ALA ~ Preservation Panels

There was a lot more to choose from when it came to preservation panels and sessions at ALA than there was at ACRL, and I had a blast utilizing the resources of my colleagues! At the very last minute I decided to go to Librarians Without Borders: International Outreach, which featured three presenters discussing efforts they had been part of to provide services such as preservation, conservation, cataloging, library design, and automation. The session ended up being really inspiring and almost spiritual in combining the technicalities of library work with the ethics of why we do what we do.

Librarians Without Borders: International Outreach

Jacob Nadal, Executive Director, ReCAP, The Research Collections & Preservation Consortium; 

Jacob Nadal and his team participated in a major recovery project in Liberia in the wake of the country's civil war. The team received tips on an on-going basis while they were in the country, and managed to recover various letters, manuscripts, official documents and public records, as well as a couple abandoned safes that wound up containing the country's Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The team provided conservation and reformatted the materials to microfilm, and eventually digitized the records, which are hosted on the University of Indiana website.

Sign of the CNDRA in Liberia from Mr. Nadal's presentation

The story contained larger themes of the right to the freedom of information and the patriotism that can arise out of having documented and reliable record of a country's values and order. The team helped the local administrators and government officials pass a Freedom of Information Act, whose celebration coupled with the exhibition of the country's founding documents brought much inspiration to the Liberian community.

Mr. Nadal left us with a couple wise maxims: preservation is a sustainable activity, optimized over time; any improvement is improvement; a moment of access makes the case for preservation. It felt like a realistic and galvanizing call to arms.

Jessica Phillips, Head, Preservation, University of North Texas

Ms. Phillips presented on behalf of her colleague Dr. Shultz-Jones, who directs the study abroad service learning program at the University of North Texas LIS program. A group of UNT LIS students have traveled to a foreign country in the name of library outreach almost every year since 2003; they've gone to Thailand, Russia, Peru, Ukraine, Germany, Czech Republic, and Albania. Namely the group automates the local library's records and lending practices, chooses an ILS system and catalogs the collections. In addition they design the setting of the library and document their actions to aid in staff training and project sustainability in their absence.  This is no small task and I can't imagine how much work -- and reward -- must come from participating in a study abroad program like this!

Becky Ryder, Director, Keeneland Library, Keeneland Association Inc.

I think Ms. Ryder's presentation was the most powerful because she effectively conveyed the altruistic spirit of universal human appreciation for culture and the manuscripts and documents that bear witness to the culture.

Ms. Ryder and her colleagues traveled to Manipur, which is a small state that has been rising an insurgency against Indian rule for 50 years. Ms. Ryder and her colleagues from the US and the UK were immersed in total Manupuri culture, attending polo exhibitions, Memorial Day rituals, and fertility festivals, which only added to their deep reverence of the ancient manuscripts held in the local archives. It was their job to listen and learn rather than to consult -- they observed, photographed, and described the artifacts and provided information about preservation, but they did not intervene. The manuscripts were as old as the 1st and 2nd Century and were made of various materials such as papyrus, cotton, silk, and jute. There were also some manuscripts made from palm leaves, and they were the worse off. Many of them were accordion folded, and a few were sewn codices.

In addition to having a mission to more formally provide preservation to these manuscripts, Ms. Ryder was introduced to the Manipuri Pony which is an endangered species that must be conserved. She is working with local equine associations in Kentucky to solve this problem.

Manipuri Ponies and polo players in traditional costume (from horsetalk.co.nz)

This presentation left me with more than a sense of the nobleness of my pursuit of librarianship and preservation: we were given the names of organizations we can become involved in. One is Partners of the Americas and the other is the US Committee of the Blue Shield.

ALA Annual Conference 2015 Intro and Wrap-up

This evening I look back on my first ALA Annual Conference, which was conveniently held in my hometown, San Francisco. I did conference things for three of the six official days of the conference. Here's my breakdown and some remarks. More in-depth posts about the preservation themed workshops, panels, roundtables, and sessions I attended will follow.

Friday, June 26, 2015

• AMIA@ALA: Association of Moving Image Archivists Workshop for ALA 

• Grand Opening of the Exhibit Hall 

With classmates from SJSU's iSchool that I met at the workshop! 

Saturday, June 27, 2015

• Librarians Without Borders: International Outreach

• Geek Out!: The Importance of Pop Culture in Libraries 

• Preservation Metadata Interest Group

• Preservation Showdown (panel debate)

• SJSU School of Information Reception 

Monday, June 29, 2015 

• Culture under siege and our response: scholars and librarians in action

• STS Program Poster Session (ACRL Science & Technology Section)

• Library of the Future - Learning with Google's Daniel Russell

• Conversation Starter: Naked Truth: connect.create.contribute

• Conversation Starter: What do LIS Students Really Think About Their Education?

