 For signing in today, it looks like our numbers are still crawling. We're up to 142 And I've been really excited to see a surge in new members on the online community So for those of you who are joining us for the first time welcome Before we get started just let me give a quick introduction to the community and then we can move on The Connecting to Collections online community was originally created in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History And with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services The community and webinars are moderated by Heritage Preservation and Learning Times is kind enough to help us with both our website and our webinars The goal of the online community has always been to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies Quickly locate reliable preservation resources and to network with their colleagues like you're doing right now Feel free to keep saying hi To help you do so we've compiled an extensive list of online resources that are broken up by topic on the online community In addition, we also host free drop-in webinars like the one today on topics that we hope you'll find useful a Recording of all of our webinars including this one can be found under webinar archives And of course if you're interested in continuing the discussion You're welcome to sign up to become a member and that means you'll be able to contribute to the discussion board So today, I am so pleased to welcome back Danya Khan Danya has worked in conservation and preservation for the past 18 years specializing in book conservation and preservation training She is a preservation consultant and adjunct faculty for the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences Where she teaches preservation management and collections maintenance She's also a professional associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic work And if you took our collections care basic course last year You will recall that Danya was an instructor on that so Danya I am going to move my the way and Move yours over and I will just remind folks if you have questions are all during this presentation. Feel free to tell Okay Alright super So thank you all for joining us It's actually really quite an honor to have so many of you signing in Although it was a little discombobulating when I tried to sign in as the instructor And I couldn't actually get in because we'd reached our limit. So this is actually very exciting. So Welcome to everybody and I know I had sent a Couple of polls to Jenny and before we really get started I'm gonna see if she can pull up those polls for me so that I can get a little bit more sense of Who all of you are since I can't say, you know, raise your hands because I can't see all hundred and some some odd of you's Hands here so if you could just answer the poll questions for me that would be great because it does help me know what Direction to take my digressions maybe let's say because if you did take the Care and handling sessions last year you do know that I tend to digress a bit So Okay, so we're getting them in Looking like today we've got a lot of museums some libraries a few archives Okay Super I'm gonna let you all keep Answering here It's looking like most of you at least in terms of your overall collections You don't have a huge collection of books. So this is good because they're going to be more Unfamiliar to you. So I'm going to just start talking now. So Whenever Jenny wants to Pull down the Polls, thank you so what we really want to talk about today is how can we care for our books and You just can't get a better example of what can go wrong with this poor book which Actually got eaten by a puppy So what we're going to think about today is really what we can do to Protect our books to the best of our abilities Apart from saying no, you can't check out our books anymore So I just want to do a quick review of The environment that we want so if you took any of the courses or have watched any of the Recording since then of last year's programs You'll probably be somewhat familiar with the environmental best practices So what we want to be thinking about is if you've got a combined stack and user area So generally what you find in public libraries for reference collections Things of that nature you want to try to keep the temperature around 68 degrees Fahrenheit It's going to be comfortable enough for people But it's also going to be a good level for the books if you've got dedicated storage So if you've got a rare books vault or something of that nature, you can drop the temperature Fairly low books actually like it much cooler than we as human beings do so The paper the leather the cloth it's all going to Live a much longer life if it's in a cooler temperature. We also want to keep the relative humidity down Very important here ideally between 30 and 50 maybe 30 and 60 percent The trouble is is when you start getting up over 60 percent and I know I'm talking about this in July in the summer, so all of us are probably struggling a little bit with our Climate control systems to try to keep it at 60 percent The trouble is is when we start going higher than that we run the risk of mold and if you really have Problems with your relative humidity you may need to Compensate by raising the temperature a little bit Because if we remember warmer air holds more moisture To bring that relative humidity down and it's much more important For that relative humidity down then for the temperature to be down because of the mold We will definitely get mold if the relative humidity is too high We also want to control the light whether our collections are in storage or on exhibit If we're in storage we can try to keep the lights off if you have dedicated storage or Install motion