1 00:00:01,459 --> 00:00:05,213 [music] 2 00:00:20,854 --> 00:00:26,401 [Sherry Byrne] The mission of the Preservation Department  is to ensure that the information resources we collect  3 00:00:26,401 --> 00:00:31,823 in all formats that support research and teaching at the University of Chicago   4 00:00:31,823 --> 00:00:38,455 remain available for long-term use. The Library  has extensive collections in many subject areas   5 00:00:38,455 --> 00:00:44,377 with rich holdings of rare and distinctive  collections. Preservation is a high priority   6 00:00:44,377 --> 00:00:49,841 and our programs demonstrate the Library’s  commitment to the care of these precious collections. 7 00:00:49,841 --> 00:00:55,972 Our two labs provide services that  are central to preserving and providing continued   8 00:00:55,972 --> 00:01:00,268 access to our collections for users now and into  the future. 9 00:01:00,268 --> 00:01:02,771 [Ann Lindsey] Conservation encompasses all of the  10 00:01:02,771 --> 00:01:09,235 actions taken toward the long-term preservation of  cultural heritage. Activities include examination,   11 00:01:09,235 --> 00:01:14,491 documentation, treatment, and preventative care,  supported by research and education. 12 00:01:14,491 --> 00:01:20,455 We are part of the larger set of people in a Library who are stewards of the physical object. 13 00:01:20,455 --> 00:01:27,003 We make sure that the collections are usable for our patrons  and able to be passed down to future generations.   14 00:01:27,003 --> 00:01:33,343 In order to do our work, we have to have knowledge  of how books were constructed over time and place,   15 00:01:33,343 --> 00:01:38,348 going back centuries and spanning the globe.  And we have to know how to implement repairs   16 00:01:38,348 --> 00:01:43,895 with respect for the object. I would hope that  our Library-wide collective effort will help   17 00:01:43,895 --> 00:01:49,567 to make our rich collections usable now and into  the future. But one part in particular of what we   18 00:01:49,567 --> 00:01:53,988 contribute that is different from others in the  Library, is that we are part of the historical   19 00:01:53,988 --> 00:01:59,869 conduit of bookbinding, papermaking, and printing.  In a way, we are the voice of the many anonymous   20 00:01:59,869 --> 00:02:06,459 craftspeople who came before us. We study and  illuminate their methods, reasons, and decisions.   21 00:02:06,459 --> 00:02:10,463 We understand in an intimate way  how these items were constructed   22 00:02:10,463 --> 00:02:15,885 and try to do justice to their process by learning  from what we see, and repairing or rebinding   23 00:02:15,885 --> 00:02:18,805 volumes in a respectful and sympathetic way. 24 00:02:18,805 --> 00:02:20,890 [music] 25 00:02:20,890 --> 00:02:26,855 [Christina Miranda-Izguerra] The Digitization Unit captures and converts a variety of paper-based and media materials 26 00:02:26,855 --> 00:02:31,734 to preserve,  increase access, and facilitate discoverability   27 00:02:31,734 --> 00:02:38,616 of the Library's general and special collections.  We focus on generating preservation grade files   28 00:02:38,616 --> 00:02:44,205 utilizing cultural heritage cameras and imaging  equipment. The Unit collaborates with other   29 00:02:44,205 --> 00:02:49,252 Library departments and external partners to  further strategic Library initiatives focused   30 00:02:49,252 --> 00:02:54,215 on building digital collections and supporting  digital scholarship. With digital collections you   31 00:02:54,215 --> 00:03:00,388 can conduct text analysis, georeference maps, you  can compare images of a book or material from one   32 00:03:00,388 --> 00:03:06,144 institution to another without leaving your chair,  even better you can magnify the finer details,   33 00:03:06,144 --> 00:03:10,440 things not seen with the naked eye.  Digitization not only preserves collections   34 00:03:10,440 --> 00:03:14,277 through the creation of digital surrogates  but more importantly it is transformative,   35 00:03:14,277 --> 00:03:19,574 and really enables advancements in research and  learning. The field is growing everyday and more   36 00:03:19,574 --> 00:03:23,953 focus driven technologies are being developed  specifically for cultural heritage capture.   