Week 8

This week we took a tour of Bird Library and visited the preservation lab and special collections.  This was interesting for me since I'm interested in preservation, and my inner English major always geeks out at old, rare books.  Preserving the circulating collection involves gluing loose pages, fixing bindings, and even shrink wrapping books that aren't used often.  Shrink wrapping books is a good example of something the library does to keep its budget balanced.  The books that are shrink wrapped are "low-use" books (one hadn't been checked out in over twenty years).  Because they are used so rarely, it is not worth it for the library to replace or fully repair them.  Shrink wrapping the books keeps their quality from degenerating and allows them to remain in the collection if they do need to be used.  Preserving the special collections is more painstaking and complicated.  It was interesting to see the differences in techniques for the new circulating books and the older books in the special collections.  It was also great to see the special collection itself (or parts of it, anyway).  I was interested in the ways that the items in the special collection are evaluated.  History is looked at; for example, the writing on the papyrus scripts wasn't as significant as the fact that the paper was 2000 years old.  The special collections curators also look at association (who previously owned an item), edition, and rarity.  Some books are considered works of art not just because of content because of how they are made, like the holocaust diaries with plaster arms and the book with gems in the cover.