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VOCES DEL PATRIMONIO

Conservation-preservation at Special Collections of the J. Paul Leonard Library of San Francisco State University

VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL

Introduction

Among the academic services that San Francisco State University offers to its academic community is the J. Paul Leonard Library, whose mission is "to empower its University constituency with lifelong learning skills to identify, find, evaluate, use and communicate information in promotion of excellence in scholarship, knowledge and understanding” (SFSU, n.d.: About the Library). Special Collections and Archives is the area of the Library that, as its name indicates, protects, in addition to archives, documentary objects which characteristics, such as high cultural value, vulnerability to theft or loss, delicate materiality, assisted manipulation, among others, define them as special objects. Preserved here are, as stated on their website, "a wealth of primary source material on a wide variety of topics" (SFSU, n.d.: Special Collections & Archives). Manuscripts, photography, rare books, publications, audiovisuals, works of art and “ephemera objects" are sources of great documentary value preserved in Special Collections and Archives (SCA).

We had the opportunity to learn about these special collections due to a research stay we carried out at the Sutro Library, located on the fifth floor of the same building. Our interest in conservation and in binding and its structure motivated us to learn about the books kept in this room. Like any other user of these materials, we made an appointment to visit the area and ordered, through the catalog, some of the books that most caught our attention.

The people in charge of the collections, Alexandra Post, in charge of ancient books, and Meredith Eliassen in charge of archives and contemporary books, were very kind to us, they provided us with the books we requested and gave us the opportunity to manipulate them freely. We talked with them about the books we consulted and about our archaeological work at the Sutro Library, which sparked their interest. We concluded, from this first visit, that books are a meeting point of several disciplines whose views interpret their textual discourse as material, according to the reader's approach and interest.

One of the aspects that caught our attention was the relationship of the community, especially students, with the special collections. The managers told us that those who consult these collections do so in search of ideas and inspiration. Also, it is a place in which the community finds and understands part of its documentary cultural heritage and can live with it freely and in a very close way. Alexandra and Meredith's openness and generosity make the library experience a pleasant adventure of discovery and knowledge.

1
ALEXANDRA POST

Alex Post is the Special Collections Research Assistance, Outreach and Instruction Coordinator, and Interim Curator of the Frank V. de Bellis Collection in Special Collections at San Francisco State University. She oversees and coordinates reference services, instruction, and outreach initiatives across all collections. She enjoys working with the unique collection of rare books, music, artifacts, and manuscript collections.

Martha: Which are the functions that you perform at the Library?

Alexandra: I am what’s called the Research, Assistance, Outreach and Instruction Team Lead, that is sort of a Coordinator in Special Collections. I make sure our reading room is open to the public, I coordinate the research requests that come into the room, and I distribute them to the right librarians. I teach a lot of the primary source instruction that goes on in the room. I also coordinate it, so, if I’m not going to teach it, I hand it off to the person who is going to teach it. I work with the rest of the librarians outside of the Special Collections to make sure that what we’re doing is consistent with what they’re doing. That is part of my role, sort of the bridge between Special Collections and the other reference librarians, what’s called “Research, Assistance and Instruction Services”. That’s one of my roles in here. They call it “Team Leads” because I have a co-lead. My co-team member is in charge of the archival collection. She does all the back of the house stuff and I do the front of the house. I handle all the in-person and that sort of patron services, so to speak.

I’m also the interim curator of the [Frank V.] de Bellis Collection. I took that on very recently, in 2021. So far, my role in that has basically been handling a lot of research requests. A lot of that is some of the old music. We have a lot of foreign researchers, people primarily in Italy and in France, musicologists, who want access to those manuscripts, so I’m doing a lot of scanning and digitizing.

We have a digital collection and I’m responsible for adding to that and overseeing the work that gets done on that digital platform. It’s just part of my role, not necessarily related to the Bellis, but the coordinator role that I am in. I wear about 500 hats.

Figure 1. Book of hours, kept in Special Collections.
(Photographs: Luis Enríquez, 2023; courtesy: J. Paul Leonard Library, SFSU).

Martha: So, it’s only you and your colleague in your area?