This conference, over-all, was a great experience -- I got to run into many classmates, instructors and colleagues while also keeping a sort of anonymity that such a large conference affords. In terms of setting, the locality of the conference was further refreshing: I rarely get a chance to head downtown in the name of my profession, and witness such a beautiful day and people, and leave the confines of my home library behind while basking in the familiarity of San Francisco. 

Professionally, I have more avenues to chase down and an inherent desire to do so rather than in the name of rote planning. I made note of various individuals with titles such as Preservation Librarian that presented or spoke at the conference, and I joined ALCTS as I learned it is the association that encompasses the preservation of collections. The folks I met at the AMIA workshop immediately came across as knowledgable, impassioned, cool, and not snooty! AMIA is an association I look forward to joining in the future, for the fellowship of likable archivists and librarians more than information or association alone!

A conference as massive as the ALA Annual is more than the sum of its parts. It's a meeting of large scale logistics, coordination, interests, and personality. The excitement you feel when waiting for the exhibit hall's grand opening on Friday night (and the frenzy over the free food!) is unique just as the desertion of the exhibit hall and ALA Store packing up on Monday afternoon is a little bit sad -- by that time there is no promise in the days to come, just exhaustion over the busy days behind you. I look forward to attending ALA in the future, but it will never be as sunny and comfortable as 2015, the year it was in San Francisco. 

Photo from the ala_members flickr stream

* I will update this post in the future as conference proceedings and resources become available.   

Discards HF 3011 D75 - HA 17 V64 1993

More business titles...

Discards HG 4908 S82 1991 - HF 3837 C4428 2004

As I moved through this week's section of discards, I encountered more business titles (quarterly dividend records, handbooks of private companies, corporate directories, bank directories, etc.), resume/career guides, and other vocational information. There were a couple titles that were interesting to me, and all are poster children for the hey day of the great and useful printed reference book.

The Secretary's Handbook
I totally get why we would be discarding this title, but its value as a cultural artifact is fascinating. To think -- young woman fresh into their first secretary position in the 50s or 60s had this title to standardize their methods and professionalism. I can imagine quite a few matronly, life-long secretaries preaching its canonization to the younger girls in the office.

The New York Public Library Business Desk Reference 
This one nearly functions as a guide to life, assuming you have life business that requires managing an office of employees and traveling overseas to make deals and connections. I can see this book being used as a textbook in an undergraduate business class, but I wonder how many established CEOs would need it?

The Economist Desk Companion
My curiosity was piqued with this one because I read a whole issue of The Economist the other day, just because the main character in Rush's novel Mating spoke of it -- they relied on the periodical in the isolated dessert of Botswana. This reference book truly is a guide to "measure, convert, calculate, and define practically anything." Sure you can find all these conversion charts, etc., on the internet now, but I can't look away from the convenience of having it all in one book, from a source trusted like the Economist.

Also, I doubt students check out books about formulating resumes like I did when I graduated college 10 years ago, so I can understand those going by the wayside. My only lament -- the call numbers were close enough and tricky enough I often use that section when I train the student workers in LC classification!

Flat-Back Case Binding

As I mentioned in my blog post about Coptic bookbinding, I took the Bookbinding Core Certificate Program at the San Francisco Center for the Book in April, 2015. Our second workshop was on Flat-back case binding, which incorporated some of the things we had learned in the Coptic binding workshop (composing and trimming signatures, adhering papers to the bookboards, preparing thread for sewing), and got us ready for the more advanced workshops to come. We discussed paper grain even more in depth this week, which was a reoccurring topic through all the workshops.

To put it simply, in this workshop we sewed a text block, constructed a case, then glued the two together. To put it more in depth, the sewing of the text block introduced the guillotine, and we learned the french stitch to sew the text block, as well as how to back the text block. We did not use special paper for the end sheets in this one, just the 70 lb. mohawk superfine vellum opaque paper that we used for all the text blocks. The case construction was challenging and fun because we learned how to calculate the dimensions and necessary overlap for the book boards, spine construction, and cloth and paper covering (in this case a 1/2 binding style, as the spine fabric carried a short distance onto the boards, and we used the spine fabric to make corners). We actually went to the length of drawing out a sort of "blue print" for the dimensions which was time consuming but very useful for future endeavors.

The workshop also presented the distinct pleasure of selecting our materials from a bright variety for the casing cover -- I chose a light brown japanese silk material with a slightly yellow metallic undertone for the spine and corners, and a marbled paper for the rest of the book boards. Additionally, we selected our endbands and glued them on -- we did not begin to learn about sewing headbands and tailbands until week 3. As it turns out, this was historically accurate, as I will discuss below, in addition to being a practical consideration.