37 00:03:25,079 --> 00:03:28,082 [music] 38 00:03:30,710 --> 00:03:37,008 [Sherry Byrne] Building of the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library has been one of the most significant steps towards   39 00:03:37,008 --> 00:03:43,097 strengthening our program for realizing our  mission. For the first time, we have dedicated   40 00:03:43,097 --> 00:03:49,729 spaces designed and well-equipped specifically  for Preservation, for the purpose of providing   41 00:03:49,729 --> 00:03:56,903 the widest range of specialized services to care  for all types of our library collections. 42 00:03:56,903 --> 00:04:03,660 Our labs have been a critical stimulus and the foundation  that has enabled the development of our programs,   43 00:04:03,660 --> 00:04:11,084 our ability to attract dedicated and specialized  staff, and increase capabilities to preserve collections. 44 00:04:11,084 --> 00:04:15,964 [Christina Miranda-Izguerra] When we moved into Mansueto, our  technology advanced dramatically. We shifted from   45 00:04:15,964 --> 00:04:22,053 flatbed scanners to high powered cameras which  enabled us to expand our services and increase productivity. 46 00:04:22,053 --> 00:04:26,599 [Ann Lindsey] We have a dedicated space for  our everyday work, but we also have space for   47 00:04:26,599 --> 00:04:32,146 our specialized equipment. We have a range of  types of treatment and analysis we can offer.   48 00:04:32,146 --> 00:04:38,069 In addition to repairing and rebinding bound  volumes, we can stabilize corrosive inks,   49 00:04:38,069 --> 00:04:44,784 identify pigments and other materials, reduce  stains, fill missing paper, as well as flatten,   50 00:04:44,784 --> 00:04:48,288 line, and mat paper objects  such as prints or maps.   51 00:04:49,831 --> 00:04:52,834 [music] 52 00:04:54,168 --> 00:05:00,300 [Elizabeth Frengel] An antiphonary, from the Latin antiphonarium, is a book that contains the musical portions   53 00:05:00,300 --> 00:05:04,762 of the Divine Office, or the daily round of  services that were performed in monasteries.   54 00:05:05,555 --> 00:05:10,601 An antiphonary is a specific type of liturgical  manuscript, one of the common categories of   55 00:05:10,601 --> 00:05:16,774 manuscripts – many of which were illuminated  – that circulated in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe. 56 00:05:16,774 --> 00:05:21,404 Other common types of illuminated  and decorated manuscripts were bibles,   57 00:05:21,404 --> 00:05:28,453 books of hours, genealogical rolls, and charters  and maps. The Antiphonarium for Matins in the   58 00:05:28,453 --> 00:05:32,874 University of Chicago Library’s collections is  typical of these types of manuscripts. 59 00:05:32,874 --> 00:05:38,713 Its sheer size and the sturdiness of its binding are good  visual indicators of how the book was used. 60 00:05:38,713 --> 00:05:44,761 It was propped on a large lectern, and the monastery’s  choir would gather around it and sing from it.   61 00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:50,308 The musical notation is large and it can be  viewed from a distance and in dim light, 62 00:05:50,308 --> 00:05:55,396 and the decorations suggest how this manuscript  was valued by the monastery that owned it.   63 00:05:57,148 --> 00:06:02,695 This particular manuscript was probably  copied in Spain between 1500 and 1600. 64 00:06:02,695 --> 00:06:09,077 The lettering is large and round, and very easy to  read. The leaves of the manuscript are made from   65 00:06:09,077 --> 00:06:14,123 parchment, which is an organic material  made from the hide of a sheep or a goat   66 00:06:14,123 --> 00:06:19,587 that undergoes a rigorous treatment process  to remove the hair and excess flesh,   67 00:06:19,587 --> 00:06:24,300 and then it undergoes stretching and bleaching  to create a smooth and durable writing surface.   