Alexandra: We have the Labor Archives and Research Center and there are a couple of librarians in there as well, we’re all sort of Collection Unit Leads. Meredith does the Historic Collection, Children Literature, and University Archives. I’m de Bellis. And then the librarians in the Labor Archives work specifically with that collection. We have a staff member in the Bay Area Television Archives, he’s a film and video archivist, so he works with the old news and documentary footage that we have in San Francisco, and he digitizes a lot of that. He has a film scanner and he posts that online as well.

Martha: What preservations practices are carried out?

Alexandra: We don’t really have a budget for preservation. I inherited a pretty well-preserved collection. I know Meredith had worked very hard to create a lot of the phase boxes that the books are in. There was some work done before my time for digitizing a lot of the really fragile items, so people could look online instead of coming in here. So, that’s the extent. I mean, just making sure that they’re on the shelves properly, so that there’s no chance of them falling off. Making sure that the items that need preservation or inboxes tied together, that kind of work. It’s not a lot of what I do yet because I think we haven’t really been adding to this collection. So, anything that had preservation priorities were probably handled before my time.

Figure 2. Phase box used in Special Collections for preservation.
(Photographs: Luis Enríquez, 2023; courtesy: J. Paul Leonard Library, SFSU).

Martha: What about the storage? Do you have environmental control?

Alexandra: We have. Our items are mostly in the vault, and it is temperature controlled, but I hate to confess that it’s not climate controlled. So, at least we have some temperature control. We do monitor, we have gauges up so that we can make sure the humidity is not too high or low and that the temperature is always maintained. It gets very humid during rainy times and that’s when we start to worry a little bit about the humidity levels. But there isn’t a lot we can do about it. The vault has archival collections, it has newspapers, it has LP; old vinyl. It has film in there, it has the rare books. So, it’s really hard to try to find the exact happy place for all those materials. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have a ton of control with our vault other than just making sure it doesn’t get too hot.

Martha: Who worked in the phase boxes?

Alexandra: Meredith did some and the woman who was curator before her. Some of the manuscripts that are in the recent database, I think a lot of that was done with a grant, the boxes were made for those materials. Meredith is trained in doing those little phase boxes that you see right there. She makes those little ones. I could make them if I needed to. I did a little bit of that. I used to work at Mills College at their Special Collections, so we were always making little boxes for books. Our cataloguing team does not tend to make the boxes for the books. We don’t do a lot of preservation. I mean, we do, within our abilities. I also work with other rare materials, but they’re not books. So, a lot of it is a matter of putting them in new housing, something that is acid-free and is not going to continue to deteriorate it.

When it is required, we do what we can. We assess, and you’d have to really be going through every single item to understand what needs preservation. So, it’s sort of on a “as-needed basis”, you know, as people request materials, if we see there’s a preservation need, then, of course we’re going to prioritize that. If we’re pulling out materials that are fragile, and are being used a lot, then those become digitization priorities. That’s one way that we’re sort of tackling the preservation. But I personally believe that this is an opportunity to experience these items, so I’d rather pull them out and just handle them very gently, using cradles, making sure that people aren’t getting their lunch all over them. And just in the room in general, we address our preservation or conservation, just protecting them by not allowing any types of pens, or foods, or drinks, or beverages. Sort of the standard Special Collections policies and everything that we can do to sort of mitigate potential conservation issues.

Martha: Do you have readers that look out for the materiality of the books instead of the writing?

Alexandra: Yes, I think a lot of the Bellis, well, except for music. I think when it comes to the rare books in our collection, especially in the de Bellis, a lot of them are studying it as an object. Some people are interested in the binding, some people are interested in the paper, some people are interested in the actual printing of it, but not so much the content of the item. The music, they’re definitely interested in the actual music, because we have some unique scores in the collections, so I think they’re more interested in the content than the object.

Our new software identifies the letters in our scanner, even in cursive, in different handwriting, in different printing. So, I think a lot of people are actually reading the item, having our recognition software kick in and help them transcribe the document is really helpful. I think that’s an advantage to digitizing some of our collections, it’s a little easier for people to read and search for some of our longer items.

Figure 3. Materials from de Bellis Collection.
(Photographs: Luis Enríquez, 2023; courtesy: J. Paul Leonard Library, SFSU).

Martha: When you digitize, or even the things you work on, you must deal with digital preservation?

Alexandra: You do, and we don’t have a digital archivist, so it’s another challenge. Currently we store all our digitized objects on our local drive, but there is no real preservation there. We don’t have a digital storage/preservation yet. The California State University (CSU) is sort of moving toward a plan, potentially for that, but we’re not there yet. So, everything is stored locally, which is not great.

