New from the NEDCC: Preservation Education Curriculum

[Photo by Flickr user wallyg used in accordance with a Creative Commons license]

I had the opportunity to sit in on a couple of preservation discussion groups at this year’s annual ALA conference. One of them was the “Preservation Instruction, Education and Outreach Discussion Group (PIEDOG)”, which was moderated by PIEDOG chair, Adrienne Bell. During the discussion, Lori Foley (Director of Field Service for the NEDCC) announced the launch of a new website devoted to providing a free resource for preservation education. The project was funded by the IMLS and will be composed of 13 three-hour courses, available for free from the Northeast Document Conservation Center’s website.

“For the first time, instructors at graduate schools of librarianship and archives can find lesson outlines, resources, activities, assignments, and images – all in one place.

Lesson plans cover the following topics:

• Introduction to Preservation
• Context for the Cultural Record
• Strucutre and Deterioration of Paper-based Materials
• Structure and Deterioration of Multimedia Materials
• Building-wide concerns
• Collections Care
• Survey and Assessments
• Treatment Options
• Preservation Reformatting
• Creating Sustainable Digital Collections
• Building a Preservation Program
• Disaster Planning”

You can access the Preservation Education Curriculum from the NEDCC’s website. They also have a comprehensive “Preservation 101″ online course available.

PSA: No French fries in the library!

Passive Aggressive Notes

Originally uploaded by Miss Martini

A library-themed gem from Passive Aggressive Notes.

Can finals be over yet?

Amazing Pop-Up Book!

Check out this video of a really awesome pop-up alphabet book by Marion Bataille.  

This week(end) at the Kilgarlin Center

Don’t forget to join us for a Kilgarlin Center Forum this Friday at 4:30pm in the conference room (556) of the Sanchez Building.  Alums Tish Brewer and Shannon Phillips will be presenting a talk entitled, “Starting a Private Practice in Paper Conservation”.

 Also, if you haven’t already, it’s time to hit up the grocery store and create your entry for Saturday’s Edible Book Festival!  The festivities will take place on the front porch of the Collections Deposit Library.

   

Kilgarlin Forum for March 28

Please come to the Kilgarlin Forum on Friday, March 28th to hear alums Tish Brewer and Shannon Phillips speak about their experience as conservators in private practice in Dallas.  In the meantime, check out their blog and their website!

Eat this book!

Spring is upon us, and once again it’s time for the EDIBLE BOOK FESTIVAL! The festival will take place on March 29th, from 2-4pm at the Kilgarlin Center.  All entries need to be submitted by 1:45pm that day.  Prizes will be awarded in the following categories:

• Best in show
• Wittiest
• Tastiest
• Best Book Structure
• Least Appetizing 

More information can be had from the Edible Book Festival website.  Bon appétit!

Old Ways Bookmaking and Tool Workshops by Jim Croft

If you’re interested in learning how to make a historical wooden-board model from start to finish, then you can’t go wrong with Jim Croft’s intensive Old Ways class being held this summer.  The tool intensive workshop runs from June 24 – June 25, and the bookmaking workshop goes from June 26-July 11.  Here’s a list, taken from his website, of some of the things he’ll teach in the bookmaking class:

Toolmaking and sharpening: Two Days Elk & deer bone folders Locally gathered & cured wood awls Tool sharpening & maintenance Fiber from stem to thread: Two Days Learn to process local, imported, sorted, sordid, and recycled hemp & flax Also work with material taken from seed to thread and from fiber to rag or at least stalk to thread Linen fire hose processing Making lye from ash Wood-fired lye cooking, retting, braking & scutching, Hackling, spinning, plying & natural bleaching Hand-cutting fiber

Papermaking: Three Days Using hemp, flax, and cotton pulps Comparisons and contrasts of the beater Meeting the water-powered stamp mill Gelatin tub sizing and wet gelatin pressing Loft drying in spurs Hand burnishing Bookmaking with Wooden Boards and Clasps: Five Days Find, harvest, and cure your local woods and learn quarter splitting from the block Sawing, hewing, and shaping by hand or take the easier route board shaping by machine Sawn and planed boards will be cut to length and shaped with rasp, file, plane, hand drill, knife, etc. Learn to tell if a piece of wood would or would not co-operate with your book Plus, learn to form and fit the formerly commonplace, but now often neglected or even negated need for brass clasps

 Third-year students, Elizabeth Bittner and Brenna Campbell, took the class last summer.  Jim Croft visited us here in Austin last January for an amazing tool-making workshop.  Nothing compares to a bonefolder you’ve made yourself, to fit YOUR hand!  

Child-Assisted Paper Destruction

Watch in horror (or amusement) as a child facilitates the wanton destruction of innocent pieces of paper!  Watch this movie at your own risk!    

Tutorial: Bookbinding with Google Books

Photo by Flickr User jimbarter

NOTE: Previously, I stated that you could only do Google Bookbinding with Adobe Acrobat Professional.  I have since realized that this is a fallacy – you can do most of the tutorial with just the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.  But, by using Acrobat Reader, you will NOT be able to delete or otherwise modify pages in your Google Book. So, due to popular demand, I have written up a tutorial about how to print out Google Books for bookbinding purposes. I like to call it Google Bookbinding.  For one thing, there are many old and out of print books about bookbinding available on Google Book Search. Printing them out in this way saves paper and allows for a more authentic reading experience.For this tutorial, you will need either Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 OR Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. Current iSchool students can find it in the IT Lab, as well as the Resource Room and labs in the Kilgarlin center.

So, without further ado, click here to download the Google Bookbinding Tutorial .

LoC and Flickr Team Up to gather metadata and YOU can help!

 The Library of Congress has put up about 3000 photos from their collection onto the website Flickr, in order to gather better metadata and also improve access to their collection.  The photos posted have no known copyright restrictions.  If you’re not already a member of Flickr, you can sign up for free and help this project by adding tags to the photos.    Here is the original post from the LoC Blog, and here is the FAQ about the project.