The Vespiary Book Binding & Book Conservation

I don’t even remember what I was looking for when I found this, but I squealed when I saw it:

The Bindery in a Box!

Made by Dea Sasso of Massachusetts, this set of binding equipment collapses into a nice portable carrying case. I’ve poked around the web, and people who have used it love it and say it’s a great piece of craftsmanship. Right now a little beyond my budget, but definitely something to add to the Christmas list! If you have any experience with this set (or with Ms Sasso and her bookbinding classes), post in the comments.

Reminded me of another blog post I saw a while back regarding portable artist’s kits. I gotta get busy and make one of these…

I just saw this post that a friend of mine shared in my feed reader, and had to pass it along. From the ever-funny, FAIL Blog

:

Click the image to see the original post. The text reads:

book rental service? was just thinking. my sister does -alot- of reading, and spends like $1000 a year on just books alone. most of them she reads once then never looks at again. is there any kind of like…video rental store but for books? would make things alot cheaper, plus once one person had read one the next person can get enjoyment from it etc

Get that poster to the patent office.

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

Sometimes people try to help out when books begin to fall apart. One of my favorites is the hammer and nail technique. Usually someone will either nail all the way through a book and bend the nail on the other side, OR if the nails don’t go through, they’ll add more nails on the backside of the book. Check out our latest find:

So folks, unless you’re making some kind of creative artist’s book, let’s stay away from the nails.

Who isn’t talking about digitization and the projected demise of the word on paper? My reading load and podcast schedule has been full of it lately, with some surprising arguments for paper as technology. On the Media recently had a whole program dedicated to the book, and one of the featured speakers was William Powers, media critic for the National Journal. He posits that paper itself is a part of the substance of what is being transmitted:

What I basically argue in my essay is that paper isn’t just a container for content. It actually becomes part of the content. It affects the content because of the way it interacts with the brain. It’s a technology, although we don’t usually think of it as a technology.

The essay he refers to above is called “Hamlet’s Blackberry,” and while on the longer side, is a thoughful exploration of the headbutting of these old and new technologies.

And I realize that I might be opening a can of worms that was already put to rest with my current reading, Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold, but I’m a bit behind the curve regarding the battles and controversies in the conservation world. Newspapers don’t crumble into dust due to their own acidic nature? But…but…. I was always taught that they were! Something curious that I hadn’t considered was Baker’s assertion that much of paper’s degredation occurs early in its life and then basically levels out.

But, the land-war over shelf-space issue is really at the heart of the issue, as Richard Cox from University of Pittsburgh writes. Most bibliophiles have at least some hoarding tendencies, and so Baker’s arguement is seductive: “let’s save everything!” Maybe that will occur once our society turns its funding to the library-industrial complex (still working on that), but until then, hard selection choices will continue to be made.

We see all kinds of crazy “treatments” that have previously been sanctioned as “good preservation.” While Baker may have simplified the complexities of maintaining certain types of collections, I think his observations lead us back to the Middle Path, with its “can’t we all just get along?” mantra.

Digitization, preservation, conservation, paper, digital media… why do these conversations tend toward mutually exclusive tones? Cooperation, imagination and initiative!

After more poking around, it looks like Baker’s American Newspaper Repository collection has found permanent housing at Duke University.

This lovely gem of a poster, recently unearthed by Mansfield’s Special Collections librarian Jordan Goffin, is now proudly displayed on the wall of our conservation department. I’m all for education through humor, and I squealed when this was given to me. It’s of an early 80’s vintage, as far as I can tell, produced by the Illinois Cooperative Conservation Program. I’ve found some mention of them on the conservation dist-list, but they seem to be defunct now. Anybody know more about this program? Recognize any of your old pals? Looks like the photographer, Daniel V. Overturf, is a fairly famous photographer and photography professor at Southern Illinois University.

Looks like digitization projects in Timbuktu have made the New York Times again. Kevin over at Library Preservation had a post last year regarding efforts by various African governments to digitize the sea of rare books floating around the once and future intellectual hub of the African continent. This article focuses on the work of Aluka, a non-profit dedicated to preserving and disseminating African scholarship, who in tandem with a team from Northwestern University have been various manuscripts from the region. Aluka also has a blog that details its work.

All I can saw is, wow. I’m partially writing this blog post for myself, so I can come back to it on some day in the future and really dig into the collection, it just looks so juicy! I’m also doing a lot of reading for a future post of lost libraries, so it’s very heartening to see that books that were thought to have been lost are now slowly emerging from the woodwork (or rather, sand-dune) and being made available for all. There’s also a great collection of digitized Timbuktu manuscripts available through the Library of Congress website.

I’m writing this paper on applying information technology to the realm of conservators and it’s given me a chance to imagine a world of electronically organized professionals. I’ve started experimenting with some of the technology out there, and I hope you’ll join me. If you read this blog at the site, you may have noticed the badge in the sidebar that I’m including here. It’s an invite to join a group I started on Ning, which as they state in their “about” section, is kind of like the “software equivalent of Home Depot.” Everything you might need to organize a group is here. I’ve used Yahoo Groups in the past, but this site looks a little slicker and seems to have more features. You can trade photos, centralize a discussion board, view profiles of your group members, link to RSS feeds and more.

Visit Conservator Conclave

I’m interested to see how a group organized in this way will compare to the list-servs that seem to dominate. So, join if you like, post whatever you want, tell your friends, etc.

Please folks, count to ten. Take hold of yourself before you take tape to your documents.

In the meantime, store your documents carefully, not rolled up in a bin.

Here’s the building the blueprints refer to: the historic Wilma Building of Missoula, MT

Photo by Rebecca Ellen.

If you are lucky enough to be close to New York City and the MOMA, there is a book-related exhibit that looks worth checking out called Book/////Shelf.  From the website:

Artworks in the shape of books are difficult to categorize.  The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and Library are rich in works by artists who tackle the idea of books by stretching the conventions of the medium.

They mention that Duchamp’s Box in a Valise is the grandaddy work in this exhibit, but do not feature it in their flash exhibit (so I’ve linked to it here).  I will admit that Dada is not my favorite movement of art, but I find the Valise intriguing, something I’d love to be given as a gift (which was Duchamp’s intention, as he gave it to his sister for a wedding gift).  Check out the mini-Duchamp-toilet.