Martha: Well, but you store it.

Alexandra: Yeah, at least it’s stored.

Martha: I have another question about that, if you have the item digitized and a reader comes and asks you for the book, do you encourage them to use the digital version, or can they use the physical item as well if they want to see the item?

Alexandra: I think that if someone is going to make the effort to come all the way to campus, especially if they’re traveling, I’m going to allow access to the original. But a lot of people just email us asking for digital copies because they don’t want to travel here. So, I’d say I get more requests asking for digital access than I do physically coming in. I think it’s hard for people to research and travel now, so, if they’re going to make the effort and they really want to see it in person, I’m going to definitely bring out an item for them. We love people in here and we want people to see our materials. It’s a different experience when you’re handling an item.

Figure 4. Choir book kept in Special Collections.
(Photographs: Luis Enríquez, 2023; courtesy: J. Paul Leonard Library, SFSU).

Martha: Which activities are taken to promote the Special Collections with students and staff of the University? Do you have any kind of social media?

Alexandra: Most of our promotion comes from using the materials in instruction, so when we have classes coming in, I’m trying to promote that way. We’re also trying to actively add to our digital access system, our Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), and so that’s one way to promote our materials as we digitize, so they’re available for public. For now, the extent of my promoting the collection is through instruction. A little bit of outreach to different classes, saying, “Hey, you know, we have this material, why don’t you bring your class in?” and digitizing materials.

The library has an Instagram account and sometimes when there is a particular month, for example, we might highlight some of our collections. The Labor Archives, because their topics, their collecting materials, are so relevant, we post a lot of images, and, you know, farmworker material. It’s so relevant to California that, the labor history gets a lot more… They have their own Instagram, as well. They post a lot of items from their collections in relation to a holiday or something. So, yes, sometimes we promote our collections through social media, but it’s not as consistent as it can be. I should also add that Special Collections has a gallery. So, that’s another way we promote our collections, it’s exhibits that we curate and there are cases in the reading rooms and outside of the reading rooms. They all feature stuff that we have in our collections.

Martha: And you change it often?

Alexandra: Not as often as we’d like because there’s so much work; again, another vacant position, we don’t have what used to be the Visual Resources Specialist. So, that is someone who handled all the exhibits, planning, installing and coordinating, but we don’t have that person anymore, so it’s up to each individual librarian to curate and to figure out installation or working with the Museum Studies program. I have an intern now from the Museum Studies program and she’s going to be working on doing a de Bellis survey of the collection exhibit. This way she gets a different side of what it means to collect and handle these types of materials.

Martha: What advice do you give to students in preventive conservation?

Alexandra: That’s a tough one, and this is not my only answer, but just to be open-minded and have as many skills in your toolbox as possible. Because when you land in jobs like mine, it’s just doing a lot of stuff that is not necessarily related to what you had in mind, or what you thought you would be doing. And there’s so few positions dedicated to just preservation now that you really have to be capable of doing a lot of things. Like, I’m in a collection with a lot of old books and rare books, but I don’t actually do a lot of preservation. I mean, I haven’t yet, mainly because I’m still new to that position, because it was done before my time, or because we don’t have the budget to have things.

We’ve tried applying for grants to kind of address some of the preservation issues, but we either haven’t gotten them or… You know, there’s a lot of California-specific grants for things that contribute to the history of California, but a lot of our materials don’t really meet that requirement. And I’m not a tenure-track librarian, so I don’t even really have the power to be applying for grants, nor do I have the time.

Martha: I do understand. Thank you very much.

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2
MEREDITH ELIASSEN

Meredith Eliassen (B.A., San Francisco State University; M.S.L.I.S., Simmons University) is a Special Collections librarian at San Francisco State University. She has an interest in local history, folklore, and design. Eliassen is the author of San Francisco State University (2006) and Helen Keller: A Life in American History (2021). Most recently, her article “Bookseller Paul Elder and his Grandma Nellie: the Adventures of a regional Publisher and Bookseller in Earthquake Country” was published on the American Printing History Association website: https://printinghistory.org/paul-elder.

Martha: Which are the functions that you perform at the library?