sensors, although that can get a little tricky at times and You know try to keep really important items or really light sensitive items in drop spine boxes wrappers Something of the ilk cover your windows with draperies or UV blocking film That's going to help block out some of the UV light, but remember all light is damaging so we really Want to think about overall light levels, and then if you're putting things on exhibit think about limiting the duration to three To four months and keeping the light levels really low, so Oh, yes Good question from down in El Paso. What about very low humidity? if you have a hard time getting the relative humidity up to 30 percent which many of us actually have Most of us on the northern half of the country have come winter. It's really hard And in desert areas, it's really hard You might want to try if you can lowering the temperature a little bit lower temperatures hold less moisture So your relative humidity will go up. I don't know how feasible that will be for Essentially your budget because it will mean that your HVAC system will run longer You can also consider Getting a humidifier and some of your HVAC systems if you have an HVAC system will Take a humidifier as compared to a dehumidifier and that may be What you need to do, but you'll need to talk to your facilities people and the manufacturer of your HVAC system to see What is a possibility for that system, but that might be another way to do it So that's just a real quick overview of the environment. We did a whole Webinar on this from last year's series So be sure to check it out under the archived webinars or is it under the programs? I can't remember now Jenny will send something out because my brain is not on last year's programs but on this so We're going to start by talking about Basically the furniture that our books are going to be stored on and We want to think about making sure that we have good freestanding Powder-coated steel shelving Powder-coated steel is the best you can use to bake Dean Ammell's As well as the chrome plated shelving The chrome plated shelving really should only be used However, if everything is going to be in boxes because you don't want to get little waffle bottoms on your books You want to make sure they're of adequate adequate size and strength This is especially important if you want to save money And buy your storage furniture at say Home Depot or Lowe's or something like that Make sure you read what the weight is for each shelf and then just for grins find out how many books fit on a shelf and weigh them It's much heavier than you think So just be sure to do your due diligence and don't get shelves that are going to be a bit droopy and Saggy so for example Here we've got a set of shelves that is just not quite adequate As you can see for The materials that are on it. So they tried to prop it up on one side with the filing cabinet, but obviously The other side is not being well supported and you can see how much it's sagging already and so we want to really try to avoid Not only the wooden shelves, but inadequate and weak shelving we want to think about Of course again our relative humidity if you're storing something in an area. That's Really highly Humid not only do you run the risk of mold, but you also run the risk of your shelves actually starting to get rusty and when this happens The surface of the shelf gets really rough. It will be almost like sandpaper to your books And of course that rust can transfer another thing. We don't really want Again, I can't stress adequate strength You'd be surprised at how many times I've gone to institutions to do assessments and They've really tried to save money and they've gone out and bought garage Shelving which yes is baked enamel. It should be really stable. However, it's not strong enough So please please please think about what you're storing on it and whether what the load for each of those shelves is going to be and Then try to make sure there aren't any sort of projections or ridges or anything like that That could be damaging so any bolts sticking out anything like that and Avoid finishes or lubricants That might be damaging to your collections or off gas this includes any cleaning supplies you may want to use So if you've got somebody who comes in and dusts your Shelves for you make sure they're not using anything like pledge or something We really want to make sure that we aren't Adding anything to the collections that we want so nice powder coated steel shelves, you know, here's a nice set of compact shelving and Compact shelving is great. It buys you a lot of space. It's you know built for books So it's going to be of adequate size and strength, but you want to make sure About where you're putting your compact shelving. So if you're considering compact shelving and It's not on the you know very ground floor where your foundation is usually for most of us That's the basement for some of us. It can be the ground floor depending on where your building is You want to check floor loads So if it's going on any sort of upper floors make sure that the floors can handle the extra weight because now you're packing more books Into a smaller space. It's going to be much heavier Also, if you're putting your compact shelving in a basement and it doesn't and you're really kind of using it for Like really high density storage of materials that don't get used often and you have a damp basement Be sure to set those sections open so that air can flow through Air flow is really important in combating mold and if you have all of your compact shelves closed up tight except for one section and It's damp in your basement and you don't get people using those materials much to have good air exchange You're going to have trouble with mold. I have worked with