Welcome to our patient safety moonshot panel. I'm extremely excited of the panel members we have today. The concept behind the patient safety moonshot was when we put our minds behind something, when we really believe we could do something, be it sending a man to the moon, being curing polio, we've achieved it. And we need to take that same mindset around preventable medical harm and say we are going to cure preventable medical harm before the end of this decade by 2030. And I'm delighted to have our panelists with us today to talk about the different areas that they're working on and things that would be necessary if we truly were able to achieve a patient safety moonshot by the end of this decade. First, I'd like to offer up to Karen to start introduce yourself. And the question I have for you, Karen, is you're doing such amazing work at the Jewish Healthcare Foundation around the creation of a national patient safety board. Could you share what's going on and what you've been doing in leading this effort to get us to that point? Well, thank you, Dave. Let me say that the patient safety movement has been a terrific partner. So I'm president and CEO of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. And we have our own Regional Health Improvement Collaborative. We've worked for 22 years to reduce medical error. We've been spectacularly unsuccessful. So moonshot, we wouldn't send someone to the moon if we depended totally on the astronauts to get there safely and get home safely. We support them. In fact, we support every pilot with advanced analytics and with excellent technology so that a lot of the safety that they experience and they provide if you're a pilot, other passengers is autonomous. We don't do that in healthcare. And so one of our interests is what does aviation have that we don't have? They have the National Transportation Safety Board, an organization that is totally focused on bringing the frontiers of technology and analytics to safety and aviation and transportation. So we said, what if we had a national patient safety board? This idea keeps coming up. I say every decade for three decades, but I think it's time now. And the pandemic has made it even more urgent. We should have those same protections that frontier technologies and analytics give to other industries. Great, thank you. I wanna turn to Leah next. Leah, like Karen, you've been a leader in patient safety for many years, driving leapfrog and others to higher quality and safety measures. I'd like you to talk a little bit about the importance of aligned incentives, your organization as well as the Patient Safety Movement Foundation and some others have been trying to drive that concept and raise awareness about it. Could you talk about why that's important and especially the idea of reporting of certain safety measures that need to be increased? Well, thank you. Thanks Dave for having me and for being part of this excellent panel. The leapfrog group was actually founded on the principle that the healthcare market should function the way other markets do in the sense that when there's excellence that should be paid for in light of its excellence and when there isn't then there should be financial penalty for that in some form. In other words, payment should be tied to performance in some way. And that is just how every other market works but it hasn't traditionally in healthcare as we know. And I think that's created some dysfunction. At the same time, what healthcare should do is respond to the needs of patients very directly and patients can express their needs by choosing providers that do well. So the safest providers should be rewarded in the community by the interest of the community members in using those facilities. I mean, this is very, very simple fundamental framework for how you get better services in a community. And yet it's not how healthcare is traditionally functioning. It just hasn't. First of all, and foremost, people don't know who's doing the best job in safety. Traditionally, we don't know that. But thanks to Patient Safety Movement Foundation, thanks to all the stakeholders really watching this, I'm sure part of today's great celebration, so many others have come together to nearly push to have public reporting of patient safety in a way we never had it before. And it's truly made a difference. And I'm proud to say LeapFrog has been very active in that movement. And what we've achieved is a set of measures now publicly reported that tell you, at least for hospitals, where which hospitals seem to be doing the best job in preventing different kinds of events and errors and accidents that happen in hospitals. That's just really a breakthrough. We've used it to put together our hospitals to degrade the LeapFrog Hospital Safety Grade, which is an A, B, C, D, or F. We afford every hospital in the country on how safe they are for their patients. Others have used those measures for a whole variety of other purposes, but payment is a really part of that too. Now, our members are employers. Employers have a role to play in addition to what we traditionally think of as purchasers like Medicare and Medicaid. Employers are purchasing a lot of health benefits and they have a role to play in incentivizing hospitals to perform best. Now, that's not going to be the end of the equation