Well, despite my intentions of getting to do some more mount spines, it became more practical to work extensively on custom pamphlet bindings of various sorts - mostly envelopes and sleeves.
It's amazing to me just how much damage acidity does to paper. The effects of age are so evident on these old pamphlets. Many of the date from the turn of the century or before, and were bound at some point a long time ago in card board bindings held together with sewn bindings and linen. Originally, these were probably very nice, supportive secondary bindings for these pamphlets. But now? Well, the pamphlets are badly damaged themselves, often the paper is so brittle that it's hard to pick the pamphlet up without having little bits of paper flake off. The linen used to hold it in place in the binding is so old and worn that it frays at the touch, and can pull apart if you try (which I was careful not to do except when I was certain that the pamphlet was safely removed from it). The string breaks by accident when the slightest pressure is applied to it. And the thick cardboard that is supposedly protecting it all breaks apart at the slightest pressure. In short, all the hard work and money invested in the past to try to protect these books has proven completely useless.
It's very sad to me, really. It's sad to see how much these books have deteriorated, how much they continue to deteriorate. But more than that, it's very sad to me that we can't do more to protect them. These poor old pamphlets, falling apart as they are, deserve some attention, some deacidification, some serious treatment. But there is just so much that is falling apart that we simply cannot give each piece that much attention. So instead, they get 10 to 15 minutes at most (many get less than that!) of me making them a simple mohawk sleeve, modifying an acid free envelop to kind of custom fit it (the lucky ones get custom made envelops, but that's only if they are a weird size), and fit into a pamphlet binding and attached with double sided tape. It's so horribly inadequate somehow, yet it's better than nothing, and it's really all that we can do because there are dozens more of in the same or worse condition on our shelves waiting for treatment, and probably thousands more in the libraries on campus waiting for someone to notice that they are slowly turning to dust on the shelf. Now, at least, they will slowly turn to dust in a nice sleeve and acid free envelop - perhaps they will turn to dust slightly slower. That would be nice. Maybe someone will get to them in time to help them - to scan and preserve them, really, since there is little else that can be done wihtout creating a custom facsimile of some sort.
Yet I know that it's more likely that they'll get placed back on the shelf and largely forgotten, and eventually they'll just crumble and that will be that. And that is very sad to me. I hope that what little we can do really does help.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Some Thoughts On the Things that People Do To Books
My plan, by the by, is to post weekly in this blog, after I finish my work for that week, with some reflections on what I've learned and stuff. Yeah, stuff.
This week has been fairly good. My mount spine needed to be redone because of a little nobbly bit on the bottom of the spine, but the second turned out fine. My second attempt at a mount spine also needed to be redone, because I didn't get the board all the way into the little spine pocket, but again the second one turned out great. Karissa informs me that I will have more opportunities to do mount spines next week, which pleases me greatly. I like to do a treatment a bunch of times, just to make sure that I've really learned it and can do it again when necessary. (case in point: I've only done a few hinge covers, and now I barely remember how! Then again, I did a bunch of Kyle boxes all at once, and now I'm pretty sure I can still do them no problem. :) ) I also learned how to make custom pockets and the like and then mount them into pamphlets. This isn't a terribly difficult procedure, but I rather enjoy it. The most complicated for this treatment have been the books that needed custom envelopes made and also needed to have a custom pamphlet made because they were too big for the "standard" sizes.
Anyway, today, I had two experiences that really got me thinking about the abuses that patrons commit to our darling books. The first involved a bound journal from 1977. Someone had used a pen to gouge through all the pages of an article, thus not only removing the article from the book but also leaving vile blue ink lines down the remains of the pages they had removed. I had to double side the pages of the article and then tip them (read: glue them) into the book. The second was that the boys from ALF came to visit us with a book for us to treat. This happens from time to time: if they find a book in desperate need of conservation, they bring it over for treatment before putting it in the vault. Today's, though, was very interesting. They showed it to Karissa, and there were general comments about how disgusting it was. A few minutes later, Karissa called us all over to share with us this discovery. The book was entitled something like "The Economics and Politics of Public Health." At some point in the past, some delightful person had chosen to spit a wad of chewing tobacco into this book, about 2/3 of the way through. Now what remained was a disgusting clump of old, chewed tobacco and a large brown stain on both of the pages.
