#nedcc

How do you preserve your personal collections?  In this post, Archives Specialist James shows us how he maintains his personal collection of concert posters.  The hardest part is protecting the poster while still at the concert, as you can see some posters get damaged in the process.  

Once the poster is safe at home, James uses an oversized archival folder to store and help flatten the poster.  These archival folders are acid and lignin free, helping to protect the poster for as long as possible.  

He also uses archival cotton bond paper to interleave each poster.  Interleaving prevents the posters from touching, helping to avoid the “bleeding” of inks.  With no environmental protections in place, the hot southern California summers hurt the posters’ longevity, which sometimes keeps James up at night!

Thursday, June 18, 2020

This week, I learned a fun new thing. I was collating the The Morning Telegraph from August of 1953 when I saw water damage and black mold on the pages (see second and third pictures). I knew that was a concern so I asked Becky (my boss) what could be done. That’s when we got out the ghostbusters vacuum!

It’s a HEPA Vacuum (specifically a UZ964 Hip Vac). “HEPA (High‐Efficiency Particulate Air) vacuums differ from conventional vacuums in that they contain filters that are capable of trapping extremely small, micron‐sized particles. A true HEPA filter can trap 99.97 percent of all airborne particles larger than 0.3 microns. To illustrate how small this is, a human red blood cell is usually between 6 and 8 microns wide (Source).” “When you vacuum with a non-HEPA vacuum cleaner most mold spores pass through the filtration, out the exhaust and back into the air, as they are too small for ordinary filters to trap them.But when you vacuum with a HEPA vacuum cleaner mold spores are caught by the HEPA filter and kept inside the vacuum. This is why vacuuming with a HEPA vacuum is one of the best ways to reduce the number of mold spores (Source).”

We vacuumed the cover of the book along with the edges and the inside pages. We had to be very careful as to not rip the delicate newsprint inside the book. All of the mold already looked like it was dead but we wanted to get rid of as much of the mold spores as possible. Once we vacuumed the book, I removed the covers (since they seemed the most damaged) and put the paper blocks inside a preservation box for future pasting and separation.

More Fun Facts from the amazing Preservation Leaflets from the NEDCC (Northeast Document Conservation Center):

To germinate (become active), spores require a favorable environment: relative humidity, temperature, stagnant air, and a food source. If favorable conditions are not present, the spores remain inactive (dormant), and in this state they can do little damage. The simplest method of removing inactive mold is to vacuum using a variable speed vacuum on low with a HEPA filter to trap the mold spores. A normal vacuum will simply exhaust the spores out into the air. Do not vacuum fragile items directly, since the strength of the suction can easily cause damage to weakened materials (Source).

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) hosted its annual conference, Digital Directions, from July 21st to July 23rd in Portland, Oregon. This conference is a little different than your standard professional conference – it’s billed more as an educational opportunity. From their website: “Guided by a faculty of national experts and experienced digital collection curators, join colleagues from institutions large and small for 2 ½ days of instruction on basics and best practices for creating good digital objects, collections, and initiatives.” Little did you know I’m an expert! That’s right, once again I would be presenting, this time all by myself. If you read my last conference blog post, you’d know I’m not too keen on public speaking. However, this is something I’m looking to remedy.

I committed to covering the hour slot called “Digitizing Audio” back in April. This gave me approximately three months to lose my mind, er, I mean prepare. How on earth do you cram the entirety of the audio universe into 45 minutes with 15 minutes of questions? The answer is – you can’t. Knowing the conference would be full of digital beginners, I felt confident that 99% of them would not be digitizing their audio holdings themselves or building their own digitization labs. Therefore, I decided to approach the presentation with the goal of teaching them the audio basics they would need to know in order to fill out a successful Statement of Work (SOW) with a vendor. I wanted attendees to be able to understand the consequences of decisions made in an SOW, as well as what they could ask for from a vendor.

With the help and support of my colleagues at AVPreserve who provided me with valuable feedback, I finally felt I was ready about a week and a half before the conference. Then I got a call from NEDCC asking me to cover the “Digitizing Video” talk as well, since the original presenter was ill and could not travel.

Ummmm....okay? I can’t believe I said yes. I had a week to put together a 45 minute presentation on video. I was in full on panic mode. I mean, I was nervous enough to cover audio and audio is my jam! I know video, of course, but I’ve spent much less time with it. I definitely was losing my mind.

Luckily, with the help of my wonderful coworkers (shout outs to Chris Lacinak, Josh Ranger, and Kathryn Gronsbell!) I pulled it off. I decided to combine my presentations since there are a lot of overlaps in SOWs for audio and video materials. So I was going to talk for about 75 minutes on audio and video and then take questions. NO BIGS. After coming to, I headed off to the airport.

As I mentioned, Digital Directions is not your typical conference. Instead of speakers, there are faculty members; presentations are focused more on teaching basics than innovations. The conference website states that its content is geared towards people possessing a beginner’s level of digital knowledge, so this is a known fact going in. I found it refreshing to be among so many people eager to learn. It is a small-ish conference with just under 200 participants which made it feel more intimate than a lot of conferences I’ve attended. Once I talked to someone, I would see them again and again throughout the conference – novel!

Day One seemed to be focused on “Ideas” and “Concepts.” As faculty members, we were encouraged to attend all sessions and mingle with participants during the breaks to chat and answer questions. I enjoyed the presentations and talking with attendees about their collections and concerns. The faculty also committed to a box lunch session, where participants could sign up to eat with us to discuss our separate specialties. This was almost more nerve wracking than the presentation! Since I was covering both the audio and video presentations, I had about eight people sign up to have lunch with me. It was actually pretty great! I found my group to be very engaging and to have interesting questions. They came from all over the country (with one from the Caribbean!) and worked in very different environments. I really enjoyed hearing about their issues with and thoughts on their collections and I hope I was able to help them in some small way on their journeys.

Day Two seemed to delve deeper into more technical details. I was slated to present on Day Two after lunch. Why do I always have to present after lunch? Well folks, I think I did pretty well. I started off kind of stiff and uncomfortable, but I could feel myself relaxing the farther I got into my presentation. I also had a lot of audiovisual examples to play, which always helps! Attendees had some very intelligent questions at the end and I think I was able to answer them well. Win!

Fundamentals of Creating and Managing Digital Collections

Join a faculty of national experts, experienced digital collections curators, and colleagues from institutions large and small for 2 ½ days of exploration and discussion about the creation of good digital objects, collections, and initiatives. Network with colleagues who have similar challenges, interact with faculty one-on-one, gain a comprehensive introduction to digitization, and visit one of America’s greatest cities. See you in Portland!