futureofthebook.com
preservation and persistence of the changing book

Introduction

Commentary

Reports

Workshops

Store

Links

Pioneers of Book Conservation

Founders of Book Conservation Practice

The gradual integration of book conservation into wider conservation practice includes a separation of book conservation from book production trades. These transitions are illustrated by careers of pioneer book conservators in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Cockerell and Powell

Douglas Cockerell (1870-1945) contributions to an emerging field of book conservation are summarized in his book; Bookbinding and the Care of Books. This work presents a complete sequence of technique which is uncompromised by damaging trade practices. Also included are innovative specifications for binding library books in constant use. The introduction identifies the problems to be faced; “The reasons that have led to the production in modern times of bindings that fail to last for a reasonable time are twofold. The materials are badly selected or prepared, and the methods of binding are faulty. Another factor in the decay of bindings, both old and new, is the bad conditions under which they are often kept.” Beyond his book, Douglas Cockerell’s influence spread through the example of his own book conservation work. In 1935 he rebound the Codex Sinaiticus establishing a model for specification, documentation and vellum text rebinding.

Roger Powell (1896-1989) researched early binding structure and published a technical description of the binding of the Stonyhurst Gospel which was bound in Northumbria in the seventh century. His treatment and rebinding of the Kells manuscript, begun in 1953, set standards for book conservation treatment. The manuscript had undergone previous damaging rebindings, particularly in the 1830’s when the book was trimmed into the illuminations. Treatment included flattening and mending the vellum leaves. Rebinding involved investigation and model making to develop a non-adhesive structure appropriate to the period of production of the manuscript. Aesthetic issues were also resolved creating a carefully crafted appearance without distractive visual elements. The Kells Gospels are inseparable from the book format for which they were made and the Powell bindings have returned them effectively and sympathetically to this format after long abuse. This is a magnificent achievement in the practice of book conservation.

Cains, Clarkson, Etherington and Waters

On November 4th, 1966 the work of book conservation was interrupted by a disastrous flood in Florence. Included in the collections soaked by mud, water and oil were about two million books and manuscripts. Emergency salvage operations were organized and conservators from all over the world were sent to assist. Following emergency salvage and drying operations, a second phase of the rescue of library collections was the organization of a conservation rebinding program designed and administered by Anthony Cains, Conservator of Trinity College. A large, well equipped facility was installed in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. The procedures and methods were based on principles of conservation and kept free of inappropriate or damaging trade practices. Observation of the flood damaged materials stimulated an investigation of the simple, but durable limp vellum bindings. As a result the limp vellum type was developed by Chris Clarkson into a basic structure for the BNC program. A report of his work was presented in 1975. In 1969 Frazer Poole of the Library of Congress approached Peter Waters (1930-2005) to act as a consultant in the planning of a conservation facility for the Library. In 1971 Peter Waters became the Head of the Restoration Office at the LC. The staff included about twenty positions with a research laboratory staff of six. Don Etherington and Chris Clarkson joined the staff in the Bindery Section. By 1976 the Binding Section had developed a complete program for book conservation with six trainees. Gertz, Harris, Morrow and Merrill

During the 1970’s library preservation in the United States was dominated by book conservators; those focused on the treatment of books and the craft of bookbinding as a theme of preservation. This influence shifted in the 1980’s as preservation librarians assumed the administration of library preservation programs and the American Library Association accommodated the new community in effective new preservation sub-groups within ALCTS. Approaches to training and education also shifted from apprenticeship formats to academic programs. Pioneers in preservation program administration included Janet Gertz and Carolyn Harris (Columbia), Carolyn Morrow (U. of Illinois) and Jan Merrill (U. of Connecticut). This was a dramatic shift of the wide field of library preservation as leadership of the programs moved from practitioners with a background in book production trades to librarian practitioners developing an academic, library and information science base and management precepts. Banks

All these transitions characterizing the emergence of the contemporary field of book conservation are well illustrated by the career of Paul Banks (1930-2000). Paul worked as a book designer in the late 50's for the Viking Press and Clark & Way in New York City. In 1960 the journal Book Production published his article; "A controversial view of The Extra Binder in America". In this item we see an early version of his vision of the future when bindings will be tough, well designed, unique and affordable, all at the same time. This was a book "on-demand" vision in which binding structure would convey many of the important qualities of a book. The field of book conservation was a perfect extension of such an interest in the future of the paper book, so Paul largely invented that field. After his involvement with the Florence flood recovery effort he stressed the collection approach to book conservation. An example of this idea is his talk; "The Scientist, the Scholar and the Book Conservator: Some Thoughts on Book Conservation as a Profession". Here he introduced an important abstraction to the field of conservation in general; that while most books are not individually of great value, "yet they are in aggregate of great importance to our future". From this idea the logic both of production collection conservation and the concept of a more complex "object" of treatment emerges. Today this concept of the "aggregate" is most important to span the multiple media of library collections. Another of Paul's initiatives brought scientific and engineering focus to the preservation effect of long term, collection storage conditions. His 1970's research of this topic informed the construction of the Newberry Library stack building which separated collection storage from reader services. This project lead to a national standard for collection storage environment at the same time that it prefigured trends of remote storage of originals augmented by modes of digital access.

David Dangler and Gary Frost at work in the early 70's, Newberry Library Conservation Lab

Most of Paul’s career was associated with the Newberry Library in Chicago. The conservation department was established in 1964 by Director Bill Towner who hired Paul Banks as Conservator. This was one of the first library conservation facility established in the United States. The Newberry Conservation department flourished under Paul Banks who became an Officer and then President (1978-1980) of the American Institute for Conservation. He taught both preservation librarians and library conservators following the pattern of his own instruction in book production and design, in craft binding with Gerhardt Gerlack and in library conservation with Carolyn Horton. At the time, the Newberry Library conservation program existed within the context of Chicago book production trades and crafts. Important influences were the Extra Bindery at the R.R.Donnelly & Sons Company directed by Harold Tribolet, the Caxton Club, The Kner & Anthony Bindery and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago which provided bookbinding instruction for art students.

Over the years various conservators received early training with Paul Banks at the Newberry Conservation department. These included John Dean, (Preservation Director, Cornell University), Norvell Jones, (Chief Conservator at the National Archives and Record Service), Barclay Ogden, (Head of Preservation, University of California, Berkeley), Sherelyn Ogden, (Book Conservator at the North East Document Conservation Center), Merrily Smith (Head of the Preservation Directorate at the Library of Congress), and Pam Spitzmueller, (Book Conservator at the Harvard Libraries) and Gary Frost, (Conservator at the University of Iowa).

Paul Banks remained as Conservator of the Newberry Library until 1981 when he left to establish a library preservation training program in the School of Library Service at Columbia University. Paul was to teach and direct the Conservation/Preservation Studies program until the late 90’s. By the eighties Paul projected that "library automation" would reshape the role of library conservation. In a talk in 1983 at the New York University Conservation Center, "A Library Is Not a Museum", he contradicts a conventional future role for libraries as "museums of the book". Instead he sees the important mediation between collections in the humanities, mainly in traditional formats, and collections in the sciences and technology that are maintained on-line, as an avant-garde role for libraries. He also warned that automation funding priorities could be skewed away from the preservation function, exactly at the moment of its increased relevance.

Perhaps Paul's greatest legacy to the future was the library school based training program for preservation administrators and library conservators. The momentum of forces he and Carolyn Harris set in motion, first at the School of Library Services at Columbia University (1981-1993) and subsequently at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas, (1993-1999) established preservation as a fundamental influence on library and information science. (SLIS “Structures for Book Conservation”, fall 2006/glf)