Michele Hamill

Our new cart for transporting posters, architectural drawings, photographs and maps arrived this week. We have long struggled to transport oversize collection materials safely between the Conservation Lab and the Rare and Manuscripts Collections (RMC). It was 2-person job to navigate through 6 doorways (all different widths), tight turns and 2 elevators with standard flat beds. It wasn’t good for the collections or for our backs!

Thanks to our wonderful colleague Wendy McPhee, conservator for the Toronto Public Library, who alerted us to G.S. Manufacturing in Canada, we now have a custom-built transport cart that safely supports 36” x 48” (and larger) folders in the “U” of the cart, full size cartons on the bottom shelf or additional flat materials, and has a removable lid which can also serve as a work surface.

We have been treating and rehousing several poster collections in the Conservation Lab recently which will now be able to be safely and efficiently returned to RMC with the new cart. WWI and WWII propaganda posters were a visually appealing public campaign to mobilize citizens to the needs of war, unify support, and motivate patriotism. Subjects for the posters included conservation and rationing, recruiting, war bonds, and the perils of careless talk, among others.

The WWII posters arrived in the lab in a tight, flattened bundle. In this state, they were not able to be used by researchers, processed by RMC staff, or safely housed.

With conservation treatment, these oversize posters (3’ x 4’ and larger) are transformed into a spectacular resource.

Unlike the WWI and WWII propaganda posters which were meant for display in public, WWII Newsmaps, produced weekly during the war years, were created for display in military installations to inform and update troops with recent war developments.

The Newsmaps, like the posters, were inaccessible due to being tightly rolled for decades. The Newsmaps on the outside of the roll were badly damaged with numerous tears. As you can imagine, the paper used for weekly Newsmaps in a time of war, was not high-grade and is now brittle and easily torn.

After cleaning, humidification and flattening, and tear and loss stabilization, the Newsmaps are ready for return to RMC to be made available to researchers.

With 2 more rolls of Newsmaps to treat and rehouse, we’ll look forward to many happy returns to RMC with our new transport cart that fits through all doorways and elevators and drives like a dream!

Tre Berney

During the American Library Association’s Preservation Week (April 26-May 2, 2015) libraries all over the country present events, activities, and resources that highlight what we can do, individually and together, to preserve our personal and shared history. To start off Preservation Week 2015, Tre Berney, Multimedia Specialist at Cornell University Library, is sharing his expertise in audio-visual preservation with the following blog post.  Tre designed and established the Library’s digitization lab to digitize fragile recordings and older legacy formats and he is the heading up a campus-wide AV census as part of a larger AV initiative partnering the library with Cornell IT. He works closely with Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology, Indiana University, Audio/Visual Preservation Solutions, Syracuse University, UCLA, Columbia and the Library of Congress. Thank you, Tre, for collaborating with us for Preservation Week 2015! –Michele Hamill

First of all, I’m honored to be a guest on our Library’s Conservation Department blog, as they are a great team doing magical things. When discussing audiovisual preservation and the big issues facing possible catastrophic loss of materials on magnetic media, proper conservation becomes even more important as we chart out solutions that may emerge from our campus-wide AV Preservation Initiative.

Both UNESCO’s Blue Ribbon Task Force publication (Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet, 2010) and the Library Of Congress are estimating that the vast majority of materials housed on magnetic tapes (cassettes, open-reel audiotape, VHS, etc.) will be lost in the next 10 years due to degradation and playback obsolescence. This includes materials ranging from field recordings of cultural events in dying languages to your own home movies of grandparents or children.

Cornell University Library’s Collection Development Executive Committee has set up a preservation fund (allocated though a grant-based system) awarded to save fragile, unique, and heavily used collections and, due to issues with legacy AV content, a lot of that fund has gone to digitization of AV collections. As an example, I’m currently working on digitizing a large collection of VHS tapes for the Africana Library of unique lectures given at Cornell in the past. Last year, this collection was moved to the annex, as they are the only copies in existence and are no longer in circulation.

While preservation and digitization is key to older formats, it’s also incredibly challenging for digital formats as well. Digital content, while often easier to use and access in a lot of cases, is incredibly fragile and subject to many problems such as bit rot and errors, proprietary and complex formats and file types, and costly storage. In reality the world is creating digital content at a staggering pace, resulting in petabytes of possibly important or disposable content. How do we deal with this in our work or even in our personal collections of video or photos?

The Library of Congress has provided a thorough resource for individuals to get a handle on the digital content they are creating, as well as digitizing to share with family and friends across the globe. This is a rapidly increasing need of people everywhere, but how do we decide what do we keep and how much? Witness.org stands out as a good example of an organization that is also promoting a more curatorial culture for our content at large, and for a purpose. They provide a guide to archiving content from a journalism/activist perspective, from creation to preservation and access.