Why would someone do that? Ripping out the pages of the journal, that I can vaguely understand - people are lazy, and god forbid they go use a xerox machine like everyone else. But I could understand spitting the tobacco on the floor more easily than I can comprehend why on earth someone would want to spit into a book. Were they bothered by it's contents? Were they afraid they'd get caught if they spit it on the floor? Were they just lazy? I can't escape the feeling that they just didn't care. And that makes me very sad somehow. I want to dedicate my life to preserving and fixing books so that future generations of patrons can have access to them; meanwhile, some of patrons care so little for our carefully guarded volumes that they would spit in them rather than go two minutes out of their way to find a garbage can.
We're probably not going to be able to fix the book. Fortunately, the libraries have two copies of it, so it won't be the end of the world. Still, I hope that this is the last time I ever see something like that. I fear, though, that in the course of doing this sort of work, I'll be amazed more than once by the horrible, stupid things that people do to our books.
This week has been fairly good. My mount spine needed to be redone because of a little nobbly bit on the bottom of the spine, but the second turned out fine. My second attempt at a mount spine also needed to be redone, because I didn't get the board all the way into the little spine pocket, but again the second one turned out great. Karissa informs me that I will have more opportunities to do mount spines next week, which pleases me greatly. I like to do a treatment a bunch of times, just to make sure that I've really learned it and can do it again when necessary. (case in point: I've only done a few hinge covers, and now I barely remember how! Then again, I did a bunch of Kyle boxes all at once, and now I'm pretty sure I can still do them no problem. :) ) I also learned how to make custom pockets and the like and then mount them into pamphlets. This isn't a terribly difficult procedure, but I rather enjoy it. The most complicated for this treatment have been the books that needed custom envelopes made and also needed to have a custom pamphlet made because they were too big for the "standard" sizes.
Anyway, today, I had two experiences that really got me thinking about the abuses that patrons commit to our darling books. The first involved a bound journal from 1977. Someone had used a pen to gouge through all the pages of an article, thus not only removing the article from the book but also leaving vile blue ink lines down the remains of the pages they had removed. I had to double side the pages of the article and then tip them (read: glue them) into the book. The second was that the boys from ALF came to visit us with a book for us to treat. This happens from time to time: if they find a book in desperate need of conservation, they bring it over for treatment before putting it in the vault. Today's, though, was very interesting. They showed it to Karissa, and there were general comments about how disgusting it was. A few minutes later, Karissa called us all over to share with us this discovery. The book was entitled something like "The Economics and Politics of Public Health." At some point in the past, some delightful person had chosen to spit a wad of chewing tobacco into this book, about 2/3 of the way through. Now what remained was a disgusting clump of old, chewed tobacco and a large brown stain on both of the pages.
Why would someone do that? Ripping out the pages of the journal, that I can vaguely understand - people are lazy, and god forbid they go use a xerox machine like everyone else. But I could understand spitting the tobacco on the floor more easily than I can comprehend why on earth someone would want to spit into a book. Were they bothered by it's contents? Were they afraid they'd get caught if they spit it on the floor? Were they just lazy? I can't escape the feeling that they just didn't care. And that makes me very sad somehow. I want to dedicate my life to preserving and fixing books so that future generations of patrons can have access to them; meanwhile, some of patrons care so little for our carefully guarded volumes that they would spit in them rather than go two minutes out of their way to find a garbage can.
We're probably not going to be able to fix the book. Fortunately, the libraries have two copies of it, so it won't be the end of the world. Still, I hope that this is the last time I ever see something like that. I fear, though, that in the course of doing this sort of work, I'll be amazed more than once by the horrible, stupid things that people do to our books.
