News

Acid-Alkaline Tally of Recent Books at OSU

Ohio State University tested about 700 books published recently (1989-91) and tabulated them to show the percent acid and percent alkaline, by country, year and format (hardcover vs. paperback). Of the 28 nations represented, 82% of hardcover books for all three years were printed on alkaline paper; and 93% of hardcover books published in 1991 were on alkaline paper. For 1991, 95% of the 128 hardcover books published in the U.S. were on alkaline paper, and Germany was not far behind, with 93%. England was 88%. and Russia was 11% for 1990, the last year for which there were any numbers.

Paperbacks were less likely to be alkaline. The total for all years, all nations, was 65%. German paperbacks from 1991 were 88% alkaline- from 1990, 79%. None of the 24 books from USSR was alkaline.

All these figures are from a paper by William J. Studer in A Roundtable on Mass Deacidification (Report on a meeting held September l2-13, 1991, in Andover, Massachusetts) edited by Peter Sparks and published in 1992 by the Association of Research Libraries.

An Enclosure Film that Eats Corrosive Gases

John P. Franey of AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, has invented a "reactive" polymer that contains scavenger molecules to neutralize corrosive gas and keep it from passing through any film made of the polymer. After five years in a reactive polymer bag, according to the report in Science News for May 16, a silver spoon looked as if it had been polished that day, while a similar spoon not bagged for the same length of time was black with tarnish. The next question is, How long do they last? A bag no thicker than a plastic garbage bag would last about 30 years, then would tell you its scavenging ability was exhausted by turning dark. The material is designed to protect artifacts and electronic equipment against sulfide and chloride compounds.

Disasters & Preparedness

• Richard Frieder reported on EMail (Conservation DistList, described in the July 1990 issue of AN) that the flood caused in downtown Chicago by accidental puncturing of a tunnel next to the river caused surprisingly few problems for local libraries and archives. Perhaps this is not surprising, in view of the fact that the tunnel originally served as a passage for delivery vehicles to metropolitan businesses, not to cultural institutions.

  Kathryn DeGraff at DePaul University said April 20 that the library at their Loop Campus was flooded on the bottom two floors, and that it might take them another two weeks to get it pumped out.

• Early December 20, the New York State Library suffered its fourth flood in 10 years from leaky plumbing, this time from a frozen pipe in the ninth floor air conditioning system. The water rained down on the microform collection on the seventh floor, damaging several hundred drawers of microfilm and tens of thousands of microfiche items. Staff and volunteers worked from 6:15 the first day until seven at night; work continued Saturday, Monday and Tuesday. Only about two dozen microfiche and one roll of film were lost. In this case, the HVAC and alarm systems malfunctioned but the disaster control plan worked nicely. A new thermostat system, which should be installed by now, was expected to prevent future such problems.
• Three papers at the IIC-CG Conference, May 29-31, concern the flood at the Canadian National Archives. Greg Hill discussed the event, the recovery operation and the postmortem recommendations; Maria Bedynski and Mary Buske had a paper on the conservation treatment of affected rare atlases; and Lynn Curry and Frida Kalbfleisch had a paper on the conservation of rare atlas bindings.

Microfilming as a Form of Prospective Preservation

Four research libraries in New York State have gotten a grant to put on a one-day symposium at Syracuse University to explore the topic of prospective preservation microfilming for current serials on poor quality paper. Emphasis will be not on how to do the microfilming, but how and whether to do it cooperatively. The target audience will be representatives of the "Big 11" research libraries in New York State. The announcement does not say whether others may attend, but a detailed report on the symposium will be published and distributed widely.

Educational Events

• Eight European and two American museums and educational institutions are organized into the nonprofit International Academic Projects (IAP), to promote education and research in conservation and related fields. Every summer the IAP Summer Schools Programme offers about 40 short intensive courses in different places in Europe, which continue the series offered by the University of London's Institute of Archaeology Summer Schools. IAP is also the organization that offers the correspondence course "Chemistry for Conservators." The American IAP contact is John Maseman (305/785-7512). Courses given this year include English for Conservators, Identification of Papermaking Materials, and Medieval Manuscripts, all given in London July 6-10; Bookbinding Structures, London July 13-17; and Conservation of Skins and Leather, London July 20-24. Cost varies from $575 to $900 for each five-day course.
• Preconference workshops at the SAA meeting in Montreal include "Security in Archives and Manuscript Repositories" (taught by Richard Strassberg and Mary Bowling, 9-5 Sept. 12); "Photographic Collections Management" (instructor not identified; 9-5 Sept. 11 and 8 to noon Sept. 12); and "Architectural Records: Identification, Preservation, and Access" (taught by Tawny Ryan Nelb, 9-5 Sept. 12). Contact the SAA office for details.
• The course on "Care of Collections" at the Campbell Center this summer was canceled.

