#msu libraries

[msulconservationlab]

At ALA Annual 2016, automation/cataloging vendor Backstage Library Works was giving out the *best* conference swag--this awesome set of lenses that fit onto a smartphone’s camera.

I’m sure they just expected people to enjoy these for personal photography, but they’re excellent tools to have in the conservation lab. Look at this close-up shot of a scarf tear I took with the macro lens. I can see tiny paper fibers! I love it! (BTW, for scale, that’s a score and the lines at the top of the pic are the ends of music staves.) 

Thanks, BSLW--you’re helping out libraries in more ways than you know :)

~Autumn

[whitesparrowbindery]

I am happy to announce that the Michigan State University Libraries' Wallace Conservation Lab is now on Tumblr at msulconservationlab

[whitesparrowbindery]

Right now I am cleaning a very dirty book...lots of dirt and debris has collected in the inner margins. But hey, if you were 363 years old and never had a bath, you'd be dirty too!

[whitesparrowbindery]

Check out this awesome cradle-cart that our Maps Librarian had custom made for transporting large maps.

Large flat maps can be a pain to move.  You can't fold them (lest you incur my wrath), and rolling can cause damage to brittle maps.  Trying to hold a map, open a door, and push a cart is a nightmare.  Thus, this galvanized steel cradle-cart was born!  Facilities even tricked it out with a sweet Spartan logo.

Go Green!

[whitesparrowbindery]

A tower of custom boxes made by one of our student workers.

[widenerlibrary]

Hyak nin is'shiu, or Stanzas by a century of poets, being Japanese Lyrical Odes, by Frederick V. Dickins, M.B. , 1866

With an extensive preface detailing the painstaking effort of the author to accurately translate these poems, "familiar in every Japanese household," this book includes poems, explanatory notes, text in Roman and Japanese characters, a full index and a catalog of Japanese author titles. It was scanned as part of the Google Books Project.

Librarians' notes indicate that the book was given to the Harvard Library by George W. Wales of Boston in 1875 and that its paper was deacidified in 1992.

Acidified paper is the reason so many books and papers created after 1840 are yellowed and crumbling. Michigan State University library offers this description of deacidification of acidic paper.