Monday, November 13, 2006
A budding bookbinder
This summer, I did and internship with Jim Canary at the Ruth Lilly Preservation Labratory at Indiana University. I had taken a SLIS (School of Library and Information Science) course with Jim the previous semester on preservation in the library environment. I liked it a lot and found the topic very interested. I was reminded of how much fun I had when I bound a book myself in Middle School; I was reminded of watching Ghostbusters 2 for the first time as a little kid and thinking that the art conservationist's in it had the coolest job ever; I was reminded that saving old things had always been something of an aspiration of mine. I greatly enjoy hand crafts and always have, and I wanted to save old books. We looked at old bindings in class, we visited Heckman Bindery, and all and all I kept thinking that this was something that I wanted to do, that I thought would be a lot of fun. The Bindery in particular made a huge difference in my thoughts on this topic; even as I watched the vaguely unhappy appearing employees, I couldn't escape the feeling that this was something I really liked and wanted to do. Jim mentioned that day that he sometimes took interns; I asked him before the end of the day.
My goals going into the internship were simple: learn as much as I could that anyone would teach me, and bind a book. Any book. Two months later, I had learn to mount a book exhibit, how to make mounts, how to build phas boxes and clam shell boxes, and I bound two books of my very own. I had learned a great deal about different treatments that I hadn't done, too, and, most importantly, I had learned that I liked doing this! I enjoyed it loads. I proudly displayed my two little bound books to all of my friends. They thought I was a bit strange, but that didn't stop me from being a bit proud.
I kept a journal over the course of the internship, I should probably post it at some point. :) It's really long, though. I babble a lot about making lots of phase boxes and all that manner of thing. There were times I didn't like it all that much - monotonous tasks can get dull sometimes.
The part of the internship that really made a huge difference, though, was helping Jim with the exhibit that he was planning. It was an exhibit of designer bookbindings. I had never encountered designer bookbindings before, but as soon as I saw them, I looked and I knew that this was something that I could do, something that I wanted to learn to do. Beautiful colors of fine leather, elaborate designs and art, all still a book, books beautifully printed with wood block prints....this was an art form that I wanted to produce with my own hands. It doesn't need to be the only thing that I do with my life - there are lots of other things I want - but it's something I want to try. For the first time since I was a child, I really feel like there is something that I can conceive of just doing and doing for a living for years to come. I had always wanted to use crafts to make a living, but there is no money to be made in embroidery no matter how good I am at it, and there is not much money to be made in costume making unless one is doing so for theater, which never really interested me - I want to put cool clothes on regular people (ie, myself!). Bookbinding takes art and books and craft - things I love - and tosses them all together into a form that I can really engage with. I've never been so excited about a potential career path! At least, not since I was in 9th and 10th grade and thought that astronomy was the coolest thing ever.
So here I am! I'm in my second (and, apparently, last) year of graduate school. I had been intending to complete three years and leave with a history degree and a library science degree, but the cost of out of state tuition coupled with the change in my interests makes this seem impractical. I'm focusing my library education on rare books. This is a new journey, one that I don't think that I want to forget. Life may be complicated right now, but at least it's interesting!
What, then, are the state of things now? After the end of my internship, I started working with the other half of the Ruth Lilly Lab, focusing on general collections rather than the books of the Lilly Library. We do a lot of treatments in a relatively routine fashion. I've bound hundreds of pamphlets (and have the calluses to prove it!). I've learned to do hinge covers, mount spines, Kyle boxes, how to bind pamphlets three different ways, how to make custom pamphlet bindings...I have so much more to learn, though, and I'm very excited about it all. I only learned mount spines last week, it was nice to get to do something more complicated. I like making boxes too, though it gets repetitive. I love binding pamphlets for reasons that defy explanation. There is just something so...relaxing...in the rhythm of making them. I work 10 hours a week, and will be working 20 hours a week next semester. I only have two classes before I graduate.
In December, I'll be visiting the North Bennet Street School in Boston, which has a bench apprenticeship in bookbinding. There are a (small) number of bookbinding programs of various sorts in the country; most of them are in book arts. There's also the Texas program in conservation, though accounts I've heard suggest that I shouldn't do that unless I want to be an administrator. I can't escape the feeling that I really want to go to Boston; I usually trust my instincts, but I don't want to make a foolish choice.
