preservation Services, will serve as Project Coordinator.

Book Arts Prize Exhibit 2010

2010-07-01T11:49:00.000-04:00

The winning entries for this year's Book Arts Prize may now be viewed in either the cases outside the Treasure Room in Baker Library or by clicking this link the on-line exhibit.

Farewell, Helen!

2010-06-30T11:19:00.002-04:00

Helen Bailey is leaving us today. She has worked in Preservation Services since September 2009 when she began her internship as part of the University of Texas library school program. While she was here Helen was in charge of two very important projects: the department web page redesign, and our celebration of "Preservation Week". In the last three days of her internship she installed the exhibit for the winners of the Book Arts Prize and is developed an on-line version as well. Busy, busy, busy!

So long and best wishes!

Farewell, Maxine!

2010-06-23T12:44:00.000-04:00

Maxine Cameron, Preservation Services Specialist and a member of the Dartmouth College Library staff for over 41 years, is retiring on June 25th, 2010. We will miss her immensely, but wish her all the best in her new adventures.

PLANETS Time Capsule

2010-06-04T08:26:00.000-04:00

PLANETS (Preservation and Long-Term Access Through Networked Services) will deposit a TimeCapsule at the Swiss Fort Knox in the Swiss Alps to draw widespread attention to the challenges of preserving digital information. The physical and electronic data will be securely stored and researchers will have an on-line copy to test accessibility.

Preservation Week

2010-06-04T08:25:00.000-04:00

Dartmouth College Library celebrated ALA Preservation Week May 9-15, 2010. Preservation services hosted several events in Baker-Berry Library to provide information about what library preservation entails and how it supports the mission of Dartmouth College. Click here for more information about the events and links to additional resources. View pictures from the event on the Dartmouth Flickr feed!

Farewell Wendy!

2010-06-04T08:24:00.001-04:00

Wendy Wolfe, Commercial Binding Assistant retired on April 30, 2010. If you have something that needs to be commercially bound contact Barb Sagraves.