68 00:06:25,718 --> 00:06:29,722 The text and musical notation would  have been copied by one or more scribes,   69 00:06:30,306 --> 00:06:33,893 and the decorated initials have penwork  would have been done by an illuminator.   70 00:06:33,893 --> 00:06:35,228 [music] 71 00:06:35,394 --> 00:06:38,064 Students and scholars have been  consulting this work for as long   72 00:06:38,064 --> 00:06:43,820 as it has been in our collections. In the  1970s, a doctoral student in Music produced   73 00:06:43,820 --> 00:06:48,991 a detailed description of the manuscript that  catalogs all the physical attributes of the book,   74 00:06:48,991 --> 00:06:53,621 including a descriptive analysis of the  materials used to make the text and the binding,   75 00:06:53,621 --> 00:06:57,875 and the student catalogued all the chants  and hymns that appear in the manuscript,   76 00:06:58,543 --> 00:07:04,590 with interpretations of the historical and  contemporary uses of that music. We retain this   77 00:07:04,590 --> 00:07:08,803 work as part of our file on the history of this  manuscript in the collections. 78 00:07:09,178 --> 00:07:15,810 The antiphonary has been the basis for theses, and undergraduate research projects, and it has been the subject   79 00:07:15,810 --> 00:07:20,690 of scholarly publications. The antiphonary  has also been used in research on historical 80 00:07:20,690 --> 00:07:28,614 music notation, paleography, Gregorian chants, medieval manuscript culture and book production, to just name a few. 81 00:07:28,614 --> 00:07:33,578 [Ann Lindsey] The Antiphonarium for Matins  came to us in virtually unusable condition,   82 00:07:33,578 --> 00:07:37,874 the textblock had completely separated from  the cover and no longer worked like a book.   83 00:07:38,207 --> 00:07:45,339 It had been rebound in the late 19th or early 20th century in a manner that was common for an average sized book. 84 00:07:45,339 --> 00:07:50,219 Since this book weighs 52  pounds, the previous repair had completely failed.   85 00:07:51,262 --> 00:07:55,892 In that previous repair, the cords that  the textblock had been sewn to were cut,   86 00:07:56,601 --> 00:08:00,855 and we decided that the only way this was  ever going to work like a book again was to   87 00:08:00,855 --> 00:08:05,902 completely disbind it and rebuild the mechanism  in the way it would have been originally bound.   88 00:08:07,069 --> 00:08:12,033 There is a specific approach to any item that  comes into conservation, which scales up or down   89 00:08:12,033 --> 00:08:16,829 to match the complexity of the object.  The first thing is to document the item,   90 00:08:16,829 --> 00:08:22,543 both photographically and in a written condition  report. There is a progression that a condition   91 00:08:22,543 --> 00:08:28,382 report follows that allows the conservator to  discover problems and propose solutions. 92 00:08:28,382 --> 00:08:33,721 Once the problems are isolated, you can determine  first whether the treatment is advisable,   93 00:08:33,721 --> 00:08:39,101 and then how to proceed. For the antiphonary, we  could tell how it had been constructed from   94 00:08:39,101 --> 00:08:41,979 physical evidence we found while examining it. 95 00:08:41,979 --> 00:08:45,733 [Melina Avery] I  was the lead conservator in treating this volume.   96 00:08:45,733 --> 00:08:50,947 The volume was originally constructed in a  similar way to other volumes from its time period,   97 00:08:50,947 --> 00:08:56,285 so we were not reconstructing a highly unusual  structure. We had repaired books like this before,   98 00:08:56,285 --> 00:08:58,704 but of course they were much smaller. 99 00:08:58,704 --> 00:09:02,542 [Ann Lindsey] This volume  was so much larger than the equipment we have.   100 00:09:02,542 --> 00:09:08,256 In the past, we came up with solutions for larger  books, but nothing we’ve worked on was this large.  101 00:09:08,256 --> 00:09:15,179 Thirty three by twenty two by five inches  and over 50 pounds. We did find references   102 00:09:15,179 --> 00:09:19,892 to some equipment that was large enough for  this book, but those pieces were in museums. 