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The Big Picture

Photo credit: Misty Thomas-Trout

We’re closing our celebration of Preservation Week with a book that shows us the value and impact of something we often take for granted. This excellent book traces economic networks in Athens, Ohio and shows the interconnected foodways that are such an vibrant and important part of this community. 

“Experience has taught me that through direct relationships and interactions of support, people tend to care more about their part in the whole. It has shown me that we are interdependent. We do make individual choices but they are not made in isolation. Our everyday decisions affect those around us as they also create patterned ways of living — patterns that build the social and cultural environment that surrounds us.” - Artist Statement 

Also...it’s VERY big.  

Sometimes we take objects of unusual size into the collection. Here we’ve had to improvise when our backroom space didn’t quite cut it. 

Artist Misty Thomas-Trout is showing us how to unpack and repack the components of her artists’ book, which consists of a network of threads moving across canvas.

Atlas of Athens: A Visual Literacy of Place

Book Box : 26 in x 32 in : Reclaimed wood, used door hinges Map : 10 ft x 2.5 ft : Acrylic on canvas, embroidery floss, push pins, cork Legend Flash Cards : 4 in x 6 in : Digital print on 100% pcw envrionment smooth Printed Book : Book digitally printed on 100% pcw environment smooth, cover is a USGS Athens, Ohio Quadrangle, 2002

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Preservation Week 2018: The Past is Present

What is it about family cookbooks that are so dear to us? Food can tap into that sense memory that brings us straight back to a precise moment in time the way few other things can. Yet eating itself is ephemeral and temporary. 

Do cookbooks then become symbolic containers for those sense memories?

Cookbooks seem to be one of the more common items we are asked about in preservation. Most recently before our fantastic staff member Teghan Sharp left for a new and exciting job she brought in two treasures that belong to her grandmother, a cookbook and a notebook of recipes.

While there wasn’t much we could do in one afternoon we sent Teghan off with two protective enclosures that will help keep these treasures a little safer and allow her to carefully use them if she wants to bring those memories to life once again.

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Preservation Week 2018: Recipes Door to Door

Have you ever thought about the life cycle of a book? Here we get a chance to compare a book before and after it was “owned”. The first two images show us pages from the Salesman’s sample that was brought door to door followed by a copy that was clearly “owned” and well used.  

Check out the American Antiquarian Society’s handy explanation of the Salesman’s Sample

Scroll down to see how the personal copy shows the later stages in the life of this recipe book, in broadest sense, with recipe cards and clippings pasted in. 

Above photos:  Salesman’s Sample of The queen of the household: a guide to the accomplishment of the home work in all its various departments, and the supplying of the home wants of the families of our land. by  Mary W. (Mary Wolcott) Janvrin.

Below photos:  Published copy of The queen of the household: a guide to the accomplishment of the home work in all its various departments, and the supplying of the home wants of the families of our land, 1889  by  Mary W. (Mary Wolcott) Janvrin.

There is a sense where conservation and librarianship become archaeological. The layers are peeled back and we can discern the order of events. Sometimes this can be an exact science and sometimes, as in the image above, a stain crossing the recipe card for quinine pills and the page it is pasted on can simply be evocative. We can imagine the owner following this recipe, already pasted in the book, when one of the 12 drops of oil spilled forever connecting those three elements in a single moment in the life of that book. 

Overly poetic? Perhaps, but it is one of the joys of thinking about the history of everyday objects. Respect for this history, even when the owner of the book isn’t a household name, is essential to the preservation of all its historically significant components. 

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This Society of American Archivists event promises to be AMAZING! 

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Preservation Week 2018: Manuscript Medicine

This manuscript appears to be copied from multiple texts concerning both medicinal and culinary recipes. While the binding may appear damaged it may be more likely that it was not produced by a professional bindery. It is actually quite soundly constructed and in wonderful condition, but the rough turn-ins and lack of any paste-down, as well as the imprecision of the blind stamping, suggest a home binding. 

So while the boards are exposed there is no conservation treatment that would seek to correct this. Additionally the boards themselves have gathered further evidence of ownership, with notes from Edmund Blunden, who’s personal library is held in our special collections. 

All pictures:  A book entitled choice and profitable secrets both physical & chirurgicall formerly concealed by the Dutchess of Lenox, and printed for John Staffort, St. George at Fleetsbring 

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Preservation Week 2018: Epistolary  Culinary

This recipe for “hour hound” (horehound) candy was recorded in this civil war correspondence from Edwin to Almyra  Brown   . 