Meredith: I am the University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian responsible for the University Archives and Historic Collections. I respond to reference questions about University history (as the institutional memory) and do primary source instruction teaching information literacy for text and visual sources.

Martha: Among the objects that belong to the collections that you are in charge of, which ones represent the greatest challenges for their preservation?

Meredith: The objects needing the most care are found in the Marguerite Archer Collection of Historic Materials. This collection includes American children’s literature and ephemera dating back to the Early Republic. Books core to the collection are from the Peter Parley to Penrod (1974) bibliography by Jacob Blanck of bestselling children’s books. The donor (Archer) acquired most of the material from garage sales and they show wear from children (sometimes multiple generations of children) and homespun repairs. I tend to leave things as they were acquired because they are of interest for how they show wear. The ephemera is special, fragile and rare; some items have been repurposed by children, so they return to manuscript status.

Martha: Based on your work experience, how do you approach artist books storage?

Meredith: I approach artists' books as citizens in a collection. Artist books are vessels for ideas and human expression, but some can be loud in how they sit on a shelf. My approach is to encapsulate them to keep them safe along with their neighbors on the shelf. Their value is in remaining in their original intended condition, so many get simple phase boxes using archival acid-free material, and others get clamshell boxes.

Figure 5. Phase box, made by Meredith Eliassen.
(Photographs: Luis Enriquez, 2023; courtesy: J. Paul Leonard Library, SFSU).

Martha: How does digital preservation interact with the objects in the collection?

Meredith: I have been conservative in digitizing material in the Historic Collections. Many objects have been digitized by other institutions with more extensive digitizing departments than San Francisco State University. The unique material in the University Archives is more likely to have support to digitize than the Historic Collections. The interaction between collection objects and digital preservation is dependent upon how both are needed to support curriculum. Increasingly artificial intelligence (AI) is compelling me to work with students in primary source instruction to increase student feelings of authenticity in describing and synthesizing object content, so they use AI as a tool and not a crutch. My teaching goal is to always prepare our students so they can enter any collection and feel confident they know how to handle a wide variety of materials and interpret them. Students still prefer to handle objects to interacting with digital surrogates online.

Martha: Which activities are taken to promote the special collection with students and staff of the University?

Meredith: The most significant outreach happens when students and staff learn about the extent of our collections (in particular the Frank V. de Bellis Collection which is like a small national library/museum) of Italian culture. I am grateful to have worked several years with that collection which prepared me mentally to return to the Historic Collections with a deeper recognition of the history of the book. It is hard to explain the impact the de Bellis collection had on me as a teacher. It was the first special collection donated to the California State University and it is fast approaching its 60th anniversary open to the public. Just the notion that this high-quality culturally significant collection is at a public university where many students are first generation college students impresses our students and staff.

For the collections I work with now (the University Archives and Historic Collections) the sharing of social justice collections and campus history related to our curriculum is most effectively shared with online research guides (LibGuides) that present our material to campus users and scholars who cannot easily come to campus which is most effective for creating awareness of our collections. In December 2023, I did a count of views for all of my guides and it was almost 35,000 views across nine research guides during the year, an amount of views that in-person outreach cannot compare to: https://libguides.sfsu.edu/prf.php?id=594fe558-7cdb-11ed-9922-0ad758b798c3.

The COVID pandemic made this the most effective means for making our collections discoverable when we were compelled to support online instruction. This form of outreach makes use of our online resources as well as giving students scaffolding to explore other related collections.

Martha: What advice do you give to students in preventive conservation?

Meredith: Conversely, my advice to students interested in preventative conservation is to give them hands-on experience handling rare material, sharing my love of beautiful books, and the history of the book which is the history of economics and the world of ideas. When students handle rare and old book objects, the humanity of the creators reaches them more than I can to convey the message you are part of a continuum of book lovers. Even if they do not understand the language of the book (and it may be an archaic version of their native language), they grasp that the book is a vessel for ideas and human expression that must be conserved. They take it in and in turn will become peer teachers with other students because they appreciate the objects. My favorite instruction is with graphic design students who after handling book objects (especially artist books) begin sharing what is relevant to them in conversations that take them beyond the session. My advice does not come in the form of advice; it comes in the form of joy in working with collections. A teacher’s passion is contagious and creates more teachers from happy students.

Martha: After these answers, do you want to comment anything else in the interview?

