New Conservation Lab Saves Printed Matter
6/12/2009
Polishchuk shows Mylar-preserved book pages to Professor Irwin Weintraub of the Library (center) and Provost Tramontano.
If the Brooklyn College Library is the brain of the campus, its memory just got a big boost! On Wednesday, May 13, the Brooklyn College Library Archives and Special Collections celebrated the opening of CUNY’s first and, so far, only conservation lab by inviting the College community to tour the new facility.
"The addition of the Conservation Lab will contribute to the preservation of the library’s precious holdings and benefit students as well as faculty," History Department Chairperson, Professor David G. Troyansky noted. "We historians think of libraries and archives as our laboratories for scholarly investigation."
Opening remarks were made to an appreciative audience, seated amid vitrines of paraphernalia and printed matter, ranging from seventeenth-century handwritten journals and folio-sized tomes to fragile 1950s Hank Kaplan paperbacks and boxing gloves. A tour of the new lab nestled behind the glass doors of the archive reading room followed. Led by Slava Polishchuk, master bookbinder and fine artist, guests were treated to views of work in progress and detailed explanations of the processes involved. "Each book is like a person," said Polishchuk, who has repaired books from the archive since 2002. "They need constant care."
Polishchuk restores bindings and covers of books—some of which are four-hundred-year-old—to resemble their original form and creates slipcases for fragile, fine, or fantastic volumes. With a custom-designed space, at least five times as large as his former atelier, he will be able to work on more projects at a time—not only books, but photographs, maps, and posters, which can be washed clean in a bathtub-size sink and dried on special racks. If books cannot be saved, Polishchuk seals their pages in Mylar. "You lose the book as an object," he said, "but the information is still accessible."
Polishchuk with former NYS Assemblywoman Adele Cohen.
An additional, if immaterial, way to preserve records, is now feasible. With the recent donation of a huge adjustable bed scanner, the lab can image photographs or books of any size. Soon a selection of the collections will be online. Since the material may not be removed from the library, Internet access will benefit scholars everywhere. "It will democratize the archive," said archivist Marianne LaBatto.
Among those attending the festivities was Adele Cohen, former New York State assemblywoman from District 46, who was delighted to see the result of the Community Capital Assistance Program grant she obtained for the College. "I am a Brooklyn College graduate," she noted, "and without the College, I would certainly not be where I am today. I majored in history—who else could be as interested in an archive?"
Provost William A. Tramontano, on hand to thank former Assemblywoman Cohen on behalf of the entire College community, remarked "It is critical to save these works for the next generation—especially if we go to the world of Kindle—so that everyone is able to see the detail, the dedication, the love that went into the printing and production of these books. This work is a testimony to the preservation of knowledge."
To leave a legacy, the lab will do more than repair the collection. "The Conservation Lab will afford Brooklyn College the opportunity to offer students enrolled in our interdisciplinary Archival Studies and Community Documentation (ASCD) minor a comprehensive course, cum workshop, in book and paper conservation," said Professor Anthony M. Cucchiara, College archivist and coordinator of the ASCD minor, which is offered by the History Department in conjunction with the library.
"Generally, such a concentration is available only to graduate students seeking library master’s degrees or certificates in archival management," noted Cucchiara, who heads the Archives and Special Collections. "Brooklyn College is the first in the City University of New York—and the first nationally—to offer this specialized course of study to undergraduates."