Working in a memory institution, I often feel like I’m helping usher content from the past into the future and that is a tremendously gratifying feeling. ‘This work will outlive us,’ is something I often hear said in libraries and archives and while that is true, there is a huge amount of effort and a lot of tough decisions that go into conservation, preservation, and access. Whether it’s a beautiful tome from the 17^th century or video of one of the last known public appearances of Jimmy Hoffa, it takes detailed work, resources, and careful planning to keep these things alive. In reality, history is written by every one of us. What’s your story?

Michele Hamill

The Stephen and Beth Loewentheil Family Photographic Collection is a spectacular photograph resource in the Rare and Manuscripts Division, Cornell University Library. Abraham Lincoln, the most photographed American in the 19^th century, is well represented in the collection in a variety of photographic processes. Abraham Lincoln understood the value of photography in his political role and as a face of the nation.  He actively sought having his photograph taken and distributed, resulting in photograph types and formats with a remarkable range of appearance, color, texture, and condition. His portraits, recently treated and rehoused in the Conservation Lab, showcase the exceptional value of the Loewentheil collection to explore different 19^th and 20^th century photographic processes and formats from many vantage points. Take a tour of some prominent photographic processes and formats through the iconic image of Abraham Lincoln. A summary of the processes can be found here.

The Loewentheil collection, which brings together a number of Lincoln portraits, has given us the opportunity to develop effective preservation strategies by assessing how each photograph was made, its inherent vulnerabilities, and how it has been affected by time and use. It is a distinct pleasure to work with this collection in the Conservation Lab and contribute to making it available for research, use and instruction.  The Loewentheil photograph collection is particularly rich in the Civil War, African American life, and the rise of the hand-colored photograph.

To learn more about the Loewentheil Collection see: Dawn’s Early Light: The First 50 Years of American Photography (http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/DawnsEarlyLight/index.html).  For more information about identifying and comparing photographic processes, see: http://www.graphicsatlas.org/

J.M. Iacchei

 
Above: Bara la bruja

We thought it a fitting time of year to highlight Cornell Library’s world class Witchcraft Collection, specifically the Witchcraft in Popular Culture subdivision.

Those of you familiar with Harry Potter may recognize Reparo as the Mending Charm:

“The Mending Charm will repair broken objects with a flick of the wand. Accidents do happen, so it is essential to know how to mend our errors.

– from the Book of Spells, (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Mending_Charm)

With hundreds of vintage movie posters, movie stills, and promotional materials depicting Witchcraft in Popular Culture (including Harry Potter movie posters and memorabilia) a mending charm in the Conservation Lab would be put to good use!

Laurent Ferri, Curator, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC), is leading the initiative to expand the Witchcraft Collection begun at Cornell in the late 19th century to encompass “Witchcraft in Popular Culture.” Laurent kindly provided a brief overview of this collection, its significance to scholarship, and importantly, the reason as to why it was necessary to branch out from the original collection, mostly 17th and 18th century bound volumes, into the new terrain of popular culture.

Here are a few words from Laurent:

Since 2012, we have assembled a unique and spectacular collection of approximately 490 pieces of vintage witchcraft-and possession-related movie material covering the period from 1916 through 2015 — that is, 99 years of outstanding material documenting the cultural impact of witchcraft and possession through the history of world cinema.

This is the perfect complement to the Witchcraft Collection started by A.D. White in the 1880s, as today affordable demonology treaties and witchcraft trial records appear less frequently on the market, and more researchers choose popular culture as their field of inquiry.

Numbered #4781 in RMC, “Witchcraft- and Possession-Related Movie Posters, Lobby Cards, and other Cinema Memorabilia, 1916-2015” is a great resource for the study of the rich iconography of witches. It also offers an opportunity to reflect on film genres and sub-genres as defined by the film industry, critics, and censors (“horror film”, “nunsploitation film”, “adult movie”, etc…). Given the graphic imagery and permanent recycling of erotic stereotypes, it could be used in conjunction with Cornell’s vast Human Sexuality Collection as well.

These striking, colorful, and often very large items are gradually making their way to the conservation lab for treatment – cleaning, pressure sensitive tape removal, stabilization of weakened or torn areas, and humidification and flattening prior to storage. Overall, these items are of great variety in both their physical characteristics (dimension, support, and condition) as well as their artistic and graphic styles.

Laurent also points out the significant aesthetic quality of the collection “…movie poster design is an art, sometimes. Take, for instance, Bill Gold,  who worked in the art department of Warner Bros and produced more than 1,000 posters until his retirement in 2004. The poster for “The Exorcist” (1973) serves its purpose perfectly: it points to the tradition of the American “film noir”, and it is inviting but not a spoiler. Another “masterwork” is the minimalist and eerie poster for “Rosemary’s baby” (1968)…the president of the advertising company Young and Rubicam, Stephen Frankfurt (a kind of Don Draper in “Mad Men”) is often credited with the choice (and, perhaps, the idea).”

