Preservation

UCLA Library Conservation Center

The UCLA Library Preservation Department is offering a conservation pre-program internship for qualified students who are applying for Masters-level training in conservation. This internship will provide experience to pre-program students or individuals currently in graduate level conservation programs in conservation decision making, treatment and documentation for library and archival collections. The conservation intern will work under the supervision of the collections conservator to perform repair or make enclosures for materials selected from the collections. Relevant literature will be reviewed prior to conservation treatment and all projects will be documented.
Application deadline is May 7, 2013.

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At the end of June, I left the humid cornfields of Iowa and headed west to spend the summer in sunny southern California. It is now almost September as I sit to reflect upon the past eight weeks that I have spent as an intern at the UCLA Library Conservation Center (LCC). The past two months have gone by quickly, but they have been an invaluable experience for me as I continue to look towards future graduate level study in conservation.

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My name is Amanda Smith and I graduated this Spring with a master’s degree from UCLA’s Moving Image Archive Studies (MIAS) program. During the quarter before I graduated, I was an intern in the Preservation Unit of the UCLA Library working with Siobhan Hagan on audiovisual materials. I had a great time and learned a lot, so I wanted to share a little bit of what I did. » Read the rest of this entry «

Internship
UCLA Library

Note the deadline for the 2013 internship is May 7, 2013

More info here

The UCLA Library Preservation Department is offering a conservation pre-program internship for qualified students who are applying for Masters-level training in conservation. This internship will provide experience to pre-program students or individuals currently in graduate level conservation programs in conservation decision making, treatment and documentation for library and archival collections. The conservation intern will work under the supervision of the collections conservator to perform repair or make enclosures for materials selected from the collections. Relevant literature will be reviewed prior to conservation treatment and all projects will be documented.

Application deadline is April 13, 2012 » Read the rest of this entry «

Emilia at Madam Tussaud’s, Hollywood, with Our (Wax) President.

The last time I wrote, I had just begun my 8-week summer preservation internship at UCLA. Now I am at the end of my experience and looking for a way to adequately summarize 2 months of practical experience, learning opportunities, long-term projects and one-time assignments.

Over the course of the summer I had two big projects. The first of these was helping the libraries’ begin their Business Continuity Plans. In my previous post I described Business Continuity Planning (or BCP for short) as I understood it at the time. Since that time my understanding of BCP has gained depth, as I attended meetings at various libraries on campus, did outside readings, listened to talks and, finally, helped the preservation department and the SRLF (Southern Regional Library Facility) work on their plans using the UCReady tool.

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Hello, esteemed readers! This is Dawn Aveline reporting to you from the summer after completing my first year in UCLA’s MLIS program. Since last fall, I’ve had the good fortune of working with Jake in the Preservation Department, as a preservation assistant. The job encompasses a variety of preservation-related duties that often change from week to week. My tasks range from querying WorldCat holdings, searching for out-of-print books, gathering environmental data, to helping coordinate digitization projects. On occasion I’ve even been known to jump in as a pinch-hit pamphlet binder in the Conservation Lab. It’s always interesting around here! Exposure to this broad range of issues in preservation administration has become an essential part of my education.

Earlier this year I tackled one of my more intriguing assignments and I am excited to share some images of it with you. This project involved examining a number of craft paper bundles that had been sent to Preservation. At some point in the past, these newsprint materials had been gathered together and wrapped up in preparation for a move; it was up to me to open each bundle and provide a condition assessment of the contents.

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The UCLA Library Preservation Department is offering two internships for the summer of 2011.

Application deadline is April 29, 2011.

The visiting internship program offers capstone experiences to individuals enrolled in graduate preservation or conservation education and provides pre-program experiences to qualified students who are applying for Masters-level training in conservation.

Preservation Administration

The intern will work with the preservation officer to complete a project in one of the following areas: audit and assessment of the condition of a library collection, development of disaster response and business continuity plans, or review and quality control of a preservation process. The intern will work with staff and collections to collect data that guides preservation decisions and assists with project management. Typical projects include collection surveys, environmental monitoring, business continuity planning and review of materials for preservation contract services.

Conservation Treatment

This internship will provide experience to pre-program students for individuals planning to attend graduate level conservation programs. The internship will focus on conservation decision making, treatment and documentation for library and archival collections. The conservation intern will work under the supervision of the collections conservator to perform repair or make enclosures for materials selected from the collections. Relevant literature will be reviewed prior to conservation treatment and all projects will be documented. » Read the rest of this entry «

Today’s update comes from Annie Peterson, a Master’s degree student in Library and Information Science, specializing in preservation, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. We’re running a summer internship program at UCLA to give students like Annie an opportunity to get their hands dirty (figuratively and literally) and gain experience in how preservation works in practice. Annie did some very good work with us this summer, and we’re really happy to share her observations here, now, and will plan to post some of our research products in the weeks ahead.

The first week in August will be the last week of my eight-week internship working with Jake Nadal in the preservation department at the UCLA Library. During my time here I’ve gained an invaluable wealth of knowledge and have worked on some really exciting projects.

One of the projects I worked on is “Collecting Los Angeles.” The goal of the project is to build a strong, cohesive collection at UCLA that is all about Los Angeles history and culture. The preservation portion of it is a condition survey that will help the library assess the overall condition of its archival collections. I worked on tweaking the survey tool and creating a ratings system for determining how valuable to Los Angeles research a particular collection could be.

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Today’s update comes from Laura Bedford, a Master’s degree student in book and paper conservation at the University of Texas, Austin. Third-year students like Laura are expected to complete a nine-month residency under a master conservator, and Laura is working at the Huntington Library with our good friend Holly Moore. Holly arranged for Laura to spend a little time with us so that she could experience work in a different conservation setting.

In February I had the pleasure of spending two weeks working at UCLA’s conservation lab with Kristen St. John, Collections Conservator, and Jake Nadal, Preservation Officer. The purpose of this mini-internship was to experience the work of a high-use circulating collection lab, as my prior experience has been in special collections and archives.

I spent the first day with Kristen reviewing the treatments she and her staff complete in-house, which involved the familiar hinge-tightening, page tip-in’s, rebacks, recases, board attachments, double fan adhesive bindings, full rebinds, phase boxes and corrugated clamshell enclosures. Books are sent to the lab from all UCLA library divisions, where a two-tiered sorting takes place. The initial sort is to identify items that are too far decayed to be repaired, items that can be sent to the UC Bindery for repair, and items that will be treated in-house. The secondary sort is to select the appropriate in-house treatments.

We sorted through roughly 50 books to familiarize myself with the criteria for library binding candidates.  I had a hard time not wanting to keep more of the books in-house, until Kristen reminded me that their library binding costs were cheaper than paying a student the two hours’ work it would take to repair the book.  Once the books were sorted, we filled out repair slips for the roughly fifteen in-house candidates, ticking off boxes to specify how the treatments were to be handled (e.g. a hollow tube spine, or instructions to photocopy rear end sheets to replace the front ones).

I didn’t do the repairs on any of the books I’d sorted out, though, as Kristen had another project in mind for me: a group of architectural drawings by Richard Neutra that were to be loaned out for exhibit by the end of the month.  I wasn’t going to be able to treat all of them in my two weeks, of course, but she wanted me to handle documentation and set up a treatment protocol that could be continued after my departure.

Neutra documents rolled, as they came to the lab.

Here’s a brief summary of what I was looking at: » Read the rest of this entry «