News and more from ZSR’s Special Collections & Archives
On April 10th about 2:30 pm, Heather Gillette was told by a student that water was leaking on some books on Wilson 6. She called Kristen Morgan, who notified the Disaster Team. Fortunately, only about 25 books were affected. A gasket failed between two metal parts which saturated the ceiling tile as water leaked. as... Continue reading “Water Disaster on April 10th in the Stacks” ›
NCPC Basic Book Repair Workshop, ECU Jan 24-25, 2008 Laupus Medical Sciences Library For two days, my colleague, Rachel Hoff and I, discussed and taught preservation concepts and treatments. It was two day-long Basic Book Repair Workshops sponsored by NCPC. Rachel and I have been teaching these workshops for several years both together and individually... Continue reading “Basic Book Repair Workshops at ECU” ›
In Preservation, I cut heavy archival board with a large cast iron machine called a board shear. Mine was made by the Jacques Manufacturing Co, in Worchester, Massachusetts probably in the 1930’s and was originally used for box making. Book binders everywhere have bought these old machines to use in their work since nothing else... Continue reading “Adjusting a Board Shear” ›
Over the past 2 years, I’ve worked with the Professional Center Library to set up a small preservation area. This week, Angie Hobbs from PCL came over to ZSR and we worked for a few hours on some of her more pesky repairs. We consolidated a text block and applied end sheets; replaced a spine;... Continue reading “Preservation Training for PCL” ›
On Thursday, Nov. 29th, eight history students in Dr. Jeff Lerner’s Roman History class stood in the library entrance and made their presentations. After working through the semester on the research, meeting with me on their exhibit design, and constructing their exhibit- each student was ready to present their work to the entire class of... Continue reading “Lerner History Exhibits- Fall 2007” ›
On Wenesday, November 14, I taught a book repair workshop for the NCSLMA (North Carolina School Library Media Association. This workshop was sponsored by the North Carolina Preservation Consortium (NCPC). The workshop was a pre-conference offering for the NCSLMA Annual conference held at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem. I had 22 media coordinators to... Continue reading “NCPC Basic Book Repair Workshop” ›
Joe Harrington and his quick thinking student Alex Chung alerted me to a water leak this week on Wilson 6. A heating duct was leaking on a section of a range in the HF’s. We quickly removed the books in harms way and placed a plastic trash can to catch the water. In all, about... Continue reading “Wilson 6 Water Dampens the Collection” ›
I had the opportunity to learn a 14th century binding style in a workshop Oct 23-26. Using signatures that were sewn over alum-tawed leather thongs, we made a cover for this binding from calfskin vellum. Vellum is a term that is often interchangeable with parchment, but usually parchment refers to goat/sheepskin and vellum to calfskin.... Continue reading “North Bennett Street School” ›
John S. Walker, who volunteered at ZSR from 2000-2003 in Preservation and passed away in 2005, has donated his books on Japan to the Z. Smith Reynolds Library. A few weeks back, I drove to his home and picked up many boxes of books. Charles Bombeld helped sort through and accept approximately 80 of these... Continue reading “John Walker Gift Books” ›
How does one go about sharpening the blade of a board shear? Well it is not a simple matter of pulling out your whetstone, oiling it up, and having at it! The blade of our board shear is 45” long and is curved. Not only that, there is a 4 foot long metal plate that... Continue reading “Board Shear Blade Sharpened” ›