many institutions on just this problem. So Just be sure to think about that and finally if you do have wooden shelves because I know There are many of you that probably have reference rooms or Libraries that have the old wooden shelving that is actually built in and part of Essentially the furniture and the look and the design of the room You really want to think about making sure that there's some sort of coating Ideally you would get something called Marvel seal, but essentially it's going to look like you're covering all of your shelves in Tin foil, which is probably not ideal But you can it's not going to be perfect, but you can put down sheets of the polyester sheeting so What used to be mylar and is now melan X you can put that down. It's not going to be a perfect vapor barrier but it will help block much of the materials being off-gassed by the wood and Is essentially clear so you won't see it Or you can use a water-based polyurethane, which will also block some of that material coming through and some of the old Volatile organic compounds coming off of the old varnish or polyurethanes If you're going to go that route be sure you read the manufacturer's directions for how long it needs to cure Trust me. You don't want to put this stuff on think it's dry put your books on and then have a bunch of books stuck to your shelves because The polyurethane or the latex paint that you put on wasn't fully cured and this I can definitely tell you from personal experience So don't do what I did read the can Okay, read the can So We also want to not just think about what sort of furniture we have our Collection stored on We also want to think about where and how we are actually storing our materials Okay, we want to make sure That we allow for easy access and safe movement this is both of people of carts of Collections you can imagine trying to get to some of the boxes in the very back of this picture how How much stuff do you need to move just to get into the back? And then how well are you going to be able to maneuver a large box that? Potentially heavy because as books get larger they get heavier You do need to think about you know Not just the safety of your collections, but your safety and that can be a little bit awkward. Oh Susan I will get back to your question in just a bit. It's a good one. I will get to it We want to make sure there's enough space for air flow around our collection so as I was saying with compact shelving it really also can go for our Collections that are in Storage so even here it may not be compact Storage, but things are really tightly packed in here. There's not a lot of air Flowing around so we can have a problem again With mold and if you do have a problem with mold in something a space like this How are you going to know about it? And how are you going to deal with it because there is just so much material? Okay, you want to make sure you have a reasonable shelf height for the retrieval of your collections This is very much a staff safety issue I'm very much an advocate of having a lot of Step stools or you know little ladders all over the place in your collection storage areas Because I am five feet tall and believe me even with just a kick step. It's hard to get to the top shelf so Reasonable shelf heights for safe retrievals. I'm just asking and you want to make sure that you're meeting the preservation needs of special formats and for this One of the examples that I really like to use our Musical scores and so if any of you have ever dealt with scores You know that they just don't come in a standard size They're all skinny, but they can be any height Imaginable so it's really hard to get shelving built for musical scores It's the same with large oversized volumes. It can be tricky to find the right shelving and we'll get to that Oversize volumes like that and just a bit but be thinking in your storage area about some of these Oddball items and what you can kind of get a sense of here is that We're Doing the best that we can in this this institution. There wasn't any more space and It was really difficult for the staff to maneuver down The walkways with carts without bumping into Some of these scores and likewise students with backpacks would also be bumping into them So you can see all of the bits of tape that are on some of these edges So like right here and over here and down here and these bits of tape were put on to try to protect those edges From getting hit all the time and as you can see especially from the one down here on the bottom It needs to be replaced. It's starting to run out so It can be very tricky in dealing with some of these odd sized odd shaped Or sometimes just plain odd Items and so we really want to Have in the backs of our heads as we're thinking about how we're going to store our bound volumes About the type of shelving that we have and what sort of space we're working with so I want to kind of Keep you keep that in the back of your mind So before I move on to the actual storing of bound volumes back to Susan's questions about shelves made from Formica like materials over wood for a lot of that It's probably going to be really good. The only thing I would check is what adhesive they used To secure the formica to the wood the formica itself is going to be really good It's good. It's stable it doesn't off-gas the question is is Essentially what adhesive was used because a lot of those can off-gas the other question is going to be how old is it? and That is Can also play into how much more it's going to off-gas. So you've got wooden shells and they are really old Okay Defining really old a hundred years or more They've probably off-gassed everything they're going to but if you've got brand new oak Shelving oak is the worst offender You definitely need to do something