The horrors of photo albums, the joy of wiener dog pictures.

So I've moved onto "part 2" of my current job as a contract conservator/archivist/librarian/etc. "Part 1" involved processing boxes upon boxes of a WWI/WWII collector's archive. It had everything from war medals to books, as well as thousands of photographs and deteriorating cellulose acetate negatives.

"Part 2" will involve the cataloging, rehousing and treatment of several boxes of photograph albums and scrapbooks. And let me tell you, a lot of these albums are not the type that you have the whole family gather around on the couch. Quite a few of them were assembled by soldiers, fighter pilots and other people who saw the horrors of war. The odd thing, though, is that you'll get several pages of smiling family portraits, the family dog...and then a picture of a dead horse. Or a really, really dead baby by a riverbank. Or a close-up of a bullet hole in a guy's arm.

But then, thankfully, I'll get the equivalent of a "unicorn chaser" in the form of a photo of a dachshund, an ostrich or a Victorian-era British guy in drag with a unicycle.

State of the Suzy Address (or how I spent my summer vacation and autumn unemployment)

Hello dear reader(s)!

Yes, the rumors of my demise were but mere fabrications. Long story short, I'm still living in Chicago - my wonderful internship at the Northwestern University Library ended back in August, I promptly went on a week-long California vacation, and then I moved to a new apartment the day after I returned from vacation. Note to self: Don't move the day after you get back from vacation, is bad.

I spent the last month and a half unpacking boxes, whipping the apartment decor into shape, building up my little workshop/studio, reading "Y the Last Man", catching up on 30 Rock and Mad Men, terrorizing the squirrels that keep trying to dig up our balcony garden, and generally being one of the millions of unemployed. I am aware that I have proverbially shot myself in the foot for wanting to stay in Chicago (instead of moving to "wherever the job is", as they say) but even in a city as big and culturally-instituted as Chicago, the pickings have been slim. Fortunately, I've managed to pick up some work here and there - such as working on someone's private archival collection and teaching a virtual class on online portfolios for a group of undergrad conservation students at Winterthur.

I have come to realize, though, that there is a need for some kind of business training in any kind of fine-arts (i.e. conservation) education. I know there's the CIPP group of AIC, but in school we were discouraged from going into private practice at the start of our careers. While I still think it's not the greatest move to go into private practice as your first job (post-internship), but in this economic climate I feel that it's prudent for me to branch out and look for what freelance work I can get. Certainly, I know my limits, both in terms of skills and what materials and equipment I have access to: I have no washing sink, no board shear, no bookpress, no fume hood - so I'm not about to start taking on projects that are more than I can handle. But I have other skills that I can market - my ability to design and edit webpages with HTML and CSS, my Photoshop skills, the fact that I went to Library School and have an MSIS degree. Still, we weren't offered any classes in small-business skills, such as the basics of how to write up a legally-sound contract, how to choose your rate, how to estimate how long a project will take, how to protect yourself from liability and how to file your taxes as a freelancer.

I'm sure there's a plethora of books about all these topics, but certainly none from a conservator's or archivist's perspective (if there is, please let me know and I'll buy it in a heartbeat!) - but I'm starting to think that teaching new conservators about good business sense is a lot like teaching sex-education to teenagers (stay with me, now!). Showing someone how to protect themselves and practice safe sex does not mean you're encouraging them to become sexually active before they're ready, or even condoning sex at all - rather, they will be prepared and thus, safe, when that day inevitably comes. It's a lot better to have the information before-hand than to try and learn it as you go, and make some possibly life/career-threatening mistakes. I'd love to know if there are any conservation programs that provide classes on the business skills necessary for going into private practice. Maybe my experience in the UT program was different because of the Library School aspect (there's not a lot of freelance librarians, methinks).


ANYWAY, I will end this wordy post with a picture of me pretending to be a Chicago-style hotdog. If you go to the Chicago History Museum, you too can be a hot dog!

Return of the Evanston map!

Northwestern has published a news story about the conservation treatment and digitization of the (big, stinky) Evanston map.

The oldest printed map of Evanston -- discovered several years ago on the verge of disintegration -- has been vibrantly restored and made freely available online by Northwestern University Library.

"This map is a very rare and important piece of Evanston's history," says University Archivist Kevin Leonard, "and the conservation staff here did an incredible job bringing it back from the grave."

Published circa 1876 by local surveyor and mapmaker Theodore Reese, the map appears to be the earliest published plat of blocks, streets and alleys in all three of the separate villages -- north, south and central -- that eventually merged into the incorporated City of Evanston. "So it's valuable as a relic of Evanston's past," Leonard says, "but it also continues to be of use to anyone researching the history of their own or other Evanston real estate, because these were some of the earliest legal property boundaries."

Here is the video about the map's treatment and digitization. My arm is featured prominently, but there's also a shot of me (at 2:20 in) helping Susan place a piece of lining tissue on the back.

Library Restores and Digitizes Oldest Known Map of Evanston from Northwestern News on Vimeo.

Ira Aldridge Theater broadsides

So I finally finished the Ira Aldridge theater broadsides...
(Image from this website, "Shakespeare in American Life").
Ira Aldridge was an African American actor who was known as the "African Roscius" and had top billing at theaters in England. He is the only actor of African American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon (see the Wikipedia article).

Before [Left] and After [Right] conservation treatment



Before [Left] and After [Right] conservation treatment

Take an anger management class, dude.

This book was run over three times, on three separate pages.

Barbie models the tiny Bible

I finished my treatment of the miniature Bible from Special Collections. Barbie was kind enough to model it...

Drop-lining, or: I'm a YouTube star!

Yup, that's me, in green.

Exhibit: HIV/AIDS Materials from Nigeria

Images of the exhibit I worked on back in December and January. It'll stay up in the library until February 26th.






I created these poster display mounts in the tall exhibit cases, since we didn't want to put them on the wall (where they'd be unsecured) and we wanted to showcase as many posters as possible. It's two pieces of Vyvek plastic, notched at the center, and supported by a base of several layers of matboard with a groove cut into it to hold the plastic. Magnets then hold the posters to the plastic, allowing eight posters for each display.

Giant, filthy, cracking map of Evanston

Sad o'clock...no more!

The clock in the IT lab has been broken for the PAST THREE DAYS. Not only did it cease to tell proper time, it also made an increasingly continuous TERRIBLE, MADNESS-INDUCING NOISE.



But hark! A cowboy came and took away the clock, relieving us of its horrific aural torture.