“Hour hound Candy, Boil the hourhound in as much water as will cover it, and tilt all the Juice is extracted. then strain it and give it another boil stirring in gradually sugar enough to make it very thick and stif. Afterwards sift sugar over a shallow tin pan, and fill it with the paste and leave it to congeal, any hard candy may be made as above.”

While the paper shows a major loss it is good quality and the ink has hardly faded. You can see from the deep creases that the recipe and letter remained folded for a very long time. While there was no interest in reducing the appearance of the creases we did want to store them unfolded to reduce wear and tear of folding and unfolding with use. Luckily these relaxed quite well on their own without humidification or weights.

All images: Letter from Edwin Brown to Almyra Brown, August 20, 1861 Ohio University Libraries. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections Collection. Brown Family Collection (MSS 18)

​ More information about this letter and other Civil War correspondence held in the Ohio University Libraries Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections can be found HERE thanks to  Ohio University Libraries Digital Collections!

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 Ohio University Libraries Digital Collections wrote a thoughtful and in-depth companion post to our Preservation Week highlight of  “The Eclipse,” for Hotel and Home Cooking, Suitable for Rich or Poor.

Ohio University Libraries’ rare books digital collection highlights the material culture of book production, focusing on local imprints and books created by women and African-Americans. So far, Digital Initiatives has photographed 85 “publishers’ bindings”– brightly-colored machine-made books designed to attract an emerging middle class audience beginning in the mid-19th century. In addition to the covers, we have until now mostly confined our digitization efforts to documenting evidence of marketing, manufacture, and ownership, such as bookplates, booksellers’ advertisements, binders’ tickets, inscriptions, and the like. The digital collection is not designed to function as a comprehensive full-text repository of public domain works, as this has already been accomplished on a massive scale by Google Books, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive.

DI made an exception, however, for “The Eclipse,” for Hotel and Home Cooking, Suitable for Rich or Poor, because of the wealth of handwritten supplemental recipes and clippings added to our copy by an unidentified former owner. Unfortunately, the names of both creators have been lost to time. The “authoress” of “The Eclipse” identifies herself only as “Mrs. H. J. Hawhe.” She never published again under that name and no Hawhes appear on the 1880 census for Columbus, Ohio, where the book was published.  Likewise, no record of an Eclipse Hotel or printer named Glenn could be located during a survey of 19th century Columbus city directories. As for the person who customized their copy of “The Eclipse” with so many additional recipes and household hints, we can be reasonably certain they worked as a professional cook because of the huge volume of ingredients required by some of the recipes. The below recipe for hand soap, for example, requires “four boxes Lewis lye, sixteen pounds clear grease or eighteen pounds cracklings, [and] twelve gallon[s] rain water.”

Our copy of “The Eclipse” is also distinct from those available through the Internet Archive and HathiTrust because it was never rebound and retains the orginal advertisements for local businesses inside the front cover, including one for “KATE SHEPARDSON BLACK, Homeopathic Physician, Women Diseases a Specialty.” Advertisements for Columbus stores and companies now long gone have also been included in the header and footer of every page, which would have defrayed the cost of printing.

Using our newly-acquired Phase One medium format camera, DI’s student imaging lead Kelly Wallace photographed “The Eclipse” from cover to cover, taking care to include all pieces of loose ephemera. The handwritten recipes have been fully transcribed and DI has committed to backing up our master files with the MetaArchive Collaborative, ensuring that access to this singular copy of a local history resource is preserved for the future. 

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Preservation Week: Valuable Vegetable

What a title!?  Valuable Vegetable Medical Prescriptions: for the Cure of all Nervous and Putrid Disorders. This fantastic volume contains amazing recipes claiming to cure medical conditions that were perhaps not so well understood at the time. I DO NOT recommend recreating any of them. Reading about them on the other hand is a real pleasure.

“...or take a new laid egg and pour out the white and fill up the place with salt, and roast it hard; then beat it to a powder and take as much as will lay on the point of a case-knife, every half hour...”

The binding of this book has also been the recipient of some creative remedies. Above you can see where a loss in the the original leather was patched. The volumes has seen quite a lot in it’s lifetime including exposure to high humidity and perhaps some direct contact with an unknown liquid. 

When the recipe to treat "Bloody Flux” (dysentery) can either be anything from that powdered egg to “dried hog dung boiled in sweet milk” OR wine with grated rhubarb and nutmeg the stained pages certainly get the imagination going. 

While we won’t be able to do any analysis to attempt to get a clearer picture of what caused the staining we can reasonably infer something about how the book was used. Being a practical text, much like a modern cookbook, it is perhaps not surprising to see such wear and staining. After all this volume was more likely to be put to work than kept pristine in a personal library. In this case we will call it a result of use, where the term “use” covers a multitude of sins.