to try to Seal in Essentially the formaldehyde that's going to be coming off of the wood So All right, so We want to really talk about now How to really store and care for our books? And so we've talked a bit about the shelving that you want now Let's take a couple of seconds and think about That other ubiquitous Item in terms of storing books and that is the bookend and You know You see all kinds of bookends. You can get your general, you know, just everyday workhorse bookend Okay like here you can get the little wire ones that Hook on to your shelving and attack you whenever you try to move them or maybe they don't attack you But believe me they attack me whenever I try to move them we want to think about our bookends for a little bit and So There are a couple of types of bookends and The type that you really want ideally in your library is what we call a non-knifing bookend and Basically what that means is it's got these little Flanges that have been folded over at the edges so they're not perfectly straight like this and what they prevent happening is something like What's in the middle here? Depending on how tightly packed your shelves are or How observant your patrons are You can have trouble with people just sticking a book back on a shelf and having it go into the bookend. I Would also recommend Speaking with other people in your institution I worked somewhere that They were with all good intentions trying to do the best that they could but they were using the large skinny bookends in the middle of the sections of the folios and When I started working at this institution I didn't know they were there and so you would go to put a book away and Not knowing that that bookend was just hiding in there because there wasn't any way to know where the bookend was lying in wait We had a lot of books damaged this way and this was in a special collection So we had to have a bit of a discussion about Why that wasn't a good idea even though in theory it should have worked But we can also get the same problem with these hanging wire ones of Having the book go into the back lobe But I have found also that they really aren't all that supportive because the book on the end isn't necessarily always going to be Just the right height for the books and so you can get them Where the little wire is just at the top of a book and then all the books slide out underneath it So no wire ones Think about your good traditional bookends the best would be to get the ones that won't knife But if what you have are these That's fine. You work with what you've got if you've got the wire ones start a campaign to get them changed out because They just they're they're attack bookends both they attack the books and the people they're just mean You can tell I've been traumatized by wire bookends We also want to think about of course with our books ideally shelving them vertically Kind of how we always see them That's kind of What they how they want to be stored? However, we need to be thinking about the sizes of books that we store together It's not always possible to Follow the rule of shelving like-sized volumes together because we know publishers publish things in all sorts of sizes and You know, they just don't always conform and They need to be cataloged and you're not going to catalog your books by size I mean not even Barnes and Noble does that so we want to though think about what happens when we have Tall books at the end of a shelf where we don't have a tall bookend Okay, or what happens when we have tall books next to a short book and what happens is the the books start to get deformed and You can see here We've got a spiral bound book here with a plastic spiral. So of course The spiral breaks because it's what spiral bindings do they're just there another problem child of the library world If you have no spiral bound volumes in your collection, you are so lucky But you can see that it's broken, you know, it's starting to fall over This is the slippery slope now this book the next time it gets checked out It's just going to get damaged more because it's already started And what you see here is it hasn't really started yet, but over time the two books either side of this little black one are Going to start to warp because they're just paper. They're actually paperbacks. There's no hard cover on those They're going to start to deform and it is just like your mother told you when you were a kid It will stick that way paper has a memory. It will be very difficult to get these Materials flat again So I'm going to backtrack for a second Helen had a great question about the plastic bookends with cork bottoms They aren't my favorite only because The cork bottoms are really thick in Relation to the other bookends so they actually make the books Stand up taller where they are which makes them more difficult to slide under the books and Also, if the books sit on those for a long time, you can start to see the indentations because they are so thick However, they are nice in one respect with those cork bottoms. They don't slide as much so You know, there's some good. There's some bad But generally I would for strength and For thinness I would stick with the metal ones if you know you have an option So they're not bad, but they're not the best they're good Um Spiral bindings to be perfectly honest, um, Jessica spiral bindings are real problems If you know they are going to be used what I've done at Institutions that I've worked at in the past as I have almost Without fail the minute they enter the library. I Sent I would send them to the library binder It really wasn't all that expensive We'd send them to the library binder Claudia with the suggestion of putting them in a four-flat pamphlet binder is another good one I found that if you regularly send