Hello Fair Blog Readers!
My name is Natalie Guingrich and, as the newest addition to the Preservation Lab, I thought I would introduce myself and offer a glimpse into some of the projects I have worked on over the past 2 months.
I am the Lab’s Paper Conservation Technician, which means I work primarily with flat, unbound material, like posters, maps, and loose paper materials. The items that we work with come from many different parts of Indiana University Libraries, including University Archives, Lilly Library, and Wells Library. Working with such a large variety of materials lets us have a glimpse into many different sides of the libraries and come across items we may not have sought out ourselves but are incredibly interesting!
Lilly Library
One of my favorite parts of the job is getting to interact with uncatalogued materials! I have had the opportunity to work with some of the materials from Lilly Library’s Kripke Collection and every foray into that collection has incredible surprises! I am in the process of unframing flat materials, as well as helping remove plastic sleeves to better store these materials until they are able to be cataloged. Here are a few of my favorite discoveries:
University Archives
One of the first projects I had the opportunity to work on were several scrapbooks from University Archives. The adhesive that had been used when the scrapbooks were originally made had mostly deteriorated (and lost their stick), so my job was to go through and reattach the ephemera to each page using wheat starch paste. After all three volumes were intact, I then was able to create custom enclosures with the help of our Kasemake specialist Herb McBride.
Wells Library
Often, we receive items straight from the catalogers to ensure items are stored in a way that will protect them from damage over time. In this case, it was a group of posters in French. We decided to make a four-flap enclosure for them. Before I made the full-size enclosure, I made a model to make sure the design would work the way I intended. Due to the size, the enclosure was constructed with 4 sheets that came together in the center.
Another project that I loved working on was mending and creating enclosures for 240 Indian Film Booklets from the 1930s to the 1970s. These booklets often included lyrics for songs in the films as well as a synopsis of the plot of the film. Many of them were in multiple languages, with one language in the front and a second language, like English, in the back. Each cover was unique, and many showed incredible artwork. Shown below are two of my favorites!
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