Author: digitalcellulose
I had a dream last night where I was examining something very closely for a private client and got a smudge of my lipstick on it. I surreptitiously tried to rub it off with my sleeve but only some of the lipstick came off. What a nightmare!
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Today in the conservation lab…I’m evaluating books from our circulating collection, to determine if we should have them withdrawn or order replacements. These are books that, for some reason, cannot be easily or efficiently repaired. Many of them are brittle, but others are missing many of their pages due to vandalism, or cannot be rebound […]
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Making paste on a Monday morning.
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I always thought that the phrase “bindery discharge” sounded like the name of a disease that only afflicts bookbinders. In reality it means the damaged book can go directly to the bindery without any additional preparation by the preservation lab. This is often because it is an adhesive bound book, so the spine will just […]
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Could you pass this dexterity test? If you interview for a job in my lab – as in many other library conservation labs – you will have to take a test like this to demonstrate your manual dexterity. This is just one example of a dexterity test that we used in the past. The test […]
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This was a Wall Street Journal article about the Bookkeeper deacidification system. I rather like that they called it a “dunking machine”, as though it’s operated by Michael Jordan.
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This is a page out of my library’s Conservation Manual, circa 1979. I literally gasped when I read the first bullet point about mending pages with Scotch Magic tape. This sure explains why so many of the books sent to the lab have just been absolutely COVERED with book tape. Taping our general collections book […]
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Weeding my office
I’m weeding my office today, and finally tackled the three filing cabinets in the conservation lab that are just chock full of outdated and useless files. It’s been very cathartic, throwing things in the recycling bin.. but the absolute highlight of today was throwing away a 3 INCH THICK stack of files that were just […]
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Artist’s books on display at the Bainbridge Island Art Museum in Washington state. Top to bottom: “Beyond Blue” by Catherine Alice Michaelis “Icarus” by Mare Blocker “Apothecary for the Landlocked” by Deborah Peek “Bugs” by Carolyn Terry “Nuts” by JoAnna Poehlmann