PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 16, March 2, 2006

Grant, gifts enable UI Library to preserve endangered materials

By Andrea Lynn, News Bureau Staff Writer
217-333-2177; andreal@illinois.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer A sitch in time Last year, library staff treated more than 17,900 books and 9,131 unbound materials. A larger, better-equipped conservation lab is under construction and is expected to speed turnaround time, reducing the backlog of books and other materials awaiting conservation.

Thousands of endangered materials spanning at least seven centuries will be rescued at the UI Library.

A $700,000 preservation grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and contributions of $1.4 million from more than 1,000 “Library Friends” will support the preservation of the at-risk works.

The Mellon grant, awarded in 2001, was contingent on Illinois raising twice the amount. By the end of last year, in less than four years total, Illinois’ Library Friends across the United States raised the required $1.4 million. The combined sum of $2.1 million will form an endowment to help support the Library’s mission of preserving its holdings. This support will provide staff for the Library’s Preservation and Conservation Program, in particular, a special collections conservator, a conservation technician and two graduate assistants.

An additional outright gift of $300,000 from Mellon is being used to design and equip a world-class conservation laboratory for items desperately in need of treatment. Valuable primary resources, such as manuscripts and early maps, as well as general books that circulate widely, will be targeted for preservation within the new facility.

“The University Library is privileged to hold magnificently rich collections,” said Paula Kaufman, university librarian. “The Mellon grant and our Friends’ contributions are allowing us to match these collections with a high-quality, vigorous preservation program.”

Until recently, Kaufman said, the library’s focus had been “much more clearly” on building collections than ensuring that those collections would be accessible to future generations. A stronger focus on preservation activities began five years ago.

“While we’ve had many preservation activities throughout the decades, there had not been, until then, a focused, comprehensive program.”

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Primary care Tom Teper, preservation librarian, is in charge of a new program focused on preserving thousands of endangered books and other materials at the UI Library. With grants and gifts totaling $2.1 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and more than 1,000 Library Friends, Teper is designing and equipping the Conservation Lab, which will preserve valuable primary resources such as manuscripts and early maps as well as books that circulate widely.

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer Pressing work Elizabeth Berfield, a graduate student in library science, sews a book together using a press in the Conservation Lab of the Library. Books processed in the Conservation Lab go into long-term storage, which is temperature controlled, at the library’s Oak Street facility.

Without such a program, Illinois depended on outside conservators for work on many pieces, including those of early writers such as John of Wales, Bernard of Clairvaux and Raymond of Sabunde.

Modern-age works from writers such as Proust, Sandburg and H.G. Wells, whose papers Illinois holds, also will receive their share of tender loving care.

The University Library has the largest public university collection in the world. Its holdings of more than 23 million items are valued conservatively at $1.5 billion. Yet nearly 40 percent of its collections is at risk of physical deterioration.

Deterioration is an inherent enemy of library collections, said Tom Teper, preservation librarian at Illinois, the person in charge of the new program.

 “It’s always a challenge, because the vast majority of materials in a library are organic, and organic materials decay.”
The primary culprit is the high acid content of most paper used in scholarly publications since the mid-1850s, Teper said. Complicating the situation is the fact that paper from the 18th century has one life span, while the composition of paper from the 19th and 20th centuries gives it a different life span.

Poor environmental conditions – temperature, light, humidity – also pose threats to collections. Ultraviolet light and radiant heat weaken bindings and bleach cloth, Teper said, adding that the general stacks, home to more than 5 million volumes, are largely without air-conditioning, and large portions of the Library’s special collections require improved conditions.

Design and construction of the conservation lab, in the Library’s high-density storage facility, has begun. Specialized equipment, such as conservators’ sinks and benches, is being purchased. The lab should be operating this summer.

“The space we had was woefully inadequate for the institution,” Teper conceded, noting that lack of space affects workflow. While some peer institutions have a 24-hour turnaround time, Illinois’ limited space and staff combined to cause up to a four-month delay for general collections conservation.

