Hi everyone. My name is Melissa to Don, and I have the great pleasure of introducing you to our two library and Archives conservation majors. These fellows were generously funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation for the last eight years. I have taught and supervised the Library and Archives major in partnership with Senior Paper Conservator Joan Irving, who just retired last month. Although she will be back to teach paper block for our first year students this September. I have learned as much from Joes. Curiosity, intellectual generosity, and compassionate wisdom as any of our students. Thank you, Joan. First up, we are celebrating Bona Vet Mercado Olivers witnessing the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico and its cultural heritage helps crystallize Barca's passion for library and archives conservation and her interest in disaster response work. While still an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico Ages, she worked with an NEH funded disaster recovery team to stabilize and monitor collections at the university library. After graduating magna cum laude with a BA in History and a minor in art, she continued her preprogram journey in the paper conservation lab at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. As a wood pack student, Veronica continued to advocate for Puerto Rican and Spanish language collections. More broadly, can you imagine how challenging it is to undertake graduate education in your second language? But as I keep telling, Veronica, being bilingual is one of your superpowers. Veronica completed graduate internships with the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and the Biblioteca Nacional de Puerto Rico. Before embarking on her third year internship at the Library of Congress, Veronica has been awarded the Harper Ingles Postgraduate Fellowship at the Library of Congress, during which she will research and treat 18th century manuscripts from the library's Puerto Rican collections. Please welcome Veronica Vet to the podium. Thank you, Melissa, for your kind introduction and thank you everyone for joining us in this special day. Being here surrounded by my talented classmates, faculty and internship mentors is a dream come true. I'm also thrilled because part of my family is here in the audience, while the rest has joined us all the way from Puerto Rico, South Carolina, and Georgia through. I'd like to honor the original inhabitants of the lands where Tulane University, the Library of Congress, and the National Library of Puerto Rico are located. Native peoples have lived on this lands since time immemorial, and the resilient voices remain an inseparable part of our local culture. I also want to show my respect for the Taino ancestors and the land of my birth boren, modern day Puerto Rico. The Taino people suffered greatly from violence brought by the European invaders during the colonization. It's also important to recognize that Puerto Rico has been a US colony for more than a century and my people have been denied a fair self determination process. As a Puerto Rican, I have the responsibility to keep educating and collaborating with communities in Puerto Rico, the diaspora, and our allies together. We must advocate for reparations and a just self determination process for Puerto Rico. We will start this presentation at Tulane University in New Orleans, then we will take a quick trip to Honduras. Finally, we will focus on two national libraries with different conservation realities. The National Library of Puerto Rico and the Library of Congress. As an emerging book conservator, I have been primarily trained in Western European bookbinding and book conservation traditions. However, as a Puerto Rican, my passion for supporting the accessibility of Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian texts and narratives collected at US institutions has led me to cultivate partnerships with allied professionals to emphasize the significance of studying and celebrating and preserving these materials. In May of 2021, I shared with Melissa an insta brand post announcing a new class offered at Tulane University, the other Bo school of Virginia. We both agreed that someday I will attend. This takes us to the summer of 2022, when together with 12 scholars, I embarked on an intensive one week course titled Spanish American Textile Technologies, co designed and taught by Doctors Hortensia Calvo, Pristine Hernandez, and Rachel Stein, Latin American experts. The course explored the factors that transformed writing in Latin America. And is a valuable resource to me because it expanded my vision about the Western book through a variety of writing modes and recording that are not typically studied in the conservation North American programs, but that are present in our national collections, such as rubbings of pre Colombian Stella, Mesoamerican painted manuscripts, hippos, chronicles of friars and priests, and first editions of early Spanish American Vocabularies and grammars as a conservatory in training. In that sense, I was the overly enthusiastic student, repeatedly asking if I could touch the books. But jokes aside, this class was a humbling experience that increased my already deep respect and appreciation for the history of writing and printing in Latin America. From New Orleans, I traveled to Honduras to my husband who was serving in the Puerto Rico National Guard, and we visited the Copan ruins, which was a perfect match with the material covered in the Class Copan Unesco Archaeological World Heritage Site, with invaluable magen structures and carved stell, a true wonder to see with my own eyes from South America. I then traveled to the Caribbean, to Puerto Rico to start my summer work project at the National Library under the direction of Ida Ada Gonzalez, with whom I built a strong working relationship during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 and who has watched my career from up close ever since. The National Library and General Archives of Puerto Rico share a huge building. On the right wing is the library, and on the left wing is the archive. Overall, both have a small staff, which includes a paper conservatory, Ivana Amble. Given that the National Library did not have a full conservation staff, and the needs and potential projects were incredibly rich and vast. Making the decision of going home did require some logistics and