All images:  Valuable Vegetable Medical Prescriptions: for the Cure of all Nervous and Putrid Disorders by Richard Carter, 1815. Ohio University Libraries Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections.

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Preservation Week 2018: Fading Traditions

That’s a recipe for marble cake, 1/2 vanilla 1/2 molasses, clearly written by someone who already knows how to make a cake, but needs little more than to remember the ingredients. The Eclipse may have had many wonderful recipes, but so did the owner of this book and what better place to write down your recipes than a cookbook?

“Doughnuts 1 1/2 cup sugar 1 cups butter 1 1/2 cups sweet milk 3 eggs Pickel for Hams Make a brine strong enough to float an egg to each one hundred pounds of meat add 2 pounds of sugar and 2 cups of saltpeter” 

“Cream Pie One pint milk 2 large spoonful sugar 1 tablespoon flour yolk two eggs white 1 beat eggs sugar flour together let milk get boiling hot pour in beaten parts stir till hot make crust bake fill with custard heat the white of eggs stiff spread on top return to oven brown slightly __(?)”

Our challenge with this item is that the pencil is not only light but also prone to smudging and fading as people touch the pages. In addition we have clippings from newspapers and magazines that are acidic and attached with old and drying adhesive. Digitizing this book allows us to share its contents more widely while minimizing the risk of loosing the ephemeral aspects. We then have the opportunity to transcribe the hand written recipes to preserve that information even if legibility of the handwriting continues to deteriorate. 

We still want this volume to be available for use and that makes this book a perfect candidate for box with an integrated cradle. The box insures everything stays together even if a clipping becomes detached and the cradle minimizes the need to hold the book with fingers over the penciled recipes.

All images: "The eclipse", for Hotel and Home Cooking, Suitable for Rich and Poor by H.J. Hawhe, Ohio University Libraries Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections

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Preservation Week 2018: Almanacs and All Kinds of Tape (and Wine)

We’re kicking off Preservation Week with our first look at the many ways recipes were recorded, passed-on, and preserved with examples from the Ohio University Libraries. We’ll also see some of the creative ways people have attempted to hold these recipes together.

Oh tape. You're always there. A sign that somebody cared enough to try to hold their hard-wearing almanac together. But now you are yellowed, lifting in places while holding fast in others, causing tears where someone intended repair...

These convalescent recipes certainly attempt to harness the restorative powers of wine! While current tastes are probably incompatible with many of these recipes the idea is very familiar. Perhaps you don’t add wine to your oatmeal, but I certainly recall my mother touting the fortifying powers of the hot cereal.

This well loved copy of Hoofland's Almanac and family Receipt Book for Everybody's Use was repaired again and again with different adhesive tapes. Because the paper is also fragile we may choose to leave the tape in place, where it covers text to avoid a loss. Tape removal takes time and patience and while we would like to see all tape removed we will likely prioritize removal of any tape that currently inhibits the mechanical action of the pamphlet. Meanwhile we’ll store it safely in a protective enclosure instead of hanging it from a nail above the hearth.

All images: Hoofland's Almanac and family Receipt Book for Everybody's Use. Philadelphia: Holloway & Co., 1877 Ohio University Libraries, Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections.

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Corrugated Board! We can’t get enough. When it comes to safe handling in the reading room our go-to is a simple cradle made of e-flute corrugated board. While it may not be as glamorous as a velvet pillow or adjustable as the Clarkson Foam Book Support System (RIP dear Sir), this humble cradle gets the job done. Our readers find it approachable and self explanatory, which cuts down on handling damage in the reading room or classroom. 

We incorporate a similar cradle design into our clamshell boxes. When the box opens it becomes a frame to support the cradle. A standard opening angle provides sufficient support and improved handling for a wide enough swath of our collection that we were willing to give up adjustability in favor of streamlined production and wide impact. There are certainly those items that get the royal treatment, but we are happy to have this workhorse to help us make improvements in preventative preservation across the collection.

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Preservation is not a neutral action. What we choose to preserve serves to illustrate and inform our cultural memory. How, can preservation and conservation professionals preserve, not just the object, but also it’s cultural context? Are we doing enough to insure that there is opportunity for a diverse workforce to contribute expertise and representative points of view? 

Miriam Centeno and Ann Marie Willer will be on Facebook Live Thursday April 27th at 2 pm to answer questions about their research and keep this important discussion going.

You can view their video presentation and submit questions in the comments on Facebook or here. 