“To have a conservation lab commensurate with the many needs of the University Library means that we will be able to give the collections the preservation care they deserve and need. These items represent a tremendous investment.”

Last year – and under far less than ideal conditions – the Library worked hard to treat 17,918 books and 9,131 unbound sheets (maps, for example, and other types of manuscript items); it de-acidified 2,100 books; sent 41,028 volumes to be commercially bound; made facsimile copies of 279 books; and microfilmed 90,000 images.

Wary of the backlog that still exists, but encouraged by the additional staff members and new space, Teper said, “We’ll be able to ratchet up our progress quite a bit.”

Preserving campus history changing in digital age
By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@illinois.edu

Click photo to enlarge Photo by L. Brian Stauffer History buffs University archivist William J. Maher, left, and Christopher Prom, associate archivist, display volumes of the Illio, the UI yearbook, which are among the University Archives’ collections. The archivists are digitizing photos, manuscripts and other materials and making them available online to broaden access to them. The collection, management and preservation of digital records pose new challenges for archivists.

The migration from pen-and-paper based correspondence and records systems to digitized communications and records is creating a new set of challenges for the people responsible for documenting the history of the UI, say staff members of the University Archives.

Established in 1963, the University Archives has more than 15 million historical manuscripts, the largest collection in Illinois, including office records, publications and personal papers from past university presidents; alumni such as sculptor Loredo Taft and UI football coach Bob Zuppke; and more than 500,000 photographs and 3,500 sound recordings, all indexed and described in 12,181 pages of finding aids in a Web-based management system.

While electronic records are not quite as vulnerable to rodents, dust and insects, the nemeses of photographs and paper, such records are less tolerant of adverse environmental conditions, and digitized information faces a threat that paper doesn’t: the rapid obsolescence of hardware and software systems that can hamper retrieval, decoding and viewing later on.

While boxes of paper files often take a decades-long, circuitous route – from file cabinet, to closet, to basement or attic – getting from college offices to the archives, digitized information could be available to archivists, scholars and the public almost immediately. Although archivists respect the needs for privacy and control of sensitive information, “we do believe firmly that the only reason these materials exist is so that they can be here to be used by researchers, faculty members, students and others,” said William J. Maher, university archivist. “Documentation of the university by electronic media is increasing, and the only way to address it is with an administrative structure that establishes a plan for managing the electronic records at the time that systems are designed and created, so that when the information is first in-put and becomes a record, there’s a process and plan in place that indicates what’s going to happen to that item in the future.”

Managing digital records requires a convergence of information technology systems administrators, librarians, archivists, faculty and records managers, and “the lines are very blurred in terms of whose responsibility it is to do which part of managing the information,” said Joanne Kaczmarek, the archivist for electronic records.

Kaczmarek, who joined the archives’ staff a few years ago to address electronic records management issues, is among the participants in the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program, a collaborative initiative led by the Library of Congress aimed at developing policies, standards and technology for the preservation of digital content. Among the work being done at Illinois is the construction and testing software tools designed from an archivist’s perspective. Kacmzarek will be testing project tools that can scour campus Web sites and capture historical data such as faculty directories, promotional materials and electronic newsletters.

Christopher Prom, assistant university archivist, is developing a digital repository of the archives’ photo collections that will be accessible and searchable over the Web. As researchers and other people request copies of photos, they are scanned and put into the repository, which currently contains 1,100 photos, including 125 newly added photos that document railway engineering. Ornithological surveys conducted by the Illinois Natural History Survey may be added in the near future too.

With funding from Michele Thompson, secretary of the UI Board of Trustees,  Prom is digitizing the board’s proceedings. The board proceedings and the initial portion of the photo repository should become available online within the next few months, Prom said. Other collections that are slated for digitzation include the Sousa Archives, the James B. Reston papers and the 3rd Armored Division Association’s World War II materials.

Web sites about student organizations and collegiate life are being preserved  through a research project funded by the National Historic Publications and Records Commission.

Kaczmarek is working with the Facilities and Services Division on records management strategies, including an initiative aimed at making original sketches and drawings of campus buildings available to the public online.

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