Anyway, I'm going to ramble in this blog about new things that I learn to do, thoughts on books and the like, etc. This isn't a blog for my life in general, that's what my LJ is for. :)
My goals going into the internship were simple: learn as much as I could that anyone would teach me, and bind a book. Any book. Two months later, I had learn to mount a book exhibit, how to make mounts, how to build phas boxes and clam shell boxes, and I bound two books of my very own. I had learned a great deal about different treatments that I hadn't done, too, and, most importantly, I had learned that I liked doing this! I enjoyed it loads. I proudly displayed my two little bound books to all of my friends. They thought I was a bit strange, but that didn't stop me from being a bit proud.
I kept a journal over the course of the internship, I should probably post it at some point. :) It's really long, though. I babble a lot about making lots of phase boxes and all that manner of thing. There were times I didn't like it all that much - monotonous tasks can get dull sometimes.
The part of the internship that really made a huge difference, though, was helping Jim with the exhibit that he was planning. It was an exhibit of designer bookbindings. I had never encountered designer bookbindings before, but as soon as I saw them, I looked and I knew that this was something that I could do, something that I wanted to learn to do. Beautiful colors of fine leather, elaborate designs and art, all still a book, books beautifully printed with wood block prints....this was an art form that I wanted to produce with my own hands. It doesn't need to be the only thing that I do with my life - there are lots of other things I want - but it's something I want to try. For the first time since I was a child, I really feel like there is something that I can conceive of just doing and doing for a living for years to come. I had always wanted to use crafts to make a living, but there is no money to be made in embroidery no matter how good I am at it, and there is not much money to be made in costume making unless one is doing so for theater, which never really interested me - I want to put cool clothes on regular people (ie, myself!). Bookbinding takes art and books and craft - things I love - and tosses them all together into a form that I can really engage with. I've never been so excited about a potential career path! At least, not since I was in 9th and 10th grade and thought that astronomy was the coolest thing ever.
So here I am! I'm in my second (and, apparently, last) year of graduate school. I had been intending to complete three years and leave with a history degree and a library science degree, but the cost of out of state tuition coupled with the change in my interests makes this seem impractical. I'm focusing my library education on rare books. This is a new journey, one that I don't think that I want to forget. Life may be complicated right now, but at least it's interesting!
What, then, are the state of things now? After the end of my internship, I started working with the other half of the Ruth Lilly Lab, focusing on general collections rather than the books of the Lilly Library. We do a lot of treatments in a relatively routine fashion. I've bound hundreds of pamphlets (and have the calluses to prove it!). I've learned to do hinge covers, mount spines, Kyle boxes, how to bind pamphlets three different ways, how to make custom pamphlet bindings...I have so much more to learn, though, and I'm very excited about it all. I only learned mount spines last week, it was nice to get to do something more complicated. I like making boxes too, though it gets repetitive. I love binding pamphlets for reasons that defy explanation. There is just something so...relaxing...in the rhythm of making them. I work 10 hours a week, and will be working 20 hours a week next semester. I only have two classes before I graduate.
In December, I'll be visiting the North Bennet Street School in Boston, which has a bench apprenticeship in bookbinding. There are a (small) number of bookbinding programs of various sorts in the country; most of them are in book arts. There's also the Texas program in conservation, though accounts I've heard suggest that I shouldn't do that unless I want to be an administrator. I can't escape the feeling that I really want to go to Boston; I usually trust my instincts, but I don't want to make a foolish choice.
Anyway, I'm going to ramble in this blog about new things that I learn to do, thoughts on books and the like, etc. This isn't a blog for my life in general, that's what my LJ is for. :)
Why I'm Starting This Blog
Very recently, I have stated firmly that I felt that blog's were inappropriate and silly in most contexts. Yet less than a week later, here I amd creating a blog. Why, oh why, you might ask, is Claire creating a blog? Well, I want to keep a bit of a diary of my bookbinding and conservation related stuff - this is a major change in my life! - but I am not organized enough to keep this as a written diary, and I don't really want to burden my friends in Livejournal with this nonsense, because I doubt most of them would be interested. In short, I'm starting this blog as a personal diary. I doubt that anyone will find it all that interesting, but it's not for anyone else it's for me. So there! :)
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