All about foil-back labels (more musing on call number labels)

I have the happy news to report that my library’s shelf prep activities (barcoding, call number labeling, security stripping (? , and property stamping have moved to my department, Preservation Services. Yeah! This means, long last, that I will not only be pestering this unit to adhere to practices that focus on permanence and durability and materials that are tested and approved for long-term use in a research library collection … I’ll be responsible for making sure this happens!

My first goal is to entirely rethink the call number labeling workflow. There’s been some recent activity on this issue on PADG, but there is no single best practice options out there. Many rather advanced and forward thinking libraries use the SeLin system … a “‘plastic-like” thin white material” coated on the back with a heat-set adhesive. There are lots of problems with SeLin, namely that while it is a great label, getting it (the outdated software, the dot matrix printer) to interact with newer computers or your ILS is difficult. This string on PADG encapsulates that issue back in 2004 — Yale loved the SeLin labels, but found the printer technology out of date.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m thinking about using our Zebra thermal transfer printer to make call number labels — I think there’s great permanence in a thermal transfer print, particularly to paper but also to polyester stock. In thinking about the label stock, I started wondering about the purpose of foil-back labels. I found this great article (from the Abbey Newsletter … my god, will anyone ever live up to Ellen McCrady’s legacy and produce again anything near as wonderful and contemporary as the Abbey Newsletter?)
that explains the purpose of the foil back label. Essentially, it is two-fold:

1. The foil helps the label to conform to the rounded shape of a book’s spine.
2. The foil acts as a barrier between the layer of “cold application pressure sensitive adhesive” and the upper layer, presumably composed of paper. This prevents the adhesive from migrating through and discoloring the paper layer and causing fading of any ink media

I’m curious about the application of a foil-back to a polyester label – I like the permanance of polyester and the potential elimination of a need for a clear label protector. Would it help the label stick to the curved spine of the book? Would it do anything to keep the adhesive from migrating, or is that even an issue with a plastic polyester label?

The Preservation Directorate at the Library of Congress has a whole section of testing requirements related to label stock printed with laser or thermal transfer processes and applied to bound books, plastics (think polypropylene CD cases and film cans), metals, and text pages (see section 700: Label Stock). HOWEVER, they don’t reveal what supplier / material they use for any of these products. I’ve even written nicely to inquire and never received a response.

I have a self-imposed deadline to figure out a new call number label system by August 1, 2008. We’re a SIrsi library (just unrolling the Java client, if you can believe it), so whatever label system we use has to seamlessly work with Sirsi. And by seamlessly I mean I scan in a barcode number and a millisecond later out pops a permanent, durable call number label.

What do others use, both in terms of materials and software, to print call number labels?? Any info and all advice appreciated! I’ll post the first comment further detailing what U.Va. current uses (and its limitations).

 

I’m famous!

Well, in that local radio celebrity type of way. I was interviewed about being a scooter-riding librarian a few weeks ago, and the story hit the airwaves last week!

 

Turn on your book light. Let it shine wherever you go.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present unto you The Enlightenment: ” illuminates your shelf rather your soul. Made from plexiglass and lit by an energy-saving bulb, the lamp plugs into an outlet with a standard cord…

 

cryogenics, n. – or, how cold can you go with library stuff, really?

This blog post title is a tribute to a new conserv-o-blog on the block. Welcome The Vespiary, a great blog with an ever clever schema for post titles.

I’ll be spending a lot of time over the next few months in the same building as the UVa surplus property center and will undoubtably be posting some photos of soon-to-be-auctioned-off gems here at Do I Really. I just might have to rename this blog Don’t I Really Want to Buy That and Stick It In My Living Room? Here’s the kick-off: a cryogenic preservation system. Per the wikipedia entry, cryogenics is “branch of physics and engineering that involves the study of very low temperatures, how to produce them, and how materials behave at those temperatures.” As I snapped some photos, I was thinking (hyperglycemic-ally so, I should note) … what would happen if I tossed a time-capsule of 19th-21st century library collections materials in there? A couple books in various types of bindings, some documents representing everything from rag paper to western union telegrams, some CDs, 16mm b/w film with mag sound, some color photos and their negatives, and perhaps a few artifacts and paintings for good measure? Just how well “preserved” would these materials be when immersed in liquid nitrogen or helium?

I think the answer is fairly obvious: the liquid cryogens plus the organic materials and media would probably not interact well, thermal shock (mentioned in the wikipedia article) aside. But it was fun to think about snapping this beauty up and reserving a place for it in my new lab, just in case the next “phase” of conservation is cryogenics.

 

Way to go, Alpine AIC Angels!