because there's a lot more to do. And the moonshot here is for everything to be publicly reported for every setting, not just hospitals. We don't only go to hospitals, thank God. We also go to ambulatory surgery centers. We go to nursing homes. There's a whole variety of settings of healthcare and all of them should be safe. And patients are entitled to know which ones are which. And also employers and others who can really make a difference in rewarding excellence in all of those facilities. So what we wanna see is a world where there's full transparency, where we can begin to reward excellence with financial consequence. And finally, I have to say, we had to play defensive on this this year. CMS proposed this year to stop reporting a number of patient safety measures. In particular one, deaths from treatable complications from surgery, which is very important to so many of us. So many people have lost loved ones that way. And we do think that hospitals, we should know which hospital is doing a better job of preventing these deaths. So I will say again, thanks to the partnership with the Patient Safety Movement Foundation and so many others like all of you in this room and here on this panel, we were able to get that restored, which is actually not a common occurrence that you were able to restore a measure like that. But again, we're just playing defense. We need a moonshot and that's where you look to leadership like yours, Dave, to get there. No, thanks, Leah.  I think of, you know, primary hip and knee replacements when those measures were when we're put in place to track infections in hospitals, it was many years ago and today the majority of those cases are being done outside the hospital, hip and knee replacements moved to ambulatory surgery centers and the public as well as others have no clue on infection rates going on with those cases. So it's an important area. So we've heard about the importance of the creation of a National Patient Safety Board. We've talked about the importance of aligning incentives to outcomes, not to pay for quantity and volume of procedures. The third part is I'm gonna turn to my really good friend, Dr. Davila, who's been leading safety initiatives across the country of Mexico for many years and true leader. Javier, can you talk a little bit about the third area? Why transparency, be it outcomes or be it preventable medical harm events needs to increase. We need to embrace transparency and maybe even share an example if you have one of why transparency has made your country or others safer. Thank you very much, Dave. And thank you so much for the invitation on Patient Safety Movement Foundation. I'm a part of all of you. And as you remember, I'm a part of the board of directors and it's a pleasure and honor for me. And yes, this is a very important issue. I think healthcare transparency as the Institute of Medicine States is making available to the public in a reliable and understandable manner. Information on the healthcare system's quality, efficiency and patient experience, among others, being able to share data to achieve better outcomes, quality and cost of care, for example, generating trust and a better connection with the society. Transparency can also improve quality, safety and efficiency throughout the healthcare system making healthcare practitioners more accountable, which can lead to better patient outcomes. Also the importance of having the ability of a clinical benchmarks that allows us to identify where we are and the aspect that we can improve and learn from other organizations. In this particular case, a healthcare culture where quality metrics have been historically treated like closely guarded secrets can be a significant challenge to transparency. Changing this attitude means changing perceptions and workplace politics can come into play. You mentioned examples in Mexico and I can give you one. The model of patient safety we named Consejo de Saluridad General. It's a healthcare council in Mexico that it's a very important structure of the Mexican government and they are giving guidance based on best practices. So organizations can improve the healthcare attention and reduce the risk for their patients. This model has been applied by public and private hospitals across the country and they have the responsibility to give the guidance and rules for the hospital's accreditation. They have the regulations for public and private hospitals. So this is very important for us to include this issue to transform the culture of transparency and all the hospitals and the academies. You know that I am a part of the Executive Committee of the Mexican Academy of Surgery and we are following these guidance and regulations from the Consejo, the healthcare council of the government of Mexico. These are just some examples. Oh, that's great. Thank you so much for sharing that and the importance of transparency. We've just got a couple of minutes left and I wanna just really quick ask you all the same question. Karen, what can our audience do to help you in your work? Go to our website npsb.org and you can do a number of things. You can join the coalition. We have over 50 organizations. I'm representing all the stakeholders in healthcare. You can tune in to our podcast called Up Next in Healthcare Safety or you can just sign on and tell