Meredith: The one thing that I have observed for conservation is that coming out of the pandemic, the quality of materials used in published books, in journals, has diminished because of the cost. I would raise the question whether this is a trend in conservation that should be researched. During the Great Depression, during the Great Wars… When the printing industry gets interrupted by something, what issues arise with these periods and how can book conservators prepare? You know, long term planning of how materials during periods of unrest can be preserved because historically these are the most important things published. It’s the ideas of reform, of oppression within nations with colonization. All of these issues that come up when there’s a pandemic and people have to get access to medical care, it’s reflected in books, in the making of books, and the support of the book industry. So, I would just raise that question. Because you come to us in an interesting time, when we’re maybe at the bottom of the cycle, where the publishing industry is going online… in texts, in different ways of publishing ideas. And I’ve always seen the book as a vessel for ideas and how ideas are exchanged, so, I’d just put that out there as my deep thought for a morning after a storm. Book-making, book-publishing is very cyclical, but it’s how it comes out. In the Renaissance, it came out with these beautiful books, what are we going to come out of the pandemic with? Will it be something that is different? Stronger? More resilient? Or is it going to be something that is just kind of lost within the different media.

Martha: That is a really good reflection and I think it’s a good conclusion to give because the interview is meant for colleagues and students in conservation. I think it’s nice to finish with this matter, where you add your own reflection but also put the question. Even opens research lines about things happening now, about how resilient the publishing industry is, but for what it means for conservators. If we can think ahead, this is a problem that, yet is not a problem, but eventually will be because cheap materials age really badly.

Meredith: Yeah, I was asked to review a book that was 2023, published, from a University Press in one of my areas of expertise, which in this case is Native Americans. And the book was problematic for me because of the way it was put together. It was a hard-bound book, but you could bend the covers. It was made with cheap material and that was reflected in the content. You know, I was gentle because the scholar who wrote the book was using old, autobiographical manuscripts from Native Americans who had been in the boarding schools and he was approaching this material, which was reconstituted by white writers, as doing a favor for the Indigenous People and my ire was…. I was mad. If you look at a book as a vessel for ideas, what this book was showing was historic memory, but it was not. It was historic memory that was altered by the conquering. So, I don’t know where I was going with this, but when you think about books it’s the quality of ideas, it’s the quality of the making, the production, the manufacturer, the editing… As a librarian I think on the conservation, but I also think about the ideas, what are we preserving?

Martha: For sure. Thank you very much.

Conclusions

The richness and variety of the collection allows us to highlight both the ancient books, as well as the manuscripts and artists' books stored in the SCA collection.

As a collaborative activity with SCA to disseminate its collections and those preserved in the Sutro Library, we carried out a show and tell, whose title was Reading Bookbinding through the ages. It exhibited copies that exemplified the history of bookbinding and its structure between the 15th and 21st centuries, from the Sutro Library, from the Special Collections, from the general collection of the J. Paul Leonard Library, and works from the Studies class. of book arts, from the same University. Attendees could interact with the books and with the exhibitors, to whom they asked questions about the books and bindings, or the exhibitors spoke to them about the values of the book and the characteristics of the binding.

As book conservators we wanted to know the conservation measures they have for these special collections to share them with our students and book conservator-restorer colleagues. We consider that this information can be useful to value our collections and evaluate their conservation characteristics. Furthermore, we consider that making known the conservation conditions of libraries abroad can serve to propose ideas in libraries in Mexico such as promoting exchange with institutions abroad. With this in mind, we decided to do this interview with those responsible for SFSU's Special Collections and Archives about conservation measures for their collections.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank: Alexandra and Meredith for sharing their experience, knowledge, and time to conduct these interviews, the Fulbright-García Robles grant program for the research funding for the study at the Sutro Library, and Paola Romero Latapí for transcribing and translating the interview.

References

AIC. (n. d.). BPG Phase Box. AIC Wiki. Retrieved July 8, 2024, from https://www.conservation-wiki.com/wiki/BPG_Phase_Box.

SFSU (n. d.). About the Library. San Francisco State University. J. Paul Leonard Library. Retrieved July 8, 2024, from https://library.sfsu.edu/about-library.

SFSU. (n. d.). Collections Special & Archives. San Francisco State University. J. Paul Leonard Library. Retrieved July 8, 2024, from https://library.sfsu.edu/special-collections-archives.