Once the text block and case had been fully constructed, the last nerve-wracking step was gluing the text block into the case. Lots of my classmates were stressing about this. The trick is to slowly let down the cover after applying the adhesive to the end sheet -- too fast and it tends to wrinkle. I managed this step quite well, and I believe it is because of my experience repairing so many large reference books at my work -- one of the most common problems is the text block sagging out of the case of commercially bound books, and I had fixed quite a few of those back when I did the reference collection evaluation and mending project.

I ended up leaving my book in the nipping press for the week, and picked it up the following week when I came for the Limp Paper Binding workshop. It turned out beautifully! I am very pleased with the evenness it displays and am very fond of it.

One side of my flat-back case binding

Detail of the tail and tailband... this was a premade tailband 

Detail of the text block and corners. We used the guillotine to trim the fore-edge for a smooth appearance and feeling

Glued-in endsheet... pretty dang smooth! 

Center of one signature. The visible thread is where the needle entered and exited the six sewing stations, while the two empty spots indicate the location of the two tapes I sewed around. 

The center of this signature shows that I should have pulled the thread more taut and boned down better! 

This is the other side of the binding... The paper and fabric is very handsome if I do say so myself :)

In Bookbinding and the conservation of books, Roberts and Etherington define flat back case binding as, "A simple type of (library) binding which has a flat spine and is cased or has a one-piece covering. This type of binding is suitable for typescript, some pamphlets, and adhesive-bound paperbacks" (1982, p. 103). Bookbinding and the conservation of books also provides a definition for flat back binding, which differentiates it from a spine that has been rounded, and points out that this type of binding tends to become concave (Roberts and Etherington, 1982, p. 103). In thinking about these two definition when considering preservation, clearly a rounded spine is more sturdy, and will resist the damages of use much better. Furthermore, when considering the last workshop I did at the San Francisco Center for the Book in the Bookbinding Core Certificate Program, the round back hard case binding, a rounded and backed spine that utilizes the lacing-in technique (boards attached to the sewing cords) makes a much more durable book. Not only does the rounded spine hold up better against use, but the lacing-in technique fortifies the joints so they do not have to rely on the glued endsheets alone.

I think, though, that the definitions presented in Bookbinding and the conservation of books takes the term much more seriously, limiting black back case bindings to unsewn bindings (machine editions of case bindings are often not sewn), while the workshop functioned on a tiered basis and emphasized the techniques of hand bindings, introducing us to more detailed bindings as the weeks went by. Hence, in the flat back case binding workshop, we sewed, glued, and backed the textblock, but we didn't round it nor lace-in the boards.

In any case, an emphasis of this kind of binding is that "the book is prepared in one series of steps, and the case--or cover--is made separately" (Young, 1995, p. 6), which I discussed above. In Greenfield's ABC of bookbinding, "flat spine" bindings were "popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries" (1998, p. 27), so the efficiency of not having to lace-in the boards or round the back was a testament to both innovation in time saving and cost savings, as is seen in many styles of bookbinding post the invention of the printing press and the spread of personal possession of bound books. Indeed, in his essay, "Onward and downward: How binders coped with the printing press before 1800," Nicholas Pickwoad says the earliest appearance of the case-bound book may be Erasmus's Adagiorum epitome, published in Amsterdam by Elzevier in 1650 -- during the wonderful Dutch golden age, of course (1994, p. 92). However, Pickwoad goes on to say that the case binding structure, which "allowed effective production line work for the first time, in that the covers of the books could be manufactured independently of and at the same time as the sewing of the textblocks, to be united, by adhesive only, at the final stage of the binding process," was very popular in Germany as early as 1725 and is the best example of the 19th Century industrialization of the binding trade (1994, p. 91). The flat-back case binding, by cutting out steps that became costly and burdensome with the rise in printed matter, was an important step in moving toward mechanization of library bindings, as well as a discovery of a reliable form of hand binding.

References

Greenfield, J. (1998). ABC of bookbinding: a unique glossary with over 700 illustrations for collectors & librarians. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press; New York, NY: Lyons Press.

Pickwoad, N. (1994). Onward and downward: How binders coped with the printing press before 1800. In R. Myers & M. Harris (Eds.), A Millennium of the Book: Production, design, & illustration in manuscript & print, 900-1900. Winchester, U.K.: St. Paul's Bibliographies; New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press.

Roberts, M., & Etherington, D. (1982). Bookbinding and the conservation of books : a dictionary of descriptive terminology. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.

Young, L. (1995). Bookbinding & conservation by hand: a working guide. New Castle, Delaware: Oak Knoll Press.