Across campus libraries, aged books silently display their years with brown acid spots, loose bindings and brittle, yellowed pages. The newer, whiter volumes that accompany them may be more pleasing to the eye, but even those show signs of mishandling when opened in torn pages, soda stains, and other blemishes.
This semester, a severely vandalized book, titled 1933: The Year of the German, was sent to the Conservation Center saturated with glue. The book describes the history of the Nazi regime; it is suspected the damage was intended to remove the text from circulation.
"It is a very rare book - I believe there is only one other copy in the country - and almost every page was completely glued together," said Peggy Pajak, manager of preservation reformatting in the University Center for Book Conservation.
In the basement of Lockwood Library, the staff of the Conservation Center works daily to replace, repair and protect tattered books and documents. The Conservation Center, funded by the university libraries budget and a New York state grant, works with books that are aged, fragile, vandalized or worn down by environmental factors.
Regardless of subject matter, it is the Conservation Center's responsibility to preserve, repair and reformat books in circulation. Ideally, the Conservation Center tries to preserve and repair original materials, but when that is impossible, their next objective is to replace the content of those materials.
"When there are few copies of a piece in the world it is important that the life is extended for the information, not just the physical product," said Diana Randall, the conservation department manager.
In 1933: The Year of the German's case, the ruined book was destroyed beyond repair so the reformatting staff turned to making photo-duplication of the pages to replace the original.
According to Pajak, when a book is beyond repair, the binding is removed, the pages are trimmed each is copied individually before being sent to a commercial bindery for finishing.
The pages of the vandalized history book, however, were too damaged for photo-duplication, and another copy of the book had to be located. Through Inter-Library Loan (ILL), the Conservation Center was able to borrow what is believed to be the only other existing copy of the book from the University of Wisconsin and make a new copy for the UB library.
"Because there are pictures and text on nearly every page, it took especially long to copy. Text and pictures have to be scanned in different modes," said Pajak. "This particular book took about one week to complete, but usually three to four can be photo-duplicated each day."
Around the corner from the reformatting department is the department that handles repairs and physical protection of books and documents. Technicians and student assistants repair damaged books by replacing pages that have been torn or ripped out, and re-casing books.
The staff in the repairing branch of the Conservation Center focuses on mending and preventing the damage that comes from age, handling and the environment.
"Fluorescent lights, sunlight, humidity, temperature and dust all have damaging effects on books and documents," said Randall.
Randall and her staff also prepare new materials for circulation by binding and reinforcing thin materials such as pamphlets and journals so they will hold up in use.
Two major requirements in preservation operations are reversibility and the use of archival paper products. "Reversibility" is simply a means of ensuring that work done to protect material does not permanently alter it. For instance, maps are often protected between two sheets of Mylar plastic to prevent tearing, creasing and water damage in a process called encapsulation. This technique is reversible, because the map can be removed from the encapsulation at any time.
Archival paper materials are acid-free and designed to maintain their color and durability in circulation. This type of conservation-sound paper is used when photoduplicating, replacing pages, inserting indexes and end pages, and creating protective jackets.
The most common repairs that are made in the Conservation Center involve pages that have been torn or ripped out.
"We see books that have entire chapters ripped out of them that have to be replaced," said Ron Gaczewski, a technician in the Conservation Center. "Students will often rip pages out rather than check out the book or photocopy the pages they need."
If a page or pages are completely missing, a copy of the book must be located through ILL, and a replacement page must be created and tipped in - or inserted - into place. The process is tedious, because both sides of the replacement page must be formatted to match the size and text of the rest of the book.
The UB Health Sciences Library tries to discourage patrons from tearing out pages by offering free photocopying to students. The photocopies are funded through grant money allocated to the project in hopes of defraying the cost of replacing the library's expensive medical texts. According to Gaczewski, the Conservation Center rarely gets Health Sciences books that need replacement pages, likely due to this preventative measure.
When materials are extremely brittle and in danger of further damage, they are protected with clamshell boxes that are designed and constructed in the Conservation Center. Sturdier boxes are made from acid-free board and glued together.
According to Kim Wagner, an instructional support associate in the Conservation Center, each type of clamshell box or enclosure has a formula that the measurements of the book must be plugged into in order to get an exact fit. Each box is specially designed to house each fragile book and takes roughly two days to complete.