Another masterwork of poster art is “…Giuseppe Bassan’s poster for “Suspiria” (1977), which is reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley’s decadent illustrations for Salome (1893) — they both evoke what’s been termed by some art historians “aesthetic Satanism”.

 Here is one example of a treatment carried out for this collection:

The poster below was printed on a wood pulp paper. Overtime it had become increasingly brittle and discolored from acid degradation. It had also, at one time, been stored folded leaving extremely fragile and weakened areas along the folds. As you can see, it became separated along the folds into five frail pieces.

Left: Before Treatment; Right: During Treatment, blotter washing

Each individual piece was blotter washed (to provide support during aqueous treatment when the wood pulp paper is extremely fragile),  flattened, and dried underweight before being pieced back together with a thin Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste. This treatment reduced the acidity and brittleness of the paper support, making handling much less precarious. In a more stable condition, this is one of the many items of the Witchcraft in Popular Culture collection now accessible for use.

Or maybe I just said “Charta Reparo!”

Above: After Treatment

More information about the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection can be found here: http://digital.library.cornell.edu/w/witch/

Also of interest is a current exhibit, co-curated by Laurent, at the Johnson Museum of Art, Surrealism and Magic. More about the exhibit can be found here: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/surrealismandmagic/

By: Michele Hamill and Jill Iacchei

Opening on October 17, 2014, a new exhibit in the Hirshland Exhibit Gallery, Carl A. Kroch Library, celebrates Cornell University’s Sesquicentennial.

The original linen drawings for the University Library (now known as Uris Library) were treated in the Conservation Lab for the exhibit. The University Library, as well as several other campus buildings, was designed by Cornell’s first architecture student, William Henry Miller, and is known as his masterpiece.

The South Elevation of the University Library—the view when walking up Ho Plaza toward the Arts Quad.

The linen (or tracing cloth) drawings of the University Library are well over a hundred years old but remain remarkably beautiful and resilient. Tracing cloth was a strong, durable and translucent support, sturdier than tracing paper. It retained its strength and flexibility and could endure heavy handling and rolling, an important attribute for working drawings such as elevations and floor plans.

Commonly called linens, the tracing cloth was predominantly made from cotton which was free of lumps and imperfections. The plain woven cloth was heavily coated with starch, making the coated cloth more resistant to tearing than untreated cloth or paper. The coated cloth was then heavily calendared by pressing through hard rollers to compact the fabric and create a very smooth, glossy, drawing surface.

A detail of the clock face showing how the smooth surface provided an ideal coating to take ink and produce sharp, crisp lines. Notice anything different from clock drawing and the actual clock?

The University Library drawings have accent watercolor applied to the verso of the drawings, as seen in this detail of the spiral staircase of the clock tower, which results in subtle shading to select parts of the drawing. The color was applied to the back of the drawings to avoid disrupting the inked images which rest on the surface of the starch coating and were very sensitive to moisture.

Detail, main doors, East Elevation.

Working drawings were not elaborately colored, but were selectively tinted with flat, simple washes of color. A standard color code was used by architects to clarify structure and to indicate the construction materials —red indicates brick, ochre denotes wood, and blue indicates iron.

Drafting manuals from the late 19^th century specified that red ink should routinely be used to indicate distance marks, as seen in the left of this detail of the West Elevation. Notice how the word “IRON” is written to the left and right of the window, as well as the area tinted blue. Because the tinted color did not reproduce in the blueprints made from the linen drawings, the drafter also indicated the construction materials through words or symbols.

This detail shows the metal work for the A.D. White Library which is housed inside the University Library. Drawings on tracing cloth served as the master for making expendable blueprints for workmen to use on-site. Linen drawings can have an overall blue or blue-grey tint, as seen here, due to colorant added to increase their transparency to the actinic (photosensitive) light needed to produce blueprints.

This albumen photograph, cleaned and stabilized for the exhibit, shows the interior of the A.D. White Library with the magnificent metal work conceived in the drawings.

The drawing for the East Elevation and the 1891 albumen photograph showing the north and east elevations of the completed building.

The treatment of the University Library drawings included surface cleaning, removal of old, failing repairs, stabilization, and flattening. The linen drawings responded well to treatment and will continue to serve as a historical record, as A.D. White asserted, of ‘the best academic library built’.

Thank you to Rhea Garen, Lead Photographer DCAPS, for providing the elevation images seen above.

The Sesquicentennial exhibit showcases a wealth of photographs, memorabilia, and documents depicting the inspiring history of Cornell University.  For more information on the Sesquicentennial exhibit, see: http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/events/current_exhibitions.html