Tag: Ashleigh Schieszer

Housing the Public Library’s historic stained glass

Housing the Public Library’s historic stained glass

According to the CHPL website, when the original Main Library at 629 Vine Street opened to the public in 1873, three beautiful and intricate stained glass windows graced one of the reading rooms in the building. In 1955, when the building was demolished, the windows were sold at auction, later to resurface as part of the decor of the Old Spaghetti Factory on Pete Rose Way. After the restaurant closed to make room for Paul Brown Stadium, the Library purchased the windows and began making plans to return them to the Main Library for the appreciation and enjoyment of our customers and staff. Thanks to the generosity of the Friends and the Annabel Fey Trust Fund, the three windows have now been re-created and restored to their original glory and are on permanent display in the Main Library.

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18th and 19th century leather: A Conservation Challenge!

18th and 19th century leather: A Conservation Challenge!

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of handling special collection materials, you may have noticed that some books stand the test of time better than others.
In particular, why is it that some older leather books that date to the 15th century still function well, while other leather covered books from the 1700’s and 1800’s fall apart and turn to powder in our hands?
The reason is twofold. Books made in the Carolingian, Romanesque and Gothic periods were highly engineered luxury items that were made with high quality materials. Later, as books become more of a household commodity, quality was sacrificed to meet rising production needs, leading to books being made cheaply with poor quality materials. The common degradation we find in 18th and 19th century tightback leather bindings is a direct result of poor construction combined with the use of poor quality materials.
What exactly is causing this later leather to degrade? There are many reasons such as environmental factors, but two of the most common condition issues are caused by the type of animal skin used, and the materials used to tan the leather.
For example, sheepskin leather exhibits characteristic degradation of shearing away in layers while calfskin does not. This is essentially because sheep have a thicker undercoat of fur. The roots of the sheep’s undercoat grow in-between the lower corium and upper grain layers of the skin, and after the hair is removed during the tanning process, a microscopic void is left between the layers of skin. As a result, the leather becomes vulnerable to delamination overtime (see photo below).

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Traveling Objects on Loan for Exhibition

Traveling Objects on Loan for Exhibition


This week we had the pleasure of assessing the condition of some unusual objects not often found in a book and paper conservation lab.  The objects, owned by the Winkler Center for the History of Health Professions at UCL, consisted of a child’s leg brace, a box of polio specimen slides from the 1960’s, and a group of honorary medals.

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Conservation – a Complex Profession

Conservation – a Complex Profession

“WhAsleighat is it that you do, exactly?” is a question conservators are often asked when met for the first time.
As an emerging conservator, sometimes it’s difficult to quickly describe the daily work I perform. When many people hear the word conservation, they immediately think of protecting wildlife.

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Oversized poster moves made easy!

Oversized poster moves made easy!

The Preservation Lab offers a suite of services to our parent institutions, including conservation, storage and handling, pest management, and environmental monitoring. Recently we got to flex both our physical and mental muscles, assisting the Public Library with a special collections move. While there were many interesting objects that required special attention during the relocation, a collection of locally and historically significant oversized posters presented a fun and exciting challenge.

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1st Fridays @ 4 – Bookbinding workshop!

1st Fridays @ 4 – Bookbinding workshop!

Several times a semester UCL’s Reference and Instructional Services department hosts 1st Fridays @4, a fun activity (with food!) that engages and educates students/patrons. When Pam Bach, the lead coordinator of 1st Fridays, asked the Preservation Lab if we would be interested instructing a simple, fun bookbinding workshop we jumped on the opportunity. Being in the basement of the library can be a bit isolating, so any chance we get to interact with the students and patrons is very appealing to us. We decided to show the participants how to make an adhesive-bound miniature book with a paper case. We chose this because it would be easy for people new to bookbinding to construct, we had all the supplies we needed to prep for the workshop, and we already had a little experience prepping and teaching the structure since we made these cute little books during our student and volunteer fun day in November.

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How to set up a Digital Photography Documentation Studio

How to set up a Digital Photography Documentation Studio



First of all, you might be wondering. Why do conservation labs conduct photography?
A picture is worth a thousand words:
Photographs are the most descriptive way for conservators to accurately document physical changes made to an object during treatment.
In conservation, producing photographic documentation is a conservation professional’s ethical obligation. In conjunction with written documentation, the photographs help to more accurately and efficiently document the examination, scientific investigation, and treatment of special collection materials.
Afterwards, the photography becomes an important part of the treatment record for a rare object and it is permanently archived with the treatment report. This information is saved with the object in hopes of aiding future scholars and conservators in understanding an object’s aesthetic, conceptual, or physical historical characteristics.  For more information on conservation treatment documentation, visit the Preservation Lab’s digital collection located here: http://digital.libraries.uc.edu/collections/preservation/.

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A conservator in Cincinnati

A conservator in Cincinnati

Moving from sunny California to the “most northern southern city, and the most eastern Midwest city,” A.K.A. Cincinnati, I’ve found that I love living in a climate with the change of seasons. In particular, one of my favorite sightings on the University of Cincinnati campus made me feel as though I was living in an page of an Andy Goldsworthy book! Just before this yellow ginkgo tree began to lose its leaves, the ground received a light autumn dusting of snow that whimsically highlighted the presence of the tree’s newly fallen leaves.

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