The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

One of the loveliest summers I ever spent was in the employ of the Oregon State Department of Agriculture. I set and check both gypsy moth and Japanese beetle traps. I worked out of my own home, set my own hours, drove a hilarious beater government K car, drove around the fringes of Portland, and listened to gobs of public radio. One of my favorite shows was by folk singer and hobo Wobbly, Utah Phillips.

His show, Loafer’s Glory, introduced me to all kinds of folk and hobo music, and proved to me that men could be just as passionate about women’s rights (even more so, perhaps!) as women. It was so idyllic to listen to his expert storytelling voice and pass over railroad crossings in the forested northwest hills.

Sadly, Utah has recently passed away after a struggle with congestive heart failure. He had a huge impact on the folk music scene, and was a rabid spokesperson for unions, rail culture, and the homeless. Recently, Democracy Now broadcast an interview with Utah, who it turns out was the archivist for the state of Utah back in the 60s. I’m including part of the transcript of his interview here, but you can listen to the rest of the interview by following this link.

UTAH PHILLIPS: Archival science is in a serious—a serious crisis, and that’s because of electronic media, electronic storage and retrieval. A lot of hotshot, fancy, high-tech salesmen have gone to a lot of archives and archivists and sold them some bogus hardware and software. How many books has the Library of Congress lost? Millions of books, because the images have vanished, whatever the storage system is, electronic storage system is. It’s degraded to the point where the stuff is no longer usable.

In the Utah state archives, the best and most durable records are on paper, from the 1800s, the old Mormon Governor Brigham Young’s papers. Why? Because there was potassium in the water they used to make the paper in their own mill, and that’s a natural paper preservative, you know. And that’s true, I think, of any archive in the country. You talk to the archivists; they’ll say the most durable resource they have is still on paper.

Well, what’s the shelf life of a CD? Is it about ten years, ten, twelve years? Congress won’t accept tape for archival purposes, because after about ten, fifteen years, it bleeds through, you see? That it—paper. You know, LPs, I have, what, over 150 John McCormack 78s from the early 1900s—my favorite singer, John McCormack—and I can play those and listen to those. Same with my LPs. The whole information is becoming more and more temporary. And you’re absolutely right. You know, it is terribly threatening to every archive to be bullied by technocrats into going that route.

UTAH PHILLIPS: I was an archivist, yeah. I handled 75,000 cubic feet of public records. For an information junkie, that’s heaven. Yeah, I loved studying archival science, and I still have a library in my home that I curate, my own little research library of popular antiquities. And that’s where my mind lives when I’m at home.

Bonus link: Wobbly lingo