PRESERVATION WEEK at UNCG

ALA Preservation Week is a nationwide event held in many libraries across the country every year. The intent of this event is to connect communities through promoting and creating awareness on how to handle and care for collections in general.

The University Libraries, at UNCG, is participating in this journey with the support of the Preservation Lab. On the week of April 28 to May 2, 2014 we are having a few events, at Jackson Library, focusing on preservation and conservation of our collections. From a small exhibit on conservation procedures in the main lobby and the "Take A Look, Grab a Book" point, in front of the main desk, with books about preservation and conservation ; to an open Preservation Lab tour, where you will be able to ask us questions regarding your personal collection and what we do here.

Below is the schedule and the details for that week:

JACKSON LIBRARY.

Exhibit

You will see several types of enclosures we create and build at the Preservation Lab; they go from the simplest phase boxes to those with a more complex design to house a specific book or artifact.  Browse some of our books and the conservation treatment performed, including restoration. 

If you enjoyed what you saw and want to learn more, you can go to the next point of our preservation week tour and grab a book from our collection at the:

Take A Look, Grab a Book display near the Access Services desk

Browse some of the titles we picked at Jackson Library especially for you about bookbinding, books about books, conservation and preservation!

Last but not the least, the last point of the tour,  visit our Preservation Lab, where we do "magical things" like a patron said to us one time. All are welcome, students, staff and patrons, to visit and ask us a question and see, ‘in loco’, our space, the tools and materials we use and what we have been working on. 

Preservation tour hours and days:

Monday - April 28th 2014, from 10 am to 12 noon.

Tuesday - April 29th 2014, from 10 am to 12 noon.

Thursday - May 1st, 2014, from 10 am to 12 noon.

Friday - May 2nd, 2014, from 10 am to 12 noon.

Useful links

ALA Preservation Week

http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/preswk

Preservation at Your Library

http://www.atyourlibrary.org/passiton

University Products – Preservation and Conservation Products

http://www.universityproducts.com/

wow.

Little Library by Todd Pattison
Andover, Massachusetts

Found and altered early 19th-century leather binding with fore-edge clasps. The bookshelves of the altered binding hold seventy-two blank leather- and paper-covered books which open and range in height from 1” to 1.5”. Working full time leaves only so many hours to pursue my own bindings, and I find that I normally spend several months or more completing a single full leather volume. Working on this piece allowed me to bind the same number of books in one night that would otherwise take a year or more. This tends to generate creativity and experimentation and also makes bookbinding pretty fun! 7.5 x 4.75 x 1.5 inches, 19 x 12 x 4 centimeters. Created 2009.

Todd Pattison studied bookbinding with Fred Jordan in western New York state in the late 1970s and early 1980s and went on to study with Hugo Peller and Edwin Heim in Ascona, Switzerland. He is currently senior book conservator at the Northeast Document Conservation Center where he has worked for the past eighteen years.

From the Guild of Book Workers Marking Time Exhibition.

This is not really a cactus.

Here is a great New York Times article on the unique challenge of preserving the Blaschka collection of glass flowers at Harvard University. These were commissioned in the late 1800's to use as teaching aids for botany students. The collection features hand-blown glass replicas that look exactly like the real thing. Some of the 847 species in the collection are very rare or even extinct so it is important for these models to be preserved for future scholars.
I highly recommend a stop here if you are ever in the Boston area!
"The curators cringe at the thought of decades of schoolchildren's feet vibrating like jackhammers on the fragile models, truncating an iris leaf and shaking green chips off a shrubby trefoil."

These posters know what's up.

Last month we put together an exhibit for one of the display cases in the corridor that connects our library to the student center. It included these posters and a number of books in various states of disrepair.