New Training Programs

• The Society of American Archivists (SAA) has adopted the training method used successfully in University of California Libraries to prepare carefully selected staff for new preservation responsibilities and build a cadre of potential leaders in the profession. Trainees will spend only 18 days total (three six-day workshops) with the instructor, but they will undertake assignments both before the program begins and between workshops, systematically building up preservation programs at their home institutions. The fee ($750) will be paid by the institution, not the individual. Preservation management will be taught from the beginning as an integral part of archival management.

  The first series of three workshops will be given in the fall, and will be repeated three times in different parts of the country between 1992 and 1994. For information contact Evelyn Frangakis, Preservation Program Director, Society of American Archivists, 600 S. Federal, Suite 504, Chicago, IL 60605 (312/922-0140).

• A two-year School of the Science and Art of Bookbinding (Scuola di scienza e arte della legatura) has been established in Vicenza (between Venice and Milan) at the Biblioteca Bertoliana. Martino Mardersteig is on the faculty, and will teach historical and technical aspects of graphic arts. For information, write Scuola di scienza ed arte della legatura, Palazzo Costantini, Contra Riale 13,36100 Vicenza (Fax 011 39 444-323832). It will probably be taught in Italian.
• The Fulbright Scholar Program offers an opportunity for librarians and archivists to broaden their professional perspective and enhance cross-cultural skills and insights at a degree-awarding institution or major research library in the United Kingdom. The purpose of the award is to promote the exchange of ideas between library staff in the US and UK Application deadline is August 1, 1992. For more information about requirements and application and selection criteria, contact Dr. Karen Adams (202/686-6245) or Ms. Thitaya Rivera (202/686-2329) or write to the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, 3007 Tilden St., NW, Suite 5M, Box N-UKL, Washington, DC. (No zip code was given in this notice, which appeared on EMail.)
• The Hungarian National Museum Conservation Department (formerly the National Centre of Museums) set up a one-year course of study in collections care ("store-keeping") in January of 1989. This is the first such program in Hungary. Students learn museology, the nature of materials, climate control, lighting, packing, sound exhibition practices, and both traditional and computerized catalog systems. The program has proven to be quite popular. It is described in a 1991 issue of the Museum's publication, Mutargyvedelem.

Four North Bennet Grads Ready in June

At the end of June, North Bennet Street School will graduate four students from the two-year Bookbinding program. These graduates have completed training in advanced bookbinding methods as well as repair and simple restoration and conservation techniques, leather binding and gold tooling. The School trains bookbinders for positions as hand binders in custom shops production shops, and university or institutional binderies and conservation departments. For information contact the Student Services Department at North Bennet Street School, 39 North Bennet St., Boston, MA 02113 (617/227-0155, ext. 15). The program is headed by Mark Esser, a widely respected bookbinder who served a traditional apprenticeship under Bill Anthony.

Competitions

Two commercial binding companies, one in England and one in the U.S., are offering prizes for work in preservation or conservation.

• The Conservation Division of ICI (Information Conservation, Inc.) calls its competition "Prize for a Plan." Contestants submitted plans for $3000 worth of ICI conservation services from the Division last November, and a review committee (Sharlane Grant, Eleanore Stewart and Don Etherington) selected the plan that had the best rationale for choosing the materials named, the appropriateness of the treatment chosen, and other criteria. Seventy people applied; only the winner, Normandy Helmer of the University of Oregon, got the $3000 worth of services free for her library, but she also got a personal prize of $200, and three other applicants got honorable mention and a prize of $1500 for each library and $100 in cash for the applicant. Applications will be invited again this year, and bigger prizes will be offered.
• In England, the National Preservation Office is administering a new conservation competition, sponsored by Riley Dunn and Wilson. It offers a top cash prize of £500 ($900) and two other cash prizes for conservation work on a bookbinding by a student or trainee of bookbinding or paper preservation in a UK college, or binding or conservation trainees in an institution or firm. (The announcement does not say what they mean by "paper preservation.") One or two conservation bindings, with documentation, may be submitted by July 24 to the National Preservation Office, British Library, Great Russell St., London WC1B 3DG (Tel. 071 323 7612).

