State Library Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

The State Library is happy to announce that it has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for 2012! The Preservation Assistance Grant provides funding for the continuation of the Massachusetts Room Preservation Project, a multi-year project that began in 2009.

A previous NEH Preservation Assistance Grant in 2010 supported the systematic repair and preservation of several important sub-categories of collections within the State Documents Collection (the Massachusetts Room, 20th Century Massachusetts maps, legislators' papers). The 2012 grant will continue this work, focusing on ephemeral materials housed in the Massachusetts Room.

For more information about the grant award, please see the National Endowment for the Humanities' press release. For more information about the preservation work performed as part of this multi-year project, please click on the "Massachusetts Room Preservation Project" label in the gray box at the bottom of this post.

- Lacy Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

Preservation Milestones

The past month has been a busy and exciting one for the preservation lab!

At the end of July preservation work was completed on the items being digitized under the Mapping Massachusetts grant. In total 368 items were preserved, with a total of 2,223 repairs performed. Work began in October of 2009 and was performed by the Preservation Librarian with help from lab interns Sarah Pickard, Jay Moschella and Chessie Monks.

This week the 1,000th item from the Massachusetts Room Preservation Project(MRPP) was repaired and preserved. Work on this NEH grant funded project began in January of 2010 and will continue through the end of the grant period in 2011 and beyond. The MRPP is designed to be a multi-year project that aims to assess and preserve when needed an estimated 40,000 items in the Massachusetts Room. Work is being completed by the Preservation Librarian and many dedicated interns. These wonderful interns include Sarah Pickard, Hilary Vaught, Bianca Hezekiah, Lori Satter and Shawna Smith.

- Lacy Crews Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

image: Harbor at Cotuit and Osterville in the town of Barnstable

Dirty Map? Clean it up!

As mentioned previously on the blog, the library is in the process of digitizing roughly 400 maps in the collection as part of a grant awarded by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. One collection of profile maps that correspond to the railroad maps are being digitized in-house and a description of the process is detailed here.

The image above shows one piece of a profile map that corresponds to the railroad map, Proposed Connections to the Massachusetts Central Railroad. All told, this particular profile map is made up of six pieces and is 191.5 inches long. There are about 70 profile maps in total, all equally long and all equally dirty! I have been working over the past couple of months to clean the dust and grime that has accumulated on these maps during years of storage in order to prepare them to be scanned and posted in the library's digital repository, DSpace.

Although the condition of the maps may look daunting, cleaning them is actually a relatively simple process. I am using non-abrasive vinyl erasers and eraser "pencils" created to erase ink from drafting film. I use a brush to sweep away the eraser crumbs, so that I do not damage or dirty the maps further by using my hands to brush the crumbs away.

I clean the maps in small sections, usually using the graphing lines printed on the maps to isolate small areas. This way, I can check my work as I go and easily see the progress I am making. Using two different erasers allows me to clean carefully around a note written in pencil or clean larger areas quickly.

In the image below, I cleaned only the section of the map below the graphed area. The difference is obvious, especially when compared to the original image of the map before cleaning (pictured above). Although the map may still look somewhat dirty, this is due to staining from the dirt and cannot be removed even if I cleaned the area over and over again.

I then move onto cleaning small rectangular areas of the graph. This ensures that I do not miss any areas and also keeps me from re-cleaning sections that are permanently stained. Too much or too vigorous cleaning can also damage the surface of the map and make the paper fragile. Most of these maps are relatively sturdy to begin with and hold up well when cleaned. Only a few have brittle edges or tears, and these may eventually be repaired with Japanese tissue to keep them from being damaged further.

I also make sure to examine the map carefully before cleaning it. In the image on the left, what may look like a smudge above the blue line is actually a number written in pencil in extremely small handwriting (click on the image to zoom in and see for yourself). The maps also often have elaborate handwritten town names and titles in ink, but it is also possible to see the original pencil draftwork done before inking the final product. We want to keep these original pencil markings intact for study even if they were mostly erased by the original creators of the maps.

The map piece at the top of the photograph at left is the final, cleaned product. Compared to another uncleaned piece of the same map, the change is easy to see. While these maps may never be perfectly spotless, if I looked this good at 140 years old, I would be pretty pleased!

The next step in the project is to scan and stitch together the pieces of the map, so that users may view them up-close and personal online. I'll share the process of scanning sometime later.

-Chessie Monks, Preservation Intern

New Images on Flickr

The library is making great progress with our Mapping Massachusetts: the History of Transportation in the Commonwealth grant and have received the first batch of images from our digitization vendor. All images are available in DSpace, and you will already find links to the digital images for many items when viewing the record in our online catalog.

A selection of these images are now available for browsing on the Library's Flickr site. The Board of Harbor and Land Commissioner Maps set contains sixteen of the approximately 125 maps digitized that were produced by the Board of Harbor and Land Commissioners. These maps range in date from the late 1880s to the early 1920s, an example of which is given above. This map depicts Gloucester Harbor as it was surveyed in 1915. Click here to see other images in this set.