I know that as soon as she has a chance to catch her breath, Beth will write all about the Angels Projects at the American Alpine Club in Golden, CO that took place last week after the 2008 AIC Annual Meeting in Denver. In the mean-time, MileHighNews.com has a great write-up of the project and the conservators who were so entralled in their volunteer work that they couldn’t put down their “painter’s pallet knife”-like microspatulas to grab a bite of lunch. I know the exact feeling, and wish I could’ve stayed in town and helped out!

I love this article because it not only gives conservation some great news exposure and better helps the public (aka, folks like my very own parents) to better understand the many facets of library, archives, and museum conservation activities, but it will also be a great prop for Beth to employ as she courts donors and grant agencies over the next few years to build a conservation program for the AAC. Preservation / conservation activities are always a “sexy sell” for fundraising (all those shiny tools, solvent submersions, and intricate hand skills). Add mountains, climbers, their ephemera, and heroic feats of sportsmanship, and a archival backlog of conservation need to the mix, and you have the recipe for conservation fundraising success.

 

New conserv-o-blog on the block sounds its barbaric yawp

I am a sucker for a rallying cry, and Jeff Peachey has a great one on his new blog: conservators of the world – both those pioneers in the jungle of private practice and those pushing out from the edges of “the system” in institutions – unite! I’ve always wanted to know more about the AIC Group CIPP (Conservators in Private Practice) and their vision for the future – I hope Jeff’s vision is a shared one amongst the group.

(And as for the Whitman reference, there was a great two hour American Experience documentary on PBS recently. I have somehow made it through life and a not just a few American Lit classes without Whitman. I am now on the hunt for an oversized, rare edition of “Leaves of Grass” missing from the shelf of Alderman Library.)

 

Lessons on fundraising for preservation

The recent New Yorker (April 28, 2008 ) has a great article (“Restoration Drama” – not available online) on the Edith Wharton Restoration project to preserve Edith Wharton’s country house, the Mount, in Lenox, MA. The organization received a Preserve America Presidential Award in 2005 or so and hosted “librarian and lover of literature” Laura Bush (“I read, I smoke, I admire”) a year later to celebrate the coup of purchasing Edith Wharton’s Library with $2.6 million in borrowed – not raised – cash.

There are some great quotes in this article about Wharton’s sense of a library’s place in a home from her book The Decoration of Houses (“Plain shelves filled with good editions in good bindings are truly more decorative than ornate books lined with tawdry books”). And I incited no small sense of internal indignation with the realization that historic preservation, i.e., the preservation of the built environment (and namely Proper Name houses) rakes in so much more cash and accolades over other equally admirable preservation endeavors of a smaller literal scale (a painting, or a collection of books or papers or films) that endeavor to preserve information containers rather than lawn ornaments.  I’m not saying historic preservation isn’t worthwhile … I just envy their donor base and merit program.

The takeaway in this article is how the Edith Wharton Restoration organization let “creative programming” – such as an adopt the book programs (adopting one book = $50,000!) intended to fund the $2.6m purchase of the Edith Wharton library that met with minimal success – get ahead of the actual budget. With debts of well over $6m as of late March 2008, the article ends with the former director “really wish[ing] them luck.” The article is a great examination of the dynamics between a board of directions that can’t seem to raise promised funds versus an enterprising (and uncontainable) organization director, and a lesson for someone like me occasionally brought out of the basement to do a preservation dog and pony show for donors and then locked back up to tend the books and vision.

 

I believe the children are our future …

Just back from AIC, and I must say that I’m feeling really good about the future of the profession. There’s a terrific crop of youngsters / hipsters on the horizon and while I used to worry about my and their livelihood in a Jude the Obscure “because we are too many” way, well, it was nice to see the blue hairs slightly outnumbered by the non-blue haired in Denver. Not that the blue-hairs don’t still have work to do! We young things need to be taken sharply by the collar and roughed up a bit with all the secrets to past and ongoing successes. I’ve yet to be mentored by a rock star of the profession quite like I want to be — jerked aside, occasionally reprimanded, and then emblazoned with advice for a bold future. I either lack promise or the older generation isn’t as outgoing as the new crowd, but either way, I’m on the hunt for a mentor. Watch out, conservation / preservation rock stars.

 

protection of the … seed record?

I will explain the radio silence from the past week shortly (or, as soon as I am officially allowed — it is $$good$$ news!), but right now I’m watching a 60 Minutes story about the Doomsday vault, a super cold storage vault for storage of seeds. Yes, seeds!

The Svalbard International Seed Vault was built by the Norwegian government into a mountainside on the Svalbard islands (just inside the North Pole) at a cost of $5m. Intended to preserve the planet’s crop diversity in perpetuity and “from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.” (The 60 Minutes story reports that a seed vault in Afghanistan was pillaged for … not the seeds, but for the glass containers in which the seeds were stored).