preparation. Well, the idea of doing a summer work project in Puerto Rico was in the back of my mind. For some time, my pre program experience was challenged by the lack of local guidance. And naturally, I was hesitant to return home without mentororship at such a critical moment of my education. It's important to acknowledge, however, that conservation in Puerto Rico today is different from what it was when I joined the field eight years ago. We now have professional allies creating opportunities for Puerto Rican students. And a conservation center has been recently established. It has taken years to create these opportunities, but they are all unequivocal steps towards equity and inclusion that must be recognized and celebrated to make the summer possible. Director Aja and assistant Sofia Feliciano provided on site guidance concerning institutional objectives, collection, space, and equipment availability. Meanwhile, Melissa done, Joel Wiggins, Deborah has Norris, and Joan Irving provided specialized conservation support through some text messages and e mail. Melissa and I saw incredible value in tackling a holistic approach that cooled, sparked the library's preventive conservation groundwork. So once the projects were narrowed down, I hopped on an airplane with a quare and a purple briefcase with my tools. The six selected projects included environmental control equipment installation, cleaning of a photographic deposit, a small rehousing project, treatment of two semi limp parchment bindings, the random survey of the Dominican Convent collection, and establishing an integrated pest management protocol. From those, I will highlight three preventive projects. Puerto Rico's tropical marine climate is typically sunny, hot, and humid year round, with Summers spiking to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So if I don't wear my natural curls, my hair looks like this. To understand the library's inner environmental conditions, eight data loggers were installed. Although the project did not include the data interpretation, my tasks covered installing and programming the devices to capture data every 30 min and drafting a written protocol in Spanish for the library staff to carry on the monitoring. The second project was the implementation of an integrated pest management program, or IPM. The goal of detecting pests and eliminating them without causing harm to the collection and its users. The library and archives have multiple floors, collection deposits, reading rooms, emergency exits, stairways, and a court yard. Creating an IPM protocol was literally a marathon. For the sake of my survival, Joel recommended focusing on the library wing. To tackle this project, I designed two documents. The first is an Excel spreadsheet to record number of traps, date of monitoring species found quantity and condition par localization. The second document is an informative leaflet shared monthly with library staff to spread awareness and provide preventive recommendations. Additionally, I wrote a guideline in Spanish that explains how to conduct the monitoring for project execution. I assembled 28 sticky traps that I checked every two weeks. This helped me identify the insects and affects their impact. Paren ants were the most common pest. While they are inherently harmless, dirt, debris, and carcasses could attract other pests. My observations were that areas with direct access to the outdoors or with tree branches touching the structure showed more insect presence, and therefore recommended regularly maintaining the surrounding vegetation. The third project was my favorite. The National Library Puerto Rico safeguards a collection that only a select few have been able to see because it has yet to be cataloged. The collection Convento Mico's, or Dominican Convent collection, the collection has 269 parchment bindings. The project, including doing a random survey to understand its preservation needs, the survey revealed that the bindings were printed in European shops in Paris, a Salamanca, Sago, and Mari between the 13th and 19th centuries. While parchment bindings are typically associated with French, Italian, and Spanish copinding traditions, there is no historical evidence of parchment manufacture in Puerto Rico. It's likely that these books were bound before traveling to the island. The survey revealed that there are three binding styles in the collection. Explain in the most general sense. First we have the lin parchment, which is a bookbinding style that employs a single flexible piece of parchment to cover the text block. Semi parchment binding is when the parchment is reinforced, for instance, with paper to make it a bit stiffer and over boards, which is when the parchment is wrapped around rigid boards as we do with leather bindings. The survey also uncovered condition issues such as distorted parchment and board detachment during the internship. I recommended rehousing and or treating the most notoriously damaged findings. In addition to moving the parchment collection to an area with more air flow, the installation of the 0 data loggers is helping the staff regulate the environment and prevent further damage. Now we just have to wait for them to be cataloged from an institution in which ingenuity and planification were my greatest assets. I returned to Washington, DC. To the Library of Congress to learn from a vibrant and thriving conservation network. The Library of Congress Conservation Division boasts a diverse cohort of photo book objects and paper conservators, Preventing specialists and technicians hailing from international conservation backgrounds, being part of such a vibrant conservation network, nurtured by different landscapes and ideologies, is providing me with the intellectual resources and mentorship necessary to cultivate my skills and build a broader repertoire of tools and knowledge. While the Library of Congress is the ideal workplace with quasi infinite supplies and fantastic treasures including the wet. So since Edison's kinetoscopic record of a sneeze, the contents of President Lincoln's pocket on the night of his assassination. And Biblia Latina from a conservation perspective, it undeniably is a treatment intensive internship placement due to the international community. It serves within the conservation division. The book section is responsible for the conservation of the library's bound collections, special