At the end of June, I left the humid cornfields of Iowa and headed west to spend the summer in sunny southern California. It is now almost September as I sit to reflect upon the past eight weeks that I have spent as an intern at the UCLA Library Conservation Center (LCC). The past two months have gone by quickly, but they have been an invaluable experience for me as I continue to look towards future graduate level study in conservation.
In my initial conversation with Kristen, I expressed interest in focusing my time on treatment documentation and works on paper. I wanted to learn how to properly record pre and post treatments so that a useful reference, that could be read an understood by someone other than myself, resulted. Specifically, I wanted to attend to organization, accurate terminology, clear descriptions, and photo-documentation. My interest in paper is rooted in observations from previous experience. Papers of different regions and time periods present their own unique conservation challenges due to substrate fiber, method of manufacture, and media used. I wanted to begin building familiarity with the distinct qualities and characteristics of each and how these differences direct treatment decisions. As the summer unfolded three projects overlapped these interests:
A collection of Arabic, Armenian, and Persian manuscripts dating primarily from the 14th-17th centuries, the Minasian collection is quite diverse. The papers I worked with represented a variety of sizes, materials, and mediums: heavy western papers, thin tissue, cloth, wove, laid, and burnished papers, printed, water colored, and handwritten documents. All exhibited varying levels of damage ranging from folds and creases to minor tears and large loses. The paper and the method of inscription and decoration directed my decisions on humidification and mending options. I found the history behind these documents most compelling. Jonathan M. Bloom’s Paper Before Print: The History and Impact of paper in the Islamic World was a great resource for historical reference.
The Rouse Collection consists of manuscript leaves from the 9th -16th centuries from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and England. This is an ongoing rehousing project begun in the summer of 2009. The manuscripts are used by classes and handled often. For this reason, the page structure was designed to both offer protection and allow for the removal of items. A previous intern, Oriana Calman, devised an album sleeve format that would allow for this initiative. Douglas MacLennan, the 2010 intern, provides a very thorough overview of this project (http://blogs.library.ucla.edu/preservation/2011/03/14/douglas-maclennan-2010-summer-conservation-internship-report/#more-524). I won’t repeat all the details here, but my task was to continue this project: creating the mylar album sleeves to house the manuscript leaves, construct five new albums that would hold the leaves, and reorganize the collection as requested by Professor Rouse.
Collections Survey:
A collaborative effort with Kristen St. John and Will Lin, the survey’s initiative was to assess the quality and durability of the treatments to circulating library materials that have left the lab. Separate blog posts can be found with the specific details of this project. Through involvement in this survey, I learned about the various types of surveys that can be used to acquire data, choosing a survey sample, and developing a survey format. From our results we anticipated that the sample selected would identify any necessary revisions in lab practices, external causes of damage, and the book’s history after leaving the lab.
Week at the Huntington Library Conservation Lab:
There is an intern swap tradition between UCLA and the Huntington Library in Pasadena. Through this exchange, I was able to spend a week at the Huntington working with paper conservator Erin Jue. While there, I learned another way of approaching photo documentation and writing treatment reports. My project was to remove the chromogenic prints from Octavia Butler Album; a seemingly simple task that demanded a great deal of patience and care. With a heated casseli spatula, I lifted the prints from the deteriorating album leaves and temporarily rehoused them in mylar sleeves. In addition to learning about photograph treatment, the history of the development of photographic processes, and the identifiable characteristics that distinguish each, the true value of this week was in the lab itself and the conversations held while visiting. Each lab is distinct in its facilities, setup, workflow, and practices. For these reasons, each lab offers it own unique perspective to aspiring conservators. Through conversation, I learned the diverse backgrounds and interests that draw people to the field and was given a number of helpful resources and insights for the future. This was an invaluable experience, for which I am most grateful.
At some point, I was informed that the conservation unit is only “a marginal field at the edge of the (library) galaxy,” and though this may be true, I find it to be the most fascinating and intriguing.