This BBC report reveals that the seeds will be stored at -18C and that the surrounding permafrost will help keep the seeds at the appropriate temperature. Once the seeds are safely stored in the vault, humans won’t be needed to tend the seed bank. “If you design a facility to be used in worst-case scenarios, then you cannot actually have too much dependency on human beings” BBC quotes Cary Fowler, the Trust’s executive director.  Interesting!

 

Tech solutions to daily burdensome and time consuming preservation activities!

I’m ordering computers and accessories with end of year funding, and I’ve been doing quite a bit of research in hopes of finding new tech tools to make our lives easier in regards to those high volume and burdensome tasks we take on daily in Preservation:

1. barcode duplication
2. shelf preparation: call number labeling, pre-printed barcode placement, security strip placement, and bookplating
3. inventory control: or, charging the hundreds of items that arrive daily to Preservation IDs and discharging the materials we’ve treated, bound or re-housed. For example: when a book arrives for library binding, we charge the book to a dummy patron called “BIND” so that staff and users don’t just see that the book is charged and unavailable … they see a notification saying the book is at the bindery and will be available in two weeks, and have the option to ILL a copy from another library. We charge each type of treatment to its own workflow to facilitate recall retrieval and inventory checks. When the book returns from the bindery (with 400-500 or so other items every other Weds), we discharge it. Hundreds. Daily. Argh.

While many libraries just assign new pre-printed barcodes (to items after library binding or books after they’re re-housed in phase boxes), I found a combination of barcode printer, resin printer ribbons, and a vendor who sells blank barcode labels, that, short of hard testing data from LoC (why aren’t their materials testing results — made possible by our generous tax dollars — publicly available online??!!) I believe produce as permanent and durable a barcode as our pre-printed barcode labels. We use a Zebra TLP2824 barcode printer that uses thermal transfer printing. The Zebra website does a great job of clarifying the difference between thermal transfer and direct thermal printing:

“Thermal transfer printing uses a heated ribbon to produce durable, long-lasting images on a wide variety of materials. No ribbon is used in direct thermal printing, which creates the image directly on the printed material. Direct thermal media is more sensitive to light, heat and abrasion, which reduces the life of the printed material.”

We use the Zebra 5095 resin printer ribbons and 3-mil polyester with 1-mil acrylic adhesive labels (no laminate) from Data2. Anyone out there use a different combination of printer / label material / print ribbon that they believe to more permanent / durable?

I’m trying to find out if there’s such a thing as a network-able barcode printer (I want to hook our barcode printer up to one computer in the room and through IP printing print barcodes from any other computer in the room), and I’m looking at the TLP2824-Z. My tech support dudes are also doing so research, so I’ll report back. I should add that we use Labelview Basic to set up a standard barcode template and to facilitate printing. It causes me great pain that I was not able to get the standard Zebra barcode printing software to work as I wanted it to.

I don’t have any bright ideas of about shelf prep tonight. I abhor and fear our current call number labeling (Gaylord “Permaplus! paper labels that come in sheets to facilitate laser jet printing and vinyl “label protectors” … yes, vinyl). When I am queen of shelf prep (hopefully soon), the call number labeling process is first against the wall. What are folks using for call number labels these days (software, label materials, print processes, etc)? I have a fantasy that one day I will send a foil-back polyester label through my thermal transfer barcode printer to create a call number label that 1) permanently sticks and conforms to the spine of a book and doesn’t pop off (that’s the reason for the foil back, right?), 2) is printed using the highly durable thermal transfer printing process on a durable polyester label, 3) doesn’t require any sort of additional “label protector” and 4) can be quickly printed with the push of one button in my ILS.

Finally, let me present to you my greatest find of this whole investigation: I am pimping out our charge / discharge computer. We charge and discharge hundreds of items each day, and student assistants are chiefly assigned to this task … they don’t always notice when they mischarge an item for accidentally overlook an item and fail to discharge it. I guess that’s why 798 items were charged to the pamphlet binding workflow when I started: there were only 3 items on the pamphlet binding shelf, and the other 795 were in their place in the stacks. but still charged to Preservation. Anyway, three words: BLUETOOTH BARCODE SCANNER. I’m going to get a cordless bluetooth barcode scanner with a trigger (this one, I think), and it is going to change our lives. I’m also setting up a standing height monitor on a swing arm so the student using the wireless barcode scanner can swing the monitor to just above the booktruck and charge/ discharge each item with the cordless barcode scanner while looking at the computer monitor to make sure each item is scanned.   Shazaam!

Any advice or feedback on these products or processes from the peanut gallery? Any tech tips to facilitate preservation activities that anyone would like to share?