103 00:09:19,892 --> 00:09:24,272 We couldn’t find anything we could purchase. We  realized that if we were going to accomplish this   104 00:09:24,272 --> 00:09:26,607 treatment, we would have to build the equipment. 105 00:09:26,607 --> 00:09:29,402 [Melina Avery] The broken rebinding was removed. 106 00:09:29,402 --> 00:09:35,491 Many pages were loose and needed to be cleaned and damage repaired. Additionally, numerous pages had   107 00:09:35,491 --> 00:09:40,538 been sliced out for unknown reasons, and we had to  reattach them to the other halves of their folios.   108 00:09:41,581 --> 00:09:46,836 This was a perfect opportunity for digitization,  since individual folios were possible to capture   109 00:09:46,836 --> 00:09:53,884 in a way that the 52 pound bound volume was not. Once  the antiphonary was returned from digitization,   110 00:09:53,884 --> 00:09:59,348 we resewed it onto large cords that we made from  linen thread. These cords were custom made in the   111 00:09:59,348 --> 00:10:04,478 lab to match the size of the original cords, and  they are strong enough to support a book of this size. 112 00:10:04,478 --> 00:10:08,858 Such cords are not available commercially,  which is why we make them ourselves. 113 00:10:08,858 --> 00:10:15,239 Also, during sewing, new parchment flyleaves were sewn on. The original flyleaf endsheets were either missing,   114 00:10:15,239 --> 00:10:20,286 or the book had never had them, which leaves the  first and last pages vulnerable to damage. 115 00:10:20,286 --> 00:10:25,708 After resewing the book, we pressed the textblock to the  shape it needed to be in to fit back into its case   116 00:10:25,708 --> 00:10:31,172 and we lined the spine. The size was perfect, which  was lucky because often a book will not easily   117 00:10:31,172 --> 00:10:36,677 fit back into its case after conservation treatment.  The case had the old cords still laced into it's   118 00:10:36,677 --> 00:10:41,098 wooden boards, and they had to be painstakingly  removed so the new cords could be laced in.   119 00:10:41,724 --> 00:10:46,145 Heavy cotton flanges were also glued to the  spine, to help attach the textblock to the case.   120 00:10:46,771 --> 00:10:49,899 We decided not to glue the spine  of the textblock to the case,   121 00:10:49,899 --> 00:10:54,779 so the strength of the attachment would depend  on the cords, the flanges, and the new flyleaves.   122 00:10:55,321 --> 00:10:59,158 The flyleaves were sewn to the textblock  with stubs which could be adhered directly   123 00:10:59,158 --> 00:11:03,746 to the wooden boards, under the lifted pastedown  endsheet which was adhered back over the stub.   124 00:11:04,455 --> 00:11:08,459 The cotton flanges were adhered to the wooden  boards on the other side, under the lifted   125 00:11:08,459 --> 00:11:13,339 leather, which was also glued back down. This  triple-strength board attachment, as well as   126 00:11:13,339 --> 00:11:17,885 the repaired and stabilized textblock, makes  the antiphonary once again safe for handling.   127 00:11:20,471 --> 00:11:23,474 [music] 128 00:11:24,433 --> 00:11:27,687 [Elizabeth Frengel] One of the best things about digitization is that it opens up 129 00:11:27,687 --> 00:11:32,775 access for audiences who might not otherwise be able to study materials like the antiphonary,   130 00:11:32,775 --> 00:11:37,405 or the many other unique things the University  of Chicago Library holds in its collections.   131 00:11:38,447 --> 00:11:43,160 When an early printed book is digitized,  for example, it becomes useful to others as   132 00:11:43,160 --> 00:11:48,124 a point of comparison for a number of things  that are important to bibliographic research   133 00:11:48,124 --> 00:11:54,588 and study of the material book in the hand-press  period. Collation, or how the book’s quires, or   134 00:11:54,588 --> 00:11:59,468 gatherings of leaves, were sewn together.  