Grants

• The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin has been awarded a quarter of a million dollars by the NEH for a two-year study of the mass deacidification of paper in archive and manuscript collections. The project, coordinated by the Center's Conservation and Archives departments, will result in treatment of 350 linear feet of the Center's 20th-century literary archives and manuscripts collections by Akzo Chemicals at their diethyl zinc (DEZ) treatment facility in Deer Park, Texas. The Center has a total of 27,000 linear feet of manuscripts and archives, mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries. A primary goal of the project is to develop guidelines for the identification of collections appropriate for mass deacidification, and of vulnerable items for which the treatment is not advised. The guidelines will also address problems of logistics security, and post-treatment processing. Diethyl zinc was chosen for this project partly because it does not involve solvents, which might cause inks to run. The Center had a trial shipment treated by DEZ in 1990.
• The Research Libraries Group (RLG) has been awarded $906,224 by the NEH for the third phase of a project to microfilm brittle or deteriorating volumes from key scholarly collections in the U.S. Phase Three of the Great Collections Microfilming Project will take two years, January 1992 to December 1993, and result in the filming of 11,703 volumes from the collections of five RLG member institutions. The two earlier phases of the project, which when completed in 1992 will result in the microfilming of more than 61,000 volumes from 16 RLG member institutions, were funded by NEH grants totaling over $3 million. (That works out to a $49 contribution by NEH for each book. The news release that ran on EMail did not say how much was contributed by the libraries.) The 1992-93 part of the project, however, will cost more: NEH's contribution will be $77 per book.

LSCA Title III Funds SC Preservation Education

The South Carolina State Library has launched an 18 month preservation education project designed to raise the awareness of both librarians and the public about the importance of preserving library and local history materials. It is funded by the Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA), Title III, which now identifies preservation as a priority, and administered as a project by the South Carolina Library Network, which must have pretty close ties to the State Library, because the State Library has awarded a grant (presumably of LSCA funds) to the Charleston Museum to develop the project. The plot is complicated, but the important thing to note is that federal money is helping fund this state preservation program, in which everybody seems to be involved, which is good.

K. Sharon Bennett, archivist/librarian at the Museum, will serve as the project consultant., and will conduct a series of workshops, town meetings, site surveys and preservation awareness activities aimed at a variety of audiences from library directors to the public.

Glassine

People have been wondering about glassine, and whether it is safe to use with photographs and other research library materials. They have heard that it is made translucent by treating it with sulfuric acid. Well, they can relax. It isn't made that way. The worst thing you can say about glassine is that it is made with alum and rosin, like nearly all paper used to be. Probably most market grades of glassine are made with alum and rosin at the usual pH of around 4.5. To decide whether you should use it, just test its present characteristics, the same as you would do with any other paper.

For interleaving and other uses with valuable paper items, librarians and archivists should use glassine made for archival purposes. It does exist. Paper Technologies, Inc. (25801 Obrero Dr., Mission Viejo, CA 92691, 714/768-7497) has it made to their specifications. It is not acidic. It is not buffered, though, because the calcium carbonate particles would make it opaque.

The way glassine is made transparent is to bring the fibers into such close contact with each other that the light goes through the sheet with minimal refracting or scattering. The paper becomes, in effect, solid instead of porous. It takes special handling all the way through the papermaking process, from selection of fiber type (wood fiber, not cotton, is standard) to calendering, but refining and calendering make the most difference. Extended refining (beating) fibrillates the stock more than usual and makes the fibers more flexible, which reduces the space between fibers. Calendering either repeatedly or with moisture and high heat solidifies the sheet too. The resulting sheet has low tear resistance and is very sensitive to moisture.

Glassine is used mostly for prosaic things like windows in envelopes and inner box liners for breakfast cereal. It may be laminated with film to make it strong and moisture-resistant, or even metallized. Only three companies are listed in Lockwood-Post's Directory as manufacturers of glassine: Glassine Canada in Quebec City, Nicolet Paper Co. in De Pere Wisconsin, and Westfield River Paper Co. in Lee and Russeil, Massachusetts. But other companies can, and do, make it to order for customers like Paper Technologies.

Quick Printers' Favorite Equipment

The National Association of Quick Printers and the Instant & Small Commercial Printer did a survey of equipment used in their industry, in 1991, which was reported in the February Instant Printer. The most popular high-speed copier was Xerox, with 44.9%, and Kodak was the runner-up, with 28.8%. In color copiers, Canon was far ahead of the others, with 25.5%. Most small presses by far were A B. Dick (55.3%), and most cameras by far were Itek (25.3%). GBC had the most popular binders (42.4%) but Ibico was not far behind with 27.7%, and Velobind was close too with 23.8%.

Japanese Papermaking Houses Disappearing

According to a book by Toshio Miyazawa, The Present Status of Washi Making Houses, the number of houses has been declining since 1901:

Reasons given for the decline are 1) competition from large mills, 2) availability of other materials for old uses, e.g. cloth for umbrellas, 3) increase in the cost of raw materials, 4) low profitability, 5) fewer young people going into the work, and 6) retirement of older workers.