Book Conservation: Week 1

Last week I started a book conservation workshop at the University of Utah Book Arts Program. It runs for five weeks. Last week I was given two books to fix during the course of the workshop, and when I got them, I realized I was scared to death. Luckily I don't have to give them back so if I screw up, nobody will really know. This is nothing like trying to repair hymnbooks.

I took some before pictures so I can compare the books when they are finished. Both spines are not in good shape. The text block on the brown one is completely removed from its cover, which is also in horrible shape. Both of these came from the U of U special collections library and our teacher got them for free for student practice. The green book is from the early 1920s; the brown book is older than that but I can't tell because the cover page is gone. I tried to research who Milo is (the guy who owned the book) and his mother & dad (they have one of those "this book belongs to" tags), but who knows. If anyone has any ideas for family history research besides FamilySearch.org, this could be a fun little mystery to solve.

Last week we learned how to remove tape from paper rips. You know, taking the tape off when some good-hearted soul thought they were fixing the book by taping the rip back together. I get to use these funky tweezer things and a special heat iron and/or alcohol...alcohol takes tape residue right off. Unfortunately it can also take off the text from the paper, but apparently there's a way to put it back on. We'll learn how to actually fix rips in paper AND fix the pulled-off-the-tape text in class tonight.