The presence of absence of a colophon,   135 00:11:59,468 --> 00:12:05,015 or printer’s device, the position of blank  leaves – these are all small details but of   136 00:12:05,015 --> 00:12:10,062 great importance to understanding the physical  copy that a researcher might have at hand. 137 00:12:10,062 --> 00:12:16,068 It is interesting and gratifying to observe that the  more rare materials are made available digitally,   138 00:12:16,068 --> 00:12:21,240 the more it drives interest in the physical  objects. You might say this is counterintuitive,   139 00:12:21,240 --> 00:12:26,370 but it is what I have observed and experienced  throughout my career, and it is supported by our   140 00:12:26,370 --> 00:12:27,830 circulation statistics. 141 00:12:27,830 --> 00:12:32,168 [Christina Miranda-Izguerra] The process begins when  materials are being reviewed for selection. 142 00:12:32,168 --> 00:12:37,798 A lot goes into selecting and reviewing materials for  digitization consideration, including copyright,   143 00:12:37,798 --> 00:12:43,345 user needs, and preservation concerns. Once  an item is selected, we assess the condition.   144 00:12:43,888 --> 00:12:49,101 When capturing fragile materials, we work closely  with Conservation to ensure we utilize the right   145 00:12:49,101 --> 00:12:54,440 combination of tools and techniques to avoid  damaging them. Usually, we will use wedges or   146 00:12:54,440 --> 00:12:59,987 cradles for books that do not open flat. We have  L-cradles and V-cradles for all of our equipment.   147 00:13:00,696 --> 00:13:06,202 L-cradles will keep a book around a 90-degree  angle while V-cradles hold a book at an 80 degree   148 00:13:06,202 --> 00:13:13,959 angle up to a 180 degree angle opening. Often, however,  imaging is the smallest piece in a larger digitization workflow. 149 00:13:13,959 --> 00:13:18,380 The more time-consuming  part is processing or quality control, where we   150 00:13:18,380 --> 00:13:23,427 review the images to ensure the digital surrogates  are faithful representations of the original.   151 00:13:24,053 --> 00:13:29,183 After quality control, we generate access  copies like PDFs and archive our master files.   152 00:13:30,351 --> 00:13:35,648 Finally, we pass these files on to our Library  colleagues to create that access point for users   153 00:13:35,648 --> 00:13:41,487 which typically includes a link to a PDF made  accessible through the Library’s online catalog,   154 00:13:41,487 --> 00:13:45,115 a finding aid, or a specialized website or interface. 155 00:13:45,115 --> 00:13:46,992 [Elizabeth Frengel] Comparing multiple copies 156 00:13:46,992 --> 00:13:51,956 of an early printed book and having the  ability to enlarge high-resolution images   157 00:13:51,956 --> 00:13:57,795 to see the minutest details can give important  visual clues that tell us how a book was made.   158 00:13:58,671 --> 00:14:04,301 As far as manuscript studies go, access to  fragments of disbound leaves can be crucial   159 00:14:04,301 --> 00:14:10,683 to piecing together a lost text. That is just  one of the aspects of the work of codicologists,   160 00:14:10,683 --> 00:14:15,813 whose work is greatly aided by the digitized  manuscripts and manuscript fragments that are   161 00:14:15,813 --> 00:14:20,693 made increasingly accessible from libraries  around the world. This is work that we want   162 00:14:20,693 --> 00:14:27,616 to continue to build on, as it strengthens our collective knowledge base about early books and manuscripts. 163 00:14:27,616 --> 00:14:28,826 [music] 164 00:14:28,826 --> 00:14:33,330 [Christina Miranda-Izguerra] At the root of it, we are  creating broader access to our collections,   165 00:14:33,330 --> 00:14:38,002 increasing our userbase beyond campus and making  them available internationally. 166 00:14:38,002 --> 00:14:45,801 Even better, we facilitate discovery by providing a new medium  to analyze collections through magnification,   167 00:14:45,801 --> 00:14:52,516 material comparison, enhancements, searchability  or text analysis. We are transforming the way   168 00:14:52,516 --> 00:14:57,563 in which people engage with these collections,  expanding research and learning possibilities. 169 00:14:58,063 --> 00:14:59,982 [music]