materials to the library binder on a regular basis It comes out in the end to be about the same price actually strangely enough So for us to get the thick pamphlet binders with the floor flaps Actually in the end was more expensive than sending them out to get To the library binder. I'm not quite sure how that ever worked out But we did the math it was odd. So we just sent them all to the library binder So a couple of options depending on how many you have We really want to again make sure that our books are shelved upright Please don't Try try not to store your books on their fore-edge As you can see if we store our books on our fore-edge we start to get this problem happening and What you're seeing here is the book is the text block Which is all of the pages on the inside is starting to pull away from the case and Once that starts to happen you get a really weak point right in the joint area Which is the most vulnerable place on a book So you really You really want to try to avoid storing them on the fore-edge I know the habit is to store them on the fore-edge because the call number is on the spine but what you can do is To work with the people who put the call number labels on your book And if the book is over a certain height, and I'm sure all of you have a good sense of what your Height is for your shelving Is if it is over that height to put the call number in the Okay, I have to visually visualize it now in the upper right hand corner of the front cover That way when it sits on its spine if it's too tall to fit on the shelf you can still see the call number Is it ideal? No, but we all have a space crunch and have to fit in as many books as we can However, we can but we can at least try to not be too Too damaging when we do that. We also want to try to make sure our books don't lean You know you have bookends use them We like to make sure that we avoid this sort of Angling probably it's angling because well somebody then slipped down and it's just kind of a mess as Books lean on their sides like that again that text block case Interaction is being really stressed and if you've got Adhesive bound books and it gets a little warm in your storage area Again it will stick that way so if you've got a book that's being you know torqued and twisted and Really bent out of shape it can stay that way if you leave it for too long. So make sure you do have Bookends about that people can use even if it is just in your staff processing area. It's still a good habit to get into Flat volumes I've been seeing there's been a lot of Discussion on really oversized volumes And for Generally for books that are more than 18 inches tall or let me try to remember 29 centimeters I believe it is 28 29 somewhere in there a lot of institutions go to a Folio and then if they're really large they go to a flat folio and this that designation tends to differ from Library to library again depending on the type of shelving and the space that they have So if you have oversized volumes It's really best for those to be stored flat because obviously they're not going to fit upright on the shelf And they may not even fit on their spines So what you want to be thinking about doing of course is storing them flat However, we are not going to be storing them flat as we are storing them flat in this picture Why well, there's there's some obvious reasons One is they're stacked Way too high. Okay. Ideally. We're only going to stack At most three books high if any of you have ever had to go retrieve oversized volumes for a patron you would get to a stack like this and you would want to just go and Beat somebody about the head and shoulders with a blunt object because that's a lot of work to get to this bottom book because it's always the bottom book and Is there somewhere safe to stack them? Can you even move around? Think about having to get access to those books. So first of all three high at the most Secondly, you want to make sure that the shelf depth is adequate Okay, not only the strength, but also the depth and you can see here that this book because of its size the narrowness of the shelf and You know basically changes in relative humidity. It's starting to curve. It's starting to sag down and guess what? it will stick that way and if you do need to the beauty of Only stacking them three high is You don't necessarily have to keep them in call number order so you can put the biggest book on the bottom not the biggest book on the top and You know basically go from largest to smallest on your way up and that is also going to prevent any sort of Potential drooping or sagging or deformation that could happen if small books are on the bottom and big books are on the top Please don't try to stack your oversized volumes on the tops of other volumes it just ends bad and Okay, we just it ends badly we can see that so Okay, is this ideal No, but it's getting closer. We at least have shelving. That's of adequate size for the volumes What we would do to make this ideal is actually get just some more shelving Okay, just the shelves because then we can put the shelves You know add another shelf in here and we can start splitting up some of these piles sometimes That's not always possible But if you know whenever you are setting things up We want to be thinking about how safe is this for the books and How what is going to happen if we have to access this book on the bottom? These are again a lot of large awkward heavy Books that need to be moved somewhere and so we just want to be sure That we're doing the best that we can for our books None of us will ever be in the position of having the ideal Storage for everything But we do want to do the best that we possibly can Okay, if you need to box your books, this is how not to do it if you need to box your books for Space-saving