The second set now available on Flickr contains twenty-nine images from the approximately 105 photographs digitized that record the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel (1848-1875). These photographs show both the construction of the tunnel, as well as work buildings surrounding the tunnel and tools developed specifically for the tunnel project. Several images include people and are quite charming. For instance, the image above shows four women - parasols in hand - standing atop the west end masonry during construction. (Click the image to enlarge). Click here to see other images in this set.

Stay tuned to Flickr where we'll be adding more images from this grant project. Up next is a selection of images from the Commission to Improve the Highways of the Commonwealth (1892).

- Lacy Crews Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

Preserving for Digitization

As mentioned in a previous post, the library was awarded a grant to digitize collections relating to transport- ation systems in the Commonwealth. The first batch of materials are being scanned and the digital images created thus far are wonderful. The second batch of materials is being preserved prior to digitization.

One step that happens before items are sent to be digitized is making sure that the original materials look as good as they possibly can prior to going in front of the camera. Recently I have focused on preserving and preparing a batch of letters written in the 1800s that correspond to the railroad maps also being digitized. Above is a before-and-after shot of such a letter (click image to enlarge). While some staining remains, the original is greatly improved and as a result the digital image will be much easier for users to read. Stay tuned to the blog for more updates as this grant project progresses.

- Lacy Crews Stoneburner, Preservation Librarian

Grants for Cities and Towns

Community development grants offerred by Massachusetts state agencies are a click away on the state's web site. To foster livable municipalities, funding in these areas may be available:

preservation
housing
brownfield redevelopment
economic development
neighborhood revitalization
downtown revitalization

Technical support programs from these offices are also listed. Grants and Funding is a selection under Online Services at Mass.gov, the Commonwealth's home page.

State Library Awarded IMLS Grant

The State Library of Massachusetts has been awarded the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Connecting to Collections Bookshelf Grant. The IMLS press release can be read here.

The library looks forward to using the resources provided through this grant to further the preservation of library collections.

- Lacy Crews, Preservation Librarian

Preservation Lab Updates

Wow - It seems the fast pace of the holidays kept up right on through January and is only now starting to slow. It's been a busy few months in the preservation lab and I want to share some of what has been happening.

State Library Awarded National Endowment for the Humanities Grant
In December the library was notified that we have been awarded a Preservation Assistance Grant to help support library staff training at the Preservation Management Institute at Rutgers University. As part of the coursework for this program a preservation survey and a disaster plan will be completed for the library. These documents will be central to guiding the work of the preservation lab over the next few years.

First Draft of Preservation Survey Complete
The end of January brought the completion of the first draft of a preservation survey of library collections and spaces. It was a great chance for me to really focus on big picture issues as well as small collections in need of care. The next step is integrating feedback from State Library staff and professors at the Preservation Management Institute into a final preservation plan that will outline collections care activities for the future along with a time line for accomplishment.

New Library Exhibit Posted
The last few weeks of January also involved preparation and fabrication of the library's newest exhibit, African Americans in the Massachusetts Legislature: A History. I highly recommend visiting this exhibit before it closes on May 15. The library was lucky enough to receive two interns who conducted the majority of the research for the exhibit, and as a result the information panels are quite rich in history and detail. Lewis Hayden, one of the legislators highlighted, has a remarkable story in which serving in the Massachusetts Legislature is only a footnote to all of the other amazing things he accomplished in his life. Be sure to visit the exhibit, located just outside of room 341, on your next visit to the State Library.

New Preservation Lab Intern
Though it feels nothing like spring, the spring semester has begun for colleges, and the preservation lab is happy to have another Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies student excited to learn preservation methods hands-on. Tina has already begun work on a small portion of a monumental project, so keep an eye out for her blog posts in the weeks to come.

Scrapbook Reorganization Project
A project that came out of the preservation survey was the need to reorganize and place in boxes some of the library's scrapbook collections. When Paige Roberts, Head of Special Collections, and I examined the stack area where the scrapbooks are housed it became clear that by reorganizing the scrapbooks and addressing a selection of gift books shelved nearby we could open up new shelf space for recently acquired manuscript collections. I enlisted Nick, our Northeastern University co-op student, to help with the project, and after several hours we had reorganized the shelving of scrapbooks, placed many books in archival boxes, and boxed up all the gift books to send upstairs to the Technical Services Department. A few more hours of rearranging shelves and giving all of the now-empty shelves a good cleaning yielded a new shelving area for up to 167 manuscript boxes. This new shelf space fills a crucial need and helps preserve the items, as some of our manuscript collections are currently shelved on tables with boxes stacked on top of one another.

Repairs in the Preservation Lab
Now that the bulk of the preservation survey and exhibit work is behind me, I can again focus on the items in the lab in need of repair. An interesting set of newsletters in need of repair were found in the stacks recently, so check back later this week for the full story on these neat items.

- Lacy Crews, Preservation Librarian