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Karmen Beecroft

Digital Initiatives Staff: Karmen Beecroft 

Hometown: Mason, Michigan 

Education: ~BA History, Museum Studies Specialization at Michigan State                             University

                   ~MS Information, Library Services Specialization at University of                          Michigan 

Previous Jobs: ~Lending Specialist, University of Michigan Interlibrary Loan                                Department

                          ~Collections Services Specialist, University of Michigan Special                             Collections

Started at Digital Initiatives: September 1, 2016

Digital Initiatives Position: Digital Projects Librarian

Projects Worked On: ~Civil War Letters

                                   ~Publishers’ Bindings

                                   ~Donald L. Swain Collection

                                   ~Athens Asylum Records

                                   ~Cornelius Ryan World War II Collection

                                  ~University Photographer Archive

Favorite Project: The Civil War Letters: “Danger! Romance! Drama!”

Photo by Ohio University Libraries Digital Initiatives student worker Kelly Wallace

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Happy Preservation Week!

Meet Barnett Hook, an Ohio man with a fabulous mustache. A jack of all trades born in 1845, Hook was at one time known as one of the top needle workers in the country. The OHIO Libraries holds the Barnett Hook manuscript collection which includes samples of his lace and embroidery work, hand painted signs advertising his instruction, as well as photographs, and other materials such as the cabinet card pictured above. 

In honor of Preservation Week’s 2017 theme, the preservation of textile collections, we took the opportunity to revisit how these textiles were stored as well as how we might display them.

Most of the embroideries and lace were rolled around a core with acid free tissue and tied gently with a scrap of muslin. Included in the roll is an index card with information about the method of needle work used. 

This storage method has done an excellent job of keeping these textiles fairly clean, and the colors of the embroidery thread bright, even though they were not placed in a secondary enclosure. However, the cores are re-purposed from paper towel rolls (with layers of tissue between the board and the textile) and the tissue provides minimal protection from dirt and mold on its own. We have an opportunity to make some improvements so we are jumping at the chance.

We will start by replacing the ordinary cardboard cores with solid archival versions. We then will add two additional layers to the rolls most likely clean untreated cotton and Tyvek. The cotton will add stability while the Tyvek will serve as the outer layer, keeping off debris and taking the brunt of the tie.Then the rolls will go into boxes with foam supports that keep the weight on the ends of the core rather than on the textile itself. 

To display the cotton lace and strawberry embroidery we opted for a black supports made of ArtCare foamcore. These supports gave us a dramatic contrast and allowed us to utilize pins to gently hold the lace in place. We used small rectangles of polyethylene strapping between the pin and the cotton lace to gentle some of the pressure of the pin. We pinned Pellon to the board behind the strawberry embroidery which provided a grabby surface to keep the textile in place without tacking. More delicate lace and samples of embroidery thread were held in place gently with polyethylene straps.

While our lab rarely has to work with textile collections it is gratifying that many of our tools and supplies can serve us well when we do. 

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5 Things You Can Do in Alden Right Now to De-stress During Finals

We get it. Finals are stressful. That’s why we offer a series of opportunities to take a break from your studies while you’re in Alden. But if it’s not the time for one of those breaks, there are still a few things you can do without having to leave the library. 

1. Visit an exhibit or look at the artwork in the library. 

Stop by the 5th floor to see the Discovering African American Life and History in Archives and Books exhibit or the 4th floor display cases to peruse Digging Up the Past: 30 Years of OHIO Archaeology. On the 2nd floor there is an exhibit case featuring materials related to our namesake President Vernon R. Alden. 

Wander around the library for a bit and you’ll no doubt find artwork on the walls, both locally created and from around the world. 

2. Grab a coloring page from the 2nd or 4th floor desk. 

Each desk should have a set of coloring pages and coloring supplies. The pages include soothing geometric designs, as well as images from our Special Collections. 

3. Download and follow one of these guided meditations from the Counseling & Psychological Services website. Or just take a few deep breaths in sync with this gif: 

4. Grab a [different] book from the stacks. 

Take a walk through the stacks and pick up a book that looks interesting, and completely different from whatever you’re studying. Use the Library of Congress call numbers to give you an idea of where you can find books on different subjects. Or just pick up something that looks old or has a fun binding, like this collection. If you find something interesting, Tweet or Instagram us a photo @AldenLibrary. 

5. Browse through the Libraries’ Digital Collections. 

You can see materials from the University Archives on our website, browse through OHIO yearbooks dating back to 1898 or visit the thematic Pinboards created by our Digital Initiatives Team. I’m particularly fond of this one highlighting the history of the University Libraries.