Enclosures are protective housings for library collection items. Enclosures help preserve their contents in many ways, including protection from damage during shelving, transport, and handling; protection from exposure to light and pollutants; they keep multiple items together, provide a place to attach labels to special collections, and lend structural support. They are also a first line of protection from damage in a water disaster or fire.
The Preservation Department creates a wide array of enclosures for the books, documents, maps, photographs, media, and artifacts in the Libraries' collections. Many are made with the our automated box-making machine, the Kasemake KM503A. Approximately 10,000 boxes are produced annually on the Kasemake, which frees up staff time for custom hand work.
KASEMAKE KM503A BOX-MAKING MACHINE
With the October 2001 installation of a Kasemake 503A box-making machine, the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries became the first academic research library in the country to automate the process of creating protective enclosures for fragile books. The box-making machine was purchased with private donations.
This computer-driven machine can produce boxes in minutes, drastically reducing the time required to create enclosures. The Kasemake takes over the work of cutting and scoring the sheets of board, and printing titles and call numbers on the box. Staff members enter a book's dimensions, title, and call number in a database, and a design program reads the data. The operator batches several enclosures together to optimize the use of materials. Enclosures can be made on the Kasemake from corrugated board, solid 20- or 40-point board, Tyvek, and other materials.
Enclosure production became a particularly important activity with the opening of the Ruth Lilly Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF), which provides secure, climate controlled shelving for the IU Libraries Collections.
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