On Preserving a Library

I work for the Library of Michigan.

In this blog I've maintained somewhat of an "arms-length" relationship with my my employer. The nature of this relationship is my decision based on an "incident" early in this blog's life. I don't hide who I work for, but I also don't know that I've ever named my employer by name - before now.

I mention this because the Library of Michigan is currently part of the Department of History, Arts, and Libraries (HAL). Lately, there has been a bit of buzz on the blogoworld and twittersphere about HAL because the Governor's Executive Order 2009-36 abolishes this department. The various agencies of the department are being moved into other existing departments with the Library going under Education and the Archives going under Dept. of Natural Resources!? This is an effort at "streamlining" government and saving money.

Unfortunately, shifting around agencies to save on administrative costs isn't where the EO ends for the Library. The Order advises ending circulation of all collections, and, with the exception of the Law collection, the Order includes the alternative of transfering the collections to another institution. I found this disappointing, but not particularly surprising. The one little detail which left me quite surprised and annoyed was that among the lists of collections which could be transferred to another institution included the Michigan Government Documents, which, together with the archives, is the nearly 200 year legacy of the activity of the government of Michigan.

Part of the pride I take in what I do and where I do it is that I play a role in the whole open government, democratic world. The State makes decisions, takes actions, investigates situations, and through the library the state collects, preserves, and provides access to this work. This is in order for future citizens and legislators to be able to look at and understand past actions and decisions. Preserving the legislative history is part of holding a government accountable for its actions. And so, to give that collection, and the responsiblity to continue collecting the documents of the State away to another institution seems like a dereliction of the duties of state. I don't doubt that a major local university is not capable of the task but that would put a significant gap between those making the decisions today, and the record of past decisions and actions.

But, things may not be as bad as they seem, or at least as some are reporting. I was talking to a colleague this morning and we felt like we are somewhere between "Rumors of our death have been greatly exagerated" and "We're not dead yet!" There are still a lot of discussion to be had and decisions to be made, and nothing in state government happens quickly, but I also don't particularly anticipate that my position will last much longer than a year or two. (Anyone need a preservation-minded librarian, slightly used?)

Reverse conservation

I'm in the midst of my two hands-on sessions with my Intro to Preservation class. Last week was book repair and tomorrow it is paper treatments. One of my favorite things about these classes is the preparation - because I get to damage items.

With book repair it often means I'm sitting on the floor in my office banging books on the floor (to 'simulate' battered hard-cover board corners) - which brings me such delight.

For tomorrow's class we will be doing surface cleaning, humidification and flattening, 3 tear mending techniques (filmoplast, heat set tissue, japanese tissue and wheat paste), deacidification and encapsulation.

Because much of my own paper treatments is done one maps, I have the students work on maps - albeit maps I print on 8.5 x 11 printer paper. Both maps will be folded - and one is put under pressure over night while folded to really establish those creases. With one map I create a few tears at the folds, and with the other, I go to my garage, sweep my garage, and then rub the sweepings into each map. (I noticed today that I use the same motion to run in the grime, as I use with the powdered eraser to remove the grime.)

Next week's topic is digital preservation - I wish that meant I could take a computer out to a field and go all "Office Space" on it - but alas, its an online class, so there's no hands-on work involved.

Laws of Preservation

Okay, I don't know what the protocol is here for proper citation, but I'm about to post 10 "laws of preservation" which apparently were created by Paul Banks and just recently talked about by Roberta Pilette at the ALA annual meeting and twittered by someone from the Preservation and Digitization dept of Duke University Libraries. (They are twittering using hashtag #alapadg)
I'm posting them because I don't recall ever seeing them before I think there is some deep wisdom here.

1. No one has access to a document that doesn't exist
2. multiplication/dispersal increases survival
3. physical medium of a book/document contains information
4. no reproduction can contain all info contained in original
5. conservation treatment is interpretation
6. authenticity cannot be restored
7. no treatment is reversible
8. use causes wear
9. books and documents deteriorate all the time
10. deterioration is irreversible

Jobs to avoid

If you see something like this in a job description, my suggestion would be to run far, far away:

"Coordinate the project and arrange, describe, process, and preserve a large collection of historic documents.
Oversee various health and safety aspects of the project, including the maintenance of a fragrance free and smoke free environment.
Work closely with the donor of the papers, primarily through e-mails on all aspects of the project.
Have telephone conversations and in-person meetings with the donor will be typed as the donor is speaking, then edited/emailed for oral history as well as efficient project functioning purposes.
Supervision and functional direction will be received from Donor."

all for $30,000. yikes

Pondering teaching techniques

This is an ongoing thing for me, but lately I've been thinking a lot about teaching (and learning) preservation (or conservation). I've taught a whole mess of 3-5 hour workshops, done some conference talks, and am nearing completion of second go-round of teaching a semester-long Intro to Preservation class. And yet, I'm still not convinced I know what I should be teaching, or what students should be doing to learn what they need to learn.

For the most part, people who participate in my workshops/classes have reasonably nice things to say about the experience – which is nice – but the real evaluation is can they do the stuff they need in order to care for collections – or better yet, do they?

So now, to satisfy what seems to be an ongoing sense of restlessness and ambition, I'm starting to imagine other teaching venture – one more approach to try and achieve what I think I should be achieving. It grows out of my sense that to care for collections (in this case book collections) people need to really understand the materials - and the best way you can understand materials is to regularly and attentively handle and manipulate them. I was talking with a colleague who also teaches workshops and we discussed how many of the people who are in our day-long workshops may not have – or take – the opportunity to practice the techniques they learned. And if those quickly trained skills aren't used, their lost.

The new venture I'm imagining is essentially a semester-long (or longer) book repair workshop where techniques are practiced over and over again. Meet one day a month to learn new techniques and then use the rest of the month to practice, practice, practice. Learn how to sew a pamphlet, and then go and sew 15 pamphlets. Learn how to reback a book, and then go and reback 10 books. (Figuring out an appropriate 4 month curriculum will be a bit of a challenge.)

In this scenario, I'm imagining a group of about 4 students who commit to full participation. My goal would be to train smart, and resourceful conservation techs who work, or at least would be capable to work in big public or small academic libraries and will have the opportunity to use these skills.

Given that my employer will likely be giving me many more days off in the next fiscal year (without pay), I just might have the time to try this out for real. I also think that keeping this venture independent of educational or work institutions will grant some freedom not otherwise available.

Preservation Presentations Online

IMLS' fourth and final event in their Connection to Collections national tour was held last month in Buffalo, and this event, like the 3 others before it was recorded. The video for the 4th conference, somewhat generically titled "Stewardship of America's Legacy: Answering the Call to Action" was just placed online. This includes Nancie Ravenel's rapid-fire presentation "Technology and Social Networking for Collections Care." (For much of the duration of this C2C program the 4th conference was advertised as being about preservation training - and I was quite excited to see what would come of it. Shortly before the event the training theme seemed to have vanished. Oh well.)

Also, webcasts of select presentations in the Library of Congress' Topics in Preservation Series are now available online.

Thanks to these two institutions for making the effort to share these events with a larger audience.

Friday Job Listings

2 postings to highlight this week:

Conservator - Texas State Library and Archives Commission in (where else) Austin

General Collections Conservator - at Princeton University