Announcements

Today’s Conservation DistList had a couple interesting announcements I wanted to pass along (in case you don’t get the DistList in your inbox).

First, Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa, formerly of the Kilgarlin Center, has accepted a new position at the University of Delaware.

The Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware is pleased to announce the appointment of Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa as adjunct assistant professor, effective July 1, 2010. While Ellen will continue to live in Austin, Texas, she will travel to DE from time to time to share her vast knowledge of and experience with preservation administration and management in libraries and archives across our nation.  Ellen is an exceptional advocate for the preservation of cultural heritage and an outstanding fundraiser, collaborator, teacher, and mentor.

Next, the Mellon Foundation has teamed up with the British Museum to create a postdoctoral fellowship for research scientists. Further information on how to apply will be made public shortly.

The Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the British Museum is delighted to announce that, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it is now able to establish a long-term programme of postdoctoral research fellowships for scientists. An endowment of $1,250,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will be combined with funds raised by the British Museum to be used over the next 16 years (2010-2026) to provide a sequence of eight three-year fellowships.

Finally, the Blue Shield has set up a FaceBook page on its efforts to support the recovery of cultural heritage in Haiti. They are looking for experts to help in this effort. You can find info on their website. There is a U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield, too, which also has info on its website regarding Haiti. If you don’t know about the Blue Shield, it is like the Red Cross or Red Crescent but for cultural materials.

Job Announcements (semi-international edition)

Mellon Conservation Science Professor, Buffalo State College [you will have to search the jobs site for this position]

Preventative Conservator, The Science Museum (London)
(Job reference: CON/0210-EXT) [term appointment through Sept. 2010]

Technical Officer, Paper and Textiles, Mitchell ACT, National Museum of Australia [temporary, full time]

Preservation Technician, GS-1001-5-6 (Promotion Potential to GS-7), National Archives and Records Administration, National Personnel Records Center( St. Louis, MO), Announcement Number: JD305875FS

Book Conservator, The Leather Conservation Centre (Northampton, UK) [short term contract with possible long-term or permanent part time]

ALA Roundups Elsewhwere

If you are posting your ALA roundup, let us know, we’d love to link to them here (and vice versa if you are so inclined). Here’s a few I’ve found so far, not all are necessarily preservation related…but we are all interdisciplinary now, right?

Gary Frost has posted his thoughts on ALA over on his blog, Book Notes.

The Shifted Librarian has posted notes, too.

ALA has created a presentations wiki as a central location for what else, presentations. This is a voluntary thing so not all presentations will be here but it’s a step in the right direction for ALA. As travel funds and conference attendance dwindles, we need our professional organizations to step up and provide its members this sort of access to conference proceedings and presentations. As soon as I can remember my login, I’ll put Brian Baird’s presentation on PUR adhesives on the wiki (you, dear reader, can already see it on PCAN ’cause we love to share).

And just for fun, Nancy Kraft tells us how to get a maximize poster space to get it to fit into her suitcase. AIC is coming up y’all, and they love their posters. Great tip Nancy!

Job Postings

Fellowship in Paper Conservation and Preservation Specialist (two separate postings) are listed at Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (Philadelphia).

Ten-Week Summer contract position in the Paper Conservation Lab, Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.). The announcement had no link, so the announcement is pasted here from the Conservation DistList:

Ten-Week Summer contract position
Paper Conservation Lab
Department of Conservation and Scientific Research
Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution

ALA Roundup, pt. 2

Before the UT discussion at BPIG we heard from Brian Baird of Bridgeport Bindery on their testing of Polyurethane (PUR) adhesives. His presentation is posted here: PUR in Library Binding ALA. Library binders are interested in these hot melt adhesives because they are strong, flexible and dry much faster than Polyvinyl acetates (PVA), and they don’t need to be notched prior to binding. Bridgeport tested 70 identical bound items that were bound to LBI standards, half bound with PUR and half with PVA. The books bound with PUR tested equal to or above those with PVA.

Over in Preservation Administrators Interest Group (PAIG) we heard from FM Global on the fire test in a high density storage facility. The results and video woke everyone up at 8 a.m. Among their findings:

• Racks with only books on them burned slower than those with books and archival materials
• Racks that had both in-rack and face sprinklers suffered less damage
• Cardboard trays disintegrated when soaked, leading to more damage as items fell out of them
• There was a three foot pile of books in the aisle when the test was complete
• Narrow aisles made fighting the fire difficult (see also the pile of books in the aisle)
• Smoke damage is likely throughout the module

This test came about after a test fire in a similar set up sparked attention from some of FM Global’s customers. The video of that test is online, but not the recent one that focused on books.

