One of the best parts of the formation of our joint lab was the addition of a full time conservator.  The University of Cincinnati lab had been performing a variety of conservation repairs or mends on general collection items for years.  Tip-ins, tears, tape removal, sewing and spine repairs were all familiar types of mending to those of us who had been working in the existing UC lab.  But when our joint lab began and our new conservator, Kathy Lechuga, started we quickly began to see that not all our repairs or mends were up to par.  Kathy had a vast knowledge of conservation, including best practices that were more up-to-date.  Even straight forward repairs like spine repairs (or re-backs) that haven’t changed much in the last 30 years needed some minor tweaking.  But one repair stuck out as needing a major update, a paper hinge repair we had been doing for years and years.
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