so you have a lot of small books like this That you just don't have the storage space to put them on the shelf all lined up Think about stacking them vertically in the box as if you would on a shelf Or you know in a flip top box like this or if you've got the You know the larger document boxes Then you want to be sure that you think about Storing them either spined down or flat and preferably wrap with a bit of tissue if you can just to keep them Essentially from rubbing against each other and having the red rot of one volume Come off on to you know the paper of another volume You can box them individually we'll get to that in a second If you're With Elizabeth's question if you are moving books to a new location. I would get the essentially the archive document boxes they're very their standard sizes they have handles and For the most part you can fill them with books and they will not be too heavy to lift Okay, three things that are very important when you're moving books your form sizes handles and not too heavy to lift and then lots of tissue paper to pack in and around the books to make sure that They don't jostle around and you know start to rub on each other like we're seeing here Even worse don't just stick them into plastic sleeves With random stickers thrown in and throw them really nilly in a box Neat and tidy neat and tidy is going to be good for any books Jackie Jacqueline, sorry, I will get back to you on that question at the end I may have you email that to me Because I have to look up and make sure I've got the right names of the adhesives now Because they change a lot So okay Ideally This is how you want your shelving to look nice and neat and tidy. Can you tell I'm a Virgo? Very much in that neat tidy organized realm So protective enclosures, we've got a lot of protective enclosures that we can use if our books are damaged or fragile I tend to prefer to recommend protective enclosures Over book repair, especially if you have not had any training If you want to do book repair, please go get some training either someone on one From a conservator or take a class I know the Campbell Center in Indiana teaches classes the Northeast Document Conservation Center and the Conservation Center for art and historic artifacts in Boston and Philadelphia respectively teach workshops You can also Contact me after the webinar And I can give you some ideas of where else you can go because there are other people around that. I know teach classes So you can think about doing just simple wrappers these are just 20-point folder stock two pieces double stick tape And they do a great job You can get You know and this is what they look like on the shelf you can be as fancy or as simple with your labels as you want You can get corrugated clamshell boxes made from Many different companies now a lot of the library binders are doing it archival boxes calm Makes them Gaylord makes them University products makes them so there's a lot of places out there now that you can get the Custom clamshell boxes made out of the corrugated board again. They are a really economical way to protect Your older more fragile books and You don't have to have all of your books tied up on the shelf and have them red rotting all over everything else For dust jackets. I do like the clear covers from Gaylord I make sure when I'm looking for those I actually have a lot of the clear covers on my own private Collection I look for the ones made on a specifically polyester You don't I tend if they don't tell me what kind of plastic they're using. I don't like Getting them. So I would definitely stick with Somebody like Gaylord because they are actually going to tell you And Brodart is actually to be perfectly honest the same company as Gaylord So I would go with Gaylord. They tend to have the archival end of things rather than Brodart which has a lot of the non archival For public libraries who aren't worried about making sure that their materials last for the long term Okay, and one last word on slipcovers If you are in an art library or a special collection You will probably see a lot of books coming in with slipcovers or you know four-flat portfolios If you are a non circulating library I would say keep the slipcovers up or the portfolios with the book Especially because you can be there or somebody is there to monitor You know how the patron is using it so you can actually give the patron the book without giving them the slip case If it's a circulating library, I tend not to keep the slipcovers with the books in large part because It's really likely the slip cover won't come back with the book because the person will take the book out of the slip cover The slip cover will get put somewhere. They'll lose it. They won't remember to bring it back with the book They'll bring it back later. And then how do you know what book it goes to? It just becomes a mess So but you again want to be really careful with slipcovers because like those Bookends that could knife a book. It's really easy to put a book into a slip cover But actually catch one of the sides of that slip cover into the text of the book. So you really want to Be careful with slipcovers. I tend not to keep them if they're circulating It's just Just the way it goes so Oh, Lynn, you got some books donated that were wrapped in plastic wrap To protect the books from bugs hmm Most of the time when I see books coming wrapped in plastic wrap, it's because the books themselves have bugs I Would get the plastic wrap off ASAP and get the books somewhere that you can Monitor them because the plastic wrap is also going to hold in a lot of moisture and so get the plastic wrap off And Check the books for mold more importantly and then check them for insects and I would do this in a location That's away from your