This Sony U-matic recorder and player was a popular video cassette format in the 1970s and 1980s.This Sony U-matic recorder and player was a popular video cassette format in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tools of the Trade

The instruments we use to conserve Illinois’ collections are often as fascinating as the artifacts themselves.

By Abigail Bobrow

The University of Illinois’ Preservation Services has come a long way since its initial creation in 1934 when grant money distributed during the Great Depression was used to create what was then called the Library Mending Division.

Ninety years later, three distinct labs—the Conservation Lab, Media Preservation Lab, and Born Digital Lab—care for our special collections and circulating materials, combining age-old methods with modern technology.

“Our collections are invaluable and irreplaceable,” said Jennifer Teper, Velde Professor and head of Preservation Services. “It’s our job to take care of them no matter what format they are in.” In this Curiosities, we are looking at the machines and devices our experts use to clean, repair, decode, and digitize the objects as they journey through Illinois’ Preservation Services before becoming widely available.

Extending Life

A paper cutter and a humidification chamber
The humidification chamber relaxes rolled-up or folded paper objects. Once the paper is softened, the items can be flattened under weights.

Like an emergency room with lifesaving equipment, the Conservation Lab has devices and techniques available to tend to the fragile and worn “patients” that come through their doors.

A blender and a CO2 dispenser.
This CO2 dispenser, commonly found in most stores, is used to prepare a wash that helps neutralize existing acids found in paper and is used explicitly for documents with Iron gall ink printing. This ink has been used since the fifth century through the twentieth century. The blender beside it is used to mix gel and liquid adhesives and create paper pulp.

“We do call it triage when materials come in,” Jody Suzanne Waitzman (ACES ’07, iSCHOOL ’13), conservator for the Conservation Lab, said. “We get a sense of what they need, what we want to prioritize, and why, and that all happens before an item is tested or a treatment is proposed.”

A paper guillotine and a a press
(LEFT) This cast-iron blade from a paper guillotine made at the turn of the twentieth century is used to cut stacks of paper or to cut the spine off a newer book that was bound with adhesive. (RIGHT) Nipping presses line the counter in the Conservation Lab. They are used for gluing something in a small book and are mostly for circulating collections. The lab also uses them for conservation classes.

Located on the second floor of the Oak Street Library Facility, the lab is dedicated to preserving physical objects, primarily paper and books, created by craftsmen, artisans, and scholars from antiquity to today. This space most closely resembles the original intent of the Library Mending Room and handles the oldest items in our collection. Fraying tomes or torn maps often require steady hands, patience, and twenty-first-century technology.

Old books and a book threading tool
(Left) Books waiting for treatment in the Oak Street facility (Right) Conservators in Illinois regularly use this kind of bookbinding
sewing frame to repair damaged spines and bindings. The tool itself traces its roots to the Middle Ages.

“There’s a sense of the life that this object has lived before it got to you,” Waitzman said. “And there is a consideration of the life it will live when it leaves here.”

Racing Against Time

A collage of audio and video recording equipment
1. These sections of film have been preserved and stabilized and are now on stable yellow reels. 2. The Media Preservation Lab values the importance of preserving metadata, including these boxes. 3. This incubator is used to dry out old reels of film damaged by mildew or mold. 4. A collection of audio equipment, including record players, cassette players, amplifiers, mixers, and speakers. 5. Several Sony Betacam players/recorders line the shelves in the Media Preservation Lab. 6. A Steenbeck analog editing table.

The Media Preservation Labs handle audiovisual items, and the tools they use to see and hear the tapes, movies, and records are also used to preserve them. Otherwise, a spool of acetate film in a canister is nothing more than a pile of plastic in a tin can.

Sometimes, it’s a race against time for both the media and the machine. Maintaining the tools we use to make items accessible can be just as challenging as preserving images and sounds themselves.

“While digitization is a goal, it’s not always necessarily the only goal we’re looking at,” Josh Harris, head of the Media Preservation Lab, said. “We are racing against time not only to get items digitized but also to account for the machines that are not made anymore. A lot of what I do is the preservation of the machine.”

Many of a certain age will surely recognize the VHS, Betamax players, reel-to-reel recorders, and movie projectors lining the walls. These analog oldies are the key to accessing immortality in a digital space.

Code Breaking

A collage of popular computer disks and computers from the 1980s and 90s
1. 8×8-inch IBM Memory Excellence floppy disk. 2. Apple IIe was released in 1983. 3. The Macintosh SE/30 was released in 1989. 4. A collection of 5¼ floppy disks was donated to the Born Digital Lab recently. 5. FRED, or forensic recovery of evidence device, is an essential workstation for securing, saving, and analyzing data from hard drives and other media carriers.

The essence of the items in the Born Digital Lab is a unique sequence of numbers and languages stored on a data carrier. These bits and bytes rely entirely on a capable computer to interpret them.

The preservationist’s role is to preserve the data and migrate it forward in the ways we currently know in preparation for the future platforms we have yet to encounter. Just like in the Media Preservation Lab, the preservationists in the Born Digital Lab are beholden to machines and programs of varying sophistication to read and decode any of the 6,000 languages used to create them digitally.

“Born digital is kind of like the Wild West,” said the digital preservation coordinator Tracy Marie Popp (iSCHOOL ’09).

Popp wrangles data housed on various disk formats using the lab’s “ancient” computers, some dating back to the 1980s.

To help preserve data that have existed only online, the university subscribes to the Internet Archive, which serves as a research source and a place to store and easily retrieve website data. The volume of continuously created data feels infinite, but the resources to preserve the information are finite.

“Everybody’s kind of grappling with this idea of, ‘Wow, there’s so much stuff, we can’t save it all,’” Popp said. “So, in working with collections managers, it’s often about making difficult choices around what you have to prioritize.”

This story was published .