us your own story. We would love to hear your story of your encounters with the health system and some of the challenges you faced. Great, thanks. Leah, what could the audience do to help you and leave fraud, move things like aligned incentives and mandatory reporting forward? Well, first you can also, you can go to Karen's website. We're big supporters of the board of patient safety and you can go to Dave's website. We're big supporters as well of the Patient Safety Movement Foundation. So we're all part of the same family. And of course, you can go to our website which is hospitalsafetygrade.org or leapfroggroup.org, sign on to our campaigns. We've got a number of campaigns going to advance payment reform and public reporting. That is our core mission. Great, thanks and finish this off, Dr. Davila. What could the audience do to help you and your initiatives in Mexico and across the world? Well, I think first of all, it's to be a part of transforming the culture of safety which it means is the example of this pandemic COVID-19 had occurred. So when I asked to my colleagues and physicians, are you still following our apps, actionable patient safety solutions? And some of them answered, well, Javier, this is an emergency situation. Let's talk about the apps later. And I said, no, it's the same situation. So because we are in the same situation that in the past, the first goal is to prevent harm and to have saved our patients. So it's a very important moment to recapture the healthcare system complete in Mexico with two milestones, political and academic support. Because if the authorities and physicians and nurses and the multidisciplinary team is not involved, it's gonna be very difficult to keep saving lives and for our patients and for our colleagues. So this is very important moment for that. Oh, thank you. And I know we're out of time. I was ploughed to talk to all of you for another hour or two. You're doing great work. Thank you so much. And we'll stop here and move to the next panel session. Thank you very much panelists. You've been great.


Welcome to JSA TV the newsroom for tech and telecom professionals. I'm Barb Mitchell here at ITW 2019 in beautiful Atlanta with Jamie Leverton who I'm excited to announce is newly appointed senior vice president and chief commercial offer officer of e-structured data centers Congratulations, Jamie. We're so excited obviously to have you here. Thank you so much. I'm incredibly excited to be here It's actually a really nice opportunity for me. This is this is week three for me at e-structure so to be down here at the show and Have so many great meetings and opportunities to really connect with with our partners and our clients It's it's been an incredible Entry into the new role Congratulations. Yeah, and you had some news come out this week here It launched the news came out yesterday the first day of the show Do you want to tell us what that means for e-structure and the future of the company? Yeah, so yesterday we announced a hundred and seventy million dollar credit facility so an expansion of our prior facility and we are we're very excited for what that That will allow us to do obviously We are a company that's focused on growth and focused on the Canadian market. So it gives us the the ability to continue to drive that mission with with haste and excitement And you're also doing a lot of work around your channel partners program. Yes. Can you talk a little bit about that? I know there's gonna be more and more coming out about that in the weeks and months to come But let us know a little bit about it. Yeah, so I I've been blessed to work in technology for the last 20 years and and I'm very passionate about the role and importance that channel partners play in an organization and That's that is a focus of mine It's still early, but as you referenced, we will we will have more news coming out very shortly because our intention is to is to really focus on the channel partner program being strategic in and how we go to market with our with our partners and and Doing it in a way that really makes sense for both parties So I'm excited for the official announcements to come out soon, but it's it's certainly a great opportunity for us And I just have to plug a little bit for Jamie here You are an official women of the IT channel Hall of Fame recipient For channel partners the work that you've done over the last 20 years And I think you know it as a as a female leader in our industry I think it gives you an opportunity to really shine and obviously it's a testament to the work that you've done but what does it mean to you in terms of mentorship opportunities for other young women that are that are either starting out or are Working through their careers in our industry Well, I do a lot of work in in mentorship with young women coming into our industry I feel incredibly blessed to have had the career that I have had and to really have started in tech and There are there as we all know there aren't enough senior women in tech We're working really really hard to figure out how to change that dynamic But as one of the few senior executives in technology in Canada, I absolutely believe it's my responsibility to mentor and and be a role model for that for that next generation and really to encourage them to come into this space because