normal collection Because if they do have mold or pests you really don't want it coming into your Regular collection because then you just have a much larger problem Custom phase boxes have got an expense the corrugated boxes Claudia are much Much cheaper and they are custom built So what you do is you just send them your dimensions and they send you a flat piece of cardboard That's cut and scored and you fold it up like a pizza box and there you have it the corrugated boxes are generally For a standard octavo sized book can run depending on how thick can run anywhere from about seven to eleven dollars And for larger books anywhere from say fifteen to twenty five But in the grand scheme of things that's much less expensive Than You know the Dense phase boxes or the cloth covered clamshell boxes So Charlene has rare books that are fragile and wants to use the Gaylord acid free corrugated board trays I'm guessing you mean either the magazine holders or the trays that are built for High-density storage I Would Try to See do a search to see how much the corrugated the custom corrugated clamshell boxes are going to be in comparison Because It may be that they're not that much more expensive Especially because you're in Syracuse and Gaylord is right there Your shipping's not going to be that much And archival boxes comm the company that really kind of started it all is in Hammond's port just down on Kiyoka Lake I would try to avoid the corrugated trays Just because they're not custom fit to the book and so you would still have a lot of potential for flopping around um So I would do some comparison shopping and see but I wouldn't really recommend the trays for us as a substitute for a clamshell box So You know You can Ali you can box really any Book that you like depending on your budget Most people just do the fragile ones are the ones that are really red-rotted that they don't want making a mess of everything But you also want to box books that actually are probably in really good shape so if you have some design bindings or Books with boss the the metal studs and what not Those you would also want to put even if they're not fragile you would want to put into a box Essentially to protect them to protect everything else around them from that book itself So We want to think a little bit about what I like to call stacks maintenance and this is basically keeping house Okay, first of all You know, it's an ongoing process to protect the books We want to make sure that they're you know tidy and upright like we were talking about last time We want to make sure that you know our you know, we're clean. We're free of dust Please don't let this be you you don't really want to see your fingerprints in your books that means you've got a problem one because it doesn't reflect well on your institution, but also a heavy layer of dust on books will trap in moisture and That increased moisture will Give the mold an opportunity to land and then dust is Just like the you know golden corral buffet for mold It's got everything in there. They want to eat and they will just Devour the mold and that are devour the dust and then just cause a much bigger problem We want to think about You know for some of our oversized things is wrapping them in paper and tying them with string and stacking them willy-nilly the best thing for the collection or do we want to maybe Write an NEH preservation assistance grant for small to mid-sized institutions To be able to buy some supplies to do a better job of storing our collections Okay, and don't forget everything. I've been saying about books on shelves goes for books on carts, too Okay, remember carts need to go over all sorts of You know bumps and whatnot and you really don't want the books falling off the cart Especially you don't want the books falling off the cart while you're trying to get into the elevator slip down that gap between the The floor and the elevator so that it goes all the way down to the bottom of the elevator shaft because trust me You don't want to know what they look like when they come up from there. I have seen them. You don't want to know We want to think about care and handling what can we do to protect our books? thing one is to try to minimize food and drink in both public areas as well as in our Workspaces colleague of mine Beth Doyle who works at Duke posted this picture a few years ago She's the conservator there and somebody returned a book where they used a banana as a bookmark and This is what happened. So You know, maybe some things won't be quite as dramatic but Pizza You know ketchup from a hamburger, you know, we all have seen the damage done So we want to try to minute minimize food and drink because not only does it damage the books It attracts the mice it attracts the insects and then again, we have a much bigger problem to deal with We want to make sure we're doing some sort of staff education, especially if you're working with a special collections or with fragile books You know, even if you just train your student staff your volunteers your interns etc How to take a book safely off the shelf without damaging it will go a long way It just makes them a little bit more aware about one small topic Which makes them more aware about a lot of other things as well, which can only work in your favor Please don't use post-it notes Staples paper clips, you know, you've all seen it Please don't use post-it notes. It's my another one of them post-it notes and plastic clips Not the regular paper clips, but the plastic v-shaped paper clips two of my bugaboos, please Don't use them It will only end in tears And usually mine not yours because I'm the one that usually has to Carefully take the paper off the post-it note and fit it back into the hole Usually ends in tears And finally, please