Mellon Seeds

I’d like to separate some of the ongoing conversations about Texas from concrete ideas on what a library conservation training program would look like. I’d like to use this post as a landing place for ideas that answer these questions:

What are the basic curricular requirements for graduate level training in book and paper conservation?  In order to deliver such a curriculum effectively, what is the desirable scope of faculty (numbers and expertise), financial aid, laboratory facilities, internship opportunities, and administrative staff?

There are some good ideas posited already over at the BPIG roundup. If you have some thoughts, please post them here. All ideas, big and small, blue sky and practical are welcome, the more the better.

Roberta Pilette and I sat down after the BPIG meeting to think this through….here’s an image of what we were thinking.

Job (and Fellowship) Postings

Advanced Training Fellowships in Conservation and Conservation Science, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.)

Digital Production Librarian, Claremont University Consortium (California)

Digital Repository Developer (Analyst, IT), Duke University Libraries (North Carolina)

ALA recap: BPIG

This has been an interesting ALA conference. As co-chair of the ALCTS PARS Book and Paper Interest Group, I want to share with you one part our program.

Our agenda included a discussion on the recent UT announcement regarding the Center for the Cultural Record. [Update 01/20/2010: With the recent implementation of its new website, the UT School of Information has posted a revised announcement "Curriculum Revision and the CAS."] We wanted to focus on the core principles or subjects we felt were absolutely necessary in training library conservators. This was to be a continuation of a conversation held before the Preservation Administrators Interest Group that morning. Just before we started a surprise guest came in…Andrew Dillon, Dean of the University of Texas iSchool. The following is a summary of what he told us:

UT iSchool was left with a financial hole that had to be addressed in part due to the ending of the NEH grant which supported the Center [the NEH representative in the audience clarified for Dillon that they didn't end the funding per se, they told UT they would not continue funding the program as currently conceived]. In addition there is a mandate from the provost to reduce costs by an additional 5% by mid February on top of cuts made last year. The decision to restructure preservation administration and conservation studies will not alleviate the budget pressures on the iSchool. Dillon feels they need to get to the point where they do not rely on external funding to support the Center.

UT envisions a school that integrates both the preservation administration and the conservation studies classes into the regular iSchool curriculum. Advanced certificates can still be obtained, but students will have to put their own curriculum together instead of following a standard progression of classes proscribed by the iSchool.

Dillon said that there will still be a Center for the Cultural Record [Update 01/20/2010: With the recent implementation of its new website, the UT iSchool removed information for or any trace of the Kilgarlin Center], but that they were in conversation with the current donors [that would be William and Margaret Kilgarlin] concerning the gift that named the center. Additional info: the interim director of the Center has been “assigned” to another institution in order to explore a promising career opportunity.

Discussion ensued. We welcomed hearing directly from Dean Dillon and hope that he continues including us in the conversations as we move forward. If you attended BPIG please share your thoughts and opinions with us here on PCAN. We will put all comments under the Pres/Cons Training category so you can find them easily.

ALA Midwinter!

We’re in Boston for ALA Midwinter this weekend. There have been many great sessions and moments, from the tango dancing ode to Barclay Ogden at the Banks / Harris reception to the all too short Q&A period for the young Ithaka dudes who wrote “What to Withdraw” at PAIG to Dean Andrew Dillon joining in a discussion about the decision to end the Preservation and Conservation certificates in the iSchool at the University of Texas. [Update 01/20/2010: With the recent implementation of its new website, the iSchool has posted a revised announcement "Curriculum Revision and the CAS."]

Sitting in the Curators and Conservators Discussion Group right now (with the rare free hotel wireless signal – thanks, Sheraton Back Bay!), I can report that Michele Cloonan is leading a great discussion on the post-UT landscape for preservation / conservation education (“Is there life for conservation after Texas?”) and the changing role of the conservation / curatorial relationship in various organizations. Michele shared a great recent (and free!) publication that I look forward to reading: It’s a Materials World: Caring for the Public Realm by Samuel Jones and John Holden (Demos Publications, 2008).

PCAN encourages you who attended ALA Midwinter, as well as those of you who could not make it but want to know more about the haps, to continue and evolve the discussion online. This is an exciting, frightening, pivotal moment for preservation and conservation — in the library and archives realms especially — and we can inform our future collectively. Please contact us to post your reactions and ideas, or simply to share information or resources you’ve recently discovered.

Job Postings

Mellon Fellowship in Paper Conservation, The Museum of Modern Art (New
York City)

Photographic Collection Project Manager, San Diego Museum of Man

Project Specialist – Education Department, Getty Conservation Institute

Lennox Foundation Preservation Internship, Iowa State University

Paper Conservator, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and
Botanical Gardens

Preservation Specialist, Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (Philadelphia)