and rate materials to date by rotating between seven book conservators. I have conducted advanced and routine conservation treatment, assessment, photography and housing of bound and flat materials from multiple custodial divisions and for distinct workflows including digetization and exhibit preparation. The projects to date incorporate multiple treatment complexity levels and philosophies from conducting leathery backing to retain as much of the existing binding, to creating sympathetic paper cases to enable handling digitization and safe shelving in the stacks. To complete rebinding of text blocks by studying the traditional craft and implementing and experiment to put different parchment treatment techniques on parchment deeds. From this rich amalgam of opportunities, I would like to highlight two treatments a leather skier re, backing treatment of an album and the parchment rebinding of a 17th century law library book. This cabinet card photo album belonged to Russel Davenport, an American author, editor, and political activist. The album documents the members of Yale's older undergrad society, the Skull and Bones Club from 1923, also known as the Brotherhood of Death, to which he belonged to. A side note is that my colleague Emily Mercer, Advanced Photo conservation Intern, conducted before treatment photography and the cabinet cards treatment. Consequently, that portion of the project won't be included in this presentation. During a consultation with the Manuscript Division collection official, the deteriorating state of the album came to light. In stark contrast to the rest of the collection, the album exhibited notorious red rot accumulation, a degradation process found in vegetable tan leather, which extended throughout the album into adjacent materials and was actively creating debris. During my examination, it was very annoying. Furthermore, the spine leather of the album had detached, leaving the joint to bear the weight of the heavy boards. This compromised the integrity of the binding, making it precarious to handle and susceptible to further damage. Jennifer Evers, rare book conservator, and I agreed that the first step was to locally apply clog, a celos ether diluted in ethanol to the areas presenting red rot to consolidate the flaky material and prevent it from spreading across my bench. Next, we agreed that a goat leather skin skier lined with aero linen will be aesthetically harmonious with the rest of the binding. A leather skier is a thinly paired piece of leather in which most of the flesh is removed. Using equipment such as Charvet machine as seen in the video, leaving behind the grain layer which is extremely weak, lining the skier with linen counters that weakness while allowing the backing material to remain thin, strong, and flexible. The reason behind using a thin piece of leather, almost paper thin instead of a full sable skin, was the concern of creating budging at the joints which will impede flexing of the boards resulting in an overall chunky looking book. To do this we re engineered the traditional leather re backing. Instead of applying all the layers one by one directly onto the spine of the book, we created a spine lining sandwich off the book, which includes a linen matrix layer to impart strength. A mulberry tissue hollow tube to control the text block opening, A sky leather head and tail cap, two sky joints, two leather cores to create robust caps to match the book's thickness. All of them were adhered with starch paste. And the video demonstrate the process of lining the sandwich. Once it was completed it was allowed to rest under weights overnight. Then we lifted the boards with lifting knives and once the re engineered re, backing piece was dry, we boarded it to make it more flexible and adhered to the spine using whit starch paste. Once in place, the spine of the book is tightly wrapped with AC bands, inter with holte and allowed to dry overnight. Then I adhered the sides of the re, backing material under the lift board and propped the book open with the aid of a spatula and which starch paste I tucked in the turn ends and allowed it to dry flat on the bench under weights. Finally, the paper backing on the original spine piece was mechanically reduced by scraping and adhered to the spine and allowed to dry, compressed under AC bands. The final outcome, in my opinion, is incredible. With the grain of the goat skin aligning perfectly with that of the book, a visual harmony is established. The redesign spine adds durability and the extent to which the red rot has been stabilized eliminates the need for researchers to constantly be concerned about cross contamination in the reading rooms. The second treatment is conflicts between differing legal authorities. The binding contains two terms written by Francisco Paolo Paramo, a 17th century Sicilian attorney. The text is printed in Latin and focuses on Roman law, particularly concilia opinions provided to European kingdoms and communities by respected jurists available for consultation. In a meeting with curator Nathan Dorn, it was explained that from about 19:33 through the early 1950s, the Law Library of the Library of Congress acquired most of its oldest historic titles. Including multiple copies of the various conflict volumes and tones by pet which you are seeing on screen. Like literally everything they go find, their acquisition and preservation mirrors the Law Library's goal to become the most complete repository of early legal imprints. The conservation division therefore has been conducting treatment on the conflict volumes as early as 1980s. In the 2000 when player Decel Senior rare book conservator started working on this book, its condition was extremely precarious. From the slides I shared from the parchment structures in Puerto Rico, you may recognize this one as an overboard parchment binding. Historically overboard parchment bindings may splay as a side effect of environmental fluctuations pulling the supports away from the spine, thus compromising the board to tech block attachment. This object may have as well suffered from a similar fate. The boards were splayed and detached, the supports were broken, much of the sewing thread was missing, The spine linings were broken, and the back folds of the tech block were split, rendering the book inappropriate for research use. Almost 20 years later, at the moment of my incorporation to the