Please, please, please encourage people to use note paper Or if nothing else pencil Because how distracting is this? It's an edge. It's an outreach and education opportunity So not just to your staff, but to all of your patrons, okay, especially for heaven's sakes if you work at an academic institution You run into a lot of this and you really You really want to try to do some outreach because it really will only Be a benefit so I want to Open it up to questions and one of the things I'm going to do is I'm also going to in the chat Give you my email and If because I forgot to put it into the PowerPoint presentation Please if you have any questions after this Don't hesitate to contact me. I am happy at any time To answer any questions because I know I've thrown a lot of information your way And you've been trying to listen to me and read the great comments This is the problem of being the presenter. I can't read your comments So I look forward to reading them when this is all over But please if you have any questions now Send them along Jenny will make sure they get to me But if you get back to your institution and you start noticing more things, please by all means Send me a question at any time. I'm happy to help So I don't know Go ahead and type in any questions Don you did amazing an amazing job of getting to questions throughout the presentation And you've got one right now about teaching at the Campbell school I've never done it. It's I'm in upstate New York, so it's a little bit far from me but a colleague of mine two colleagues of mine actually have taught there Jennifer Hain Tepper and Susan Russick and if you can get a class with either one of them They are both fantastic as well In lieu of plastic paper clips I would either go with the coated ones or you can buy stainless steel and if you get the stainless steel paper clips They won't rust either. They're a little bit more expensive But they give you peace of mind You can also get stainless steel staples by the way So you can you know go about things like that Um What about Magazines should they not be put into protective plastic? Comic books magazine. I'm not sure what protective Plastic you're talking about Merle if you could send me a follow-up Do you mean the bags or do you mean the the laminate that you can Put on top so if you can get back to me on that I will answer your question Um Three-ring binders Three-ring binders are tricky First of all check to make sure that the notes aren't sticking What happens with three-ring binders a lot is either the paper gets brittle and tears out of the holes or you get the polyvinyl chloride covers reacting with the print and and reactivating the Fuser that's in there and sticking the pages to the binder if you don't have any of that going on in many ways It's best to just leave things be without too much manipulation if they do get a lot of use I would maybe recommend Getting them bound but before you do that get them digitized and you know so that You have that opportunity get them digitized before they get bound and you have that access For the Charlene, I think you left out a bit of your question Oh, whether a book is rare, I bet Really the only way to know is to start talking to people and you've got a great resource up at SU and special collections Will LeMoy is the curator up there and the rare books and manuscripts section of ALA Rbms.info is their website and they have a Pamphlet that you can get on is my book rare and so I would go to Rbms.info and somewhere on that page there will be The pamphlet is my book rare and that will be able to give you a Good, you know good starting point Merle the bags as Long as you make sure they are polypropylene Polyethylene or polyester You're good. Just don't store them in a basement because the high relative humidity Could be damaging because the plastic is going to hold that moisture in But if it's not in a basement you've got you know good air circulation As long as they're polyethylene polypropylene or polyester never never never never never polyvinyl chloride no PVC or any other plastic that you can actually smell if you can smell your plastic it's off-gassing and It's probably ultimately not off-gassing anything good for your collections Historic so Amanda has an historic house of a lawyer with the library in the book places with the glass doors You have a historic house that probably means it's anywhere from 75 years or older By this point in time my guess is whatever damage will have been done Has been done for the books in there The only thing I would do periodically is just open the open the cases Leave them air out for a day or you know even just an hour and then close the glass again That's going to give you Eric's change and it's going to let anything bad out And you know so just like keeping good airflow for mold get some good Eric's change in there It'll help you a lot All right, yeah, that is all that we have No, that's fine. I see a few questions coming in, but I'll hold on to those and I'll send them your way Yep, sounds perfect and Let me just quickly say that our next webinar is Thursday, August 28th. We're doing a two-part integrated pest management We've got an expert bug guy with us, and we're hoping you'll help us With sending in pictures of your own buzz growth but thank you all so much for joining us today a Recording of this webinar will be available shortly and I'll hold on to some of these questions. We weren't able to get to and post those up on the webinar Don yet. Thank you. Thank you so much. This was wonderful Well, thank you and just to reiterate, you know somewhere in that chat box was my email Please, you know if anything comes up afterwards Don't hesitate to contact me. All right, and thank you everyone have a fantastic afternoon