the career Potential is limitless. It is such a fun Industry to be a part of and really as we look to the to the future into the next 20 30 40 years I fundamentally believe that tech is going to be a part of every career So we need to encourage our young women and girls. I have two daughters They are they just graduated from grade three and grade five and and I want them to be comfortable with tech to To have the same love of it that I do and to to embrace whatever that could mean for them in their future and and really I think it's important that that we work hard to Open up that communication and make sure that we keep them Excited and comfortable with tech Yeah, thank you, and I've you know, we've talked about this before and I think that it's great what you're you know the message that you support on that and You're a great example obviously And so, you know, it's been you know, it's exciting to have you in this role It's been exciting to watch a structure Grow expand Normlessly over even the last just even 12 to 18 months, you know, it's been amazing Anything sort of special you want to talk about that you see coming other we've already talked about so many things There's so many great announcements, you know, what's on the horizon? Hmm. I There's a lot on the horizon. I I have never had a busier three weeks in my career There is so much going on. There's so much excitement the team that Todd has assembled is absolutely incredible Really aligned on the same goals the same passion the culture is unbelievable and There is no end to things that we have in store Over the next few months and and going into the future. So just keep Keep an eye on us and we'll we'll continue to surprise you We look forward to it. Yeah, so thank you so much Jamie for joining us here today at ITW 2019 And thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV. Happy networking


I might not be on the up and up with the latest football news, but even I know about NFL star Patrick Mahomes' mega deal. Say hello to the sports world's first $500 million man. The famous quarterback has already made a pretty penny playing for the Kansas City Chiefs and now he's there to stay for a while. Although he's only 24 with that kind of salary, you know he already owns a gorgeous house, so we'll be looking at where Patrick calls home. We even found the listings. Patrick LeVon Mahomes II is a football quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL and son of famous baseball player Pat Mahomes. After playing college football, he entered the 2017 NFL Draft selected by the Chiefs and the rest was history. Patrick proved his worth leading the team to their first Super Bowl appearance in 50 years where they defeated San Francisco for their first victory since 1970, so it's not surprising he was named MVP. So shocked to everyone though as at the star quarterback just signed the richest contract in sports history after agreeing to a 10-year extension with the Kansas City Chiefs. When coupled with the final two years of his current contract, Patrick got himself a deal worth over half a billion dollars. The 117-page mega contract includes a $10 million signing bonus, a $49.4 million dollar bonus due in 2026, and 25 million bucks in incentives if Patrick wins the NFL's MVP award again and reaches the Super Bowl. All things considered, the most recent estimate of his net worth is at about $40 million dollars, so you know the man has a nice house. Hey guys, it's Kara and today we're doing another house tour here on Famous Entertainment.  If you like these videos, make sure you're subscribed to ring that bell to be notified when we post so you can always be up to date. We've also done house tours and likes of Steph Curry and Tom Brady and we'll link to some at the end. Follow me on Instagram to chat and like I always say, let me know who's house tour is next in those comments down below and let's get into this video. In the early 90s when Patrick was still a baby, his father Patrick Mahomes Sr. was playing professional baseball. Around the same time, in 1997, this is when his parents purchased a home in Tyler, Texas. The family would live in this home for the next eight years so it's where Patrick spent basically his entire childhood. Tyler is a large city in Texas and fairly close to White House where Patrick ended up going to high school later on. Built in 1993, the home sat on 1.6 acres of land and was large and elegant. Although the photos are somewhat outdated by now, it appears it was a single-level family home and outside had a gorgeous lawn complete with a fountain and gardens. Inside Patrick's childhood home spans 3,500 square feet so it was quite spacious. The home was decorated with a cozy vibe and had a living room with brick fireplace, kitchen with marble countertops and wooden cabinets as well as a games room. The master suite had a jacuzzi in the attached bath and outside offered features like a gazebo, large swimming pool and hot tub. All things considered, it looked like a beautiful family home to grow up in. The Mahomes sold the home in 2005 after Patrick Jr.'s parents divorced. However, Randy Patrick Jr.'s mom bought another home in Tyler where they would live up until early 2014 when he graduated high school. Prior to Patrick's gorgeous house in Kansas City he lives in now, reports online to