project, the paper treatment had been finalized by Claire, including page repair and guarding Claire. And I agreed that the books inherent is warranted, dividing it into two tones to distribute the stress of the structure. We also opted to create a bookbinding model to assess its mechanical properties and inform the treatment proposal. We decided on a limp parchment structure with alum took supports due to its proven flexibility and durability. When receiving the text block, I needed to tackle four major treatment challenges. The text block was considerably big, approximately 5 " thick. It was comprised of 130 gatherings. Each gathering was made only two bifolia and the paper was very thin and lightweight. All of these factors create extreme swelling in a text block, and if not addressed, will cause the spine area to beat this balance with the rest of the text block, creating a major wedge shape. This was addressed in three ways. First, the swelling was addressed by splitting the text block into two volumes. Each toe was sewn with very thin thread in a two pattern, a method of swelling in which two sections are sewn on a single length of thread instead of all along, which will add more thread to each gathering. During the process, I made sure that the thread was being drawn into the center fold with a loaded stick to prevent more swelling. This allowed for both text blocks to retain and even shape. After this process, I slightly rounded the spine and consolidated it with a thin layer of woods starch baste. After the spine dried, I had to address the second challenge to modify the sewing to minimize the gaps between the gatherings without increasing the text blocks overall swelling. Two on sewing is traditionally known for creating gaps between the gatherings and not aiding in a control spine shape. In the screen you can see how the spine is curving up excessively because the two on sewing did not impart sufficient consolidation across the spine. For this reason we decided to sew the text block off the sewing frame, going around each support with thread with a corp needle to better consolidate the gatherings to one another. This is how consolidated the support looks after pack sewing. Finally, to further control the throw up, we lined the spine with subsequent layers of roll. So panels, after each layer dried, we will prop the book open to observe the spine's behavior. The process was finalized by applying a layer of aero linen and by sewing traditional bait on the spine bans. All the steps mentioned before were conducted on a blank model of similar dimensions to the book on proven reliable. I proceeded to do all of this all over again, twice for each volume. It was therefore very labor intensive. In this photo, you can appreciate the entirety of the project. At the bottom is the blank model with a paper case followed by Thomas one and Thomas two. Thomas on E is ready to receive its parchment covering, while Thomas two on the top is awaiting pack sewing and spine linings. Once the text blocks were prepared, parchment cases for each tom were modeled after ten point board. Similar skins of parchment were selected to create the cases. The measurements from the paper case templates where it transferred to the skins. The cases were increased and folded and the two tones were laced in through their album taught supports, and there you have it. Our two months of experimentation are now embedded into the history of the 17th century Palermo imprint Parchment bindings are known for their durability and the unique aesthetic qualities, which can vary in color, texture, and translucency. While parchment bindings are a historic technique, it is still practiced to preserve and restore books with traditional methods. Therefore, the craft holds a special place in the world of bookbinding, connecting contemporary book conservation with centuries old techniques. But my internship has transcended beyond the book conservation section to conduct collection care and re housing activities. This involves spending weeks in collections care, treating general collection materials, and learning to use the case make electric cutter machine. Additionally to folding machine made boxes to house Rosenwald collection materials and learning the hard way that wearing gloves when folding boxes is the best way to prevent painful paper cuts. Many, many of them. I also did platy packs and fancy clamshell boxes with gold stamped leather pieces and worked on the ultrasonic bolder and hinging works of art and paper. Additionally, I have participated in workshops such as Jack He's bamboo and line tool making workshops, Katherine Kelly's Atlas Binding Workshop, and attended the Websockets Conference. Led and participated tours and translated for Spanish speaking visitors. I even spent the morning of Christmas Eve willingly at the library because a sprinkler system accidentally went off in the Adams building stack area, wetting with clean water, at least over 500 case bindings. Due to my increasing interest in preservation emergency response, the team has finally invited me to become a full fledged member. And currently I'm in the shadowing stage to wrap this up. Today I can only express how grateful I am for the beautiful people I have met, learned from, and laugh with during the past three years. I'm grateful for the chance to learn directly from all of you. My classmates, family, wood peck committee, and past and present supers. None of this which I have presented today will have been possible without your guidance and its example to my family. Thank you for bearing with me and for believing in me. That's it. I went to sleep. So yes. Kaylee, a little more details about the emergency response you did? Yeah. Well, essentially everyone was away for the holiday vacation and there was a reduced availability of staff members in the library. So they just made a call and we went in, we checked the areas, and we brought into a drying area, all the damaged books, opened them up, set up multiple fans, at least four or five, and rotated throughout the weekend to make sure that they were dried. Yeah, it was interesting, but yeah, there there wasn't enough time to hire a contractor or a company to do that task, so definitely relying on the preservation team was super important. Yeah. Okay.
Verónica Mercado Oliveras
From Robert Diiorio August 22, 2023
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