Preservation Week at VCL, April 23 to 29

Posted on April 24, 2017 by trwrightmauer

During the American Library Association’s Preservation Week (April 23-April 29) the Vassar College Libraries will join libraries all over the country to highlight the ongoing need for preservation in our libraries and showcase items that demonstrate some of the challenges and solutions we face each day while caring for our collection of over one million books, documents and media.

In addition to our red table tent cards and bookmarks spread throughout the libraries that communicate some best practices for preservation, we will have two cases leading into the Cornaro Room that display examples of preservation problems as well as the remedies we employ to make them usable again by the Vassar community.

The Vassar College Libraries are committed to the preservation of our collection and have a long established Preservation Department that provides conservation and preservation services to all of our libraries in order to maintain the health and accessibility of our extensive collection. We cannot achieve this goal without the help of the entire Vassar community and invite you to learn more about what you can do to help ensure the longevity of our collection for future Vassar scholars.

ABOUT THE VCL PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT

The Preservation department offers a broad range of preservation options for both newly acquired and existing materials to ensure the most effective treatments for standard collections formats as well as sound, creative solutions for the non-standard formats. Keeping in mind the key treatment goals of usability, readability, permanence (through use of chemically stable conservation materials), sturdiness, and adherence to national standards, the Department provides state of the art conservation treatments on worn, damaged, or deteriorating materials, thereby enhancing user access to the Libraries’ collections.

More information about our criteria and methods may be found under the PRESERVATION TAB at the Vassar College Libraries website.

ABOUT PRESERVATION WEEK

Preservation Week was created in 2010 because some 630 million items in collecting institutions require immediate attention and care and eighty percent of these institutions have no paid staff assigned to collections care and 22 percent have no collections care personnel at all. Some 2.6 billion items are not protected by an emergency plan. As natural disasters of recent years have taught us, these resources are in jeopardy should a disaster strike. Personal, family, and community collections are equally at risk.

Preservation Week is an initiative of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), a division of the American Library Association (ALA).

WHY IS PRESERVATION IMPORTANT?

In 2005 the first comprehensive national survey of the condition and preservation needs of the nation’s collections reported that U.S. institutions hold more than 4.8 billion items. Libraries alone hold 3 billion items (63 percent of the whole). A treasure trove of uncounted additional items is held by individuals, families, and communities.
Some 630 million items in collecting institutions require immediate attention and care. Eighty percent of these institutions have no paid staff assigned responsibility for collections care; 22 percent have no collections care personnel at all. Some 2.6 billion items are not protected by an emergency plan. As natural disasters of recent years have taught us, these resources are in jeopardy should a disaster strike. Personal, family, and community collections are equally at risk.

KEY ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS THAT PLACE COLLECTIONS AT RISK:

Light: Ultraviolet rays from natural and artificial sources can cause fading and disintegration.
Pollutants: Dust is abrasive and can accelerate harmful chemical reactions.
Heat: High temperatures can accelerate deterioration.
Moisture: High humidity promotes mold growth, corrosion, and degradation, while excessive dryness can cause drying and cracking. Fluctuations between extremes can cause warping, buckling, and flaking.

PRESERVATION FAST FACTS

More than 4.8 billion artifacts are held in public trust by more than 30,000 archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, scientific research collections, and archaeological repositories in the United States. 1.3 billion of these items are at risk of being lost.
Roughly 70% of institutions need additional conservation or preservation training for their staff and volunteers.
A majority of collecting institutions, more than 80%, do not have a disaster plan in place that can be executed by trained staff.
Nearly a quarter of all the 21 million paintings, sculptures, and works of decorative art in U.S. collections need conservation treatment or improved care and conditions.
More than 50% of collecting institutions have had their collections damaged by light.
More than 65% of collecting institutions report damage to their collections due to improper storage.

*Source: “A Public Trust at Risk: The Heritage Health Index Report on the State of America’s Collections,” Library of Congress. For additional information regarding Preservation Week, please visit www.ala.org/preservationweek.

National African-American Read-In at VCL, February 20, 2017

Posted on February 6, 2017 by tsutherland

Join us for the 2017 National African-American Read-In!

Celebrate Black History Month at Vassar College Libraries as we host an African-American Read-In. Come read or come listen to a variety of different works authored by African Americans.

Date: Monday, February 20, 2017
Time: 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Location: Class of ’51 Reading Room, Thompson (Main) Library.

A reception will follow the readings at 4 p.m.

Frequently asked questions:

Q. Can I reserve a book in advance to read?
Yes! Contact Tracy Sutherland, Head of User Services, with your request. We can pull items from the stacks in advance.
Q. I’m not able to attend but would like something read – is that possible?
Yes! We can pull items from the stacks in advance as well. Contact Tracy Sutherland, Head of User Services, with your request.

Follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #AfricanAmericanReadIn

For more information about the National African-American Read-In, visit http://www.ncte.org/aari.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Barbara Beisinghoff Residency

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Thomas Hill

This autumn, as the Vassar campus begins to undergo its yearly change from leafy green Arcadia to the clear white light of Winter, it has undergone another transformation toward transparency through the energies of the internationally acclaimed graphic artist Barbara Beisinghoff. Resident on campus with the filmmaker Eva Wal from September 19 to October 14, Barbara’s campus-wide installation, “When Light Touches Paper,” includes an exhibit of her artist’s books and prints that sprawl between the Van Ingen Art Library and Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.

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It also includes the metamorphosis of campus trees, most notably the great London Plane tree on the Library Lawn, into “Poetrees” of couchéd paper fragments of texts from poets including Paul Celan and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Trained as an etcher, Beisinghoff’s work has evolved into a sculptural relationship with hand-made paper, upon which she inscribes watermark and water-jet-carved figures that can only be seen with backlighting.

Included in the Art Library portion of her exhibit is her “Room for a Clairvoyant.” This is a space populated by semi-transparent prints with texts derived from the German novelist Christa Wolf’s 1983 novel Cassandra, based on the story of the tragic prophetess of Troy. The showcase of artists’ books in the reading room of the Art Library contains a series of imaginary books from Cassandra’s library, which include stories of contemporary emancipated women, for Beisinghoff explains that “such a wise woman, able to see across time, would have to have had a library. Also included are “Tau Blau” or Dew Blue — a work whose paper is made out of flax grown on her estate near Hannover, and the biographical “Allmannigfaltige,” which features images of six of Goethe’s women inscribed into his color theory.

Events:

A film of Barbara’s stay on campus, “Wölbe Dich, Welt” = “Grow Vaulted, World” by Eva Wal is continuously showing in the Room for a Clairvoyant in the Art Library before Mid-Term week.

Barbara will give a gallery talk Thursday October 6 at 5:00 p.m., beginning in the Project Gallery of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.

On Wednesday October 5 at noon on WVKR (91.3FM) The Library Cafe, hosted by Art Librarian Thomas Hill, will feature a 45 minute interview with the artist about her artist’s books and etchings, installations and public commissions, and her residency at Vassar College.

On Tuesday October 11 at 5:00 p.m. in the Class of 1951 Reading Room in the Main Library Barbara Beisinghoff wil be participating in a symposium on artists’ books with artist Werner Pfeiffer, Women’s Studio Workshop executive and artist Ann Kalmbach, and Special Collections Librarian Ronald Patkus. A reception will follow.

The residency of Barbara Beisinghoff and Eva Wal is sponsored by the Creative Arts Across the Disciplines initiative, a program funded with a grant from the Andrew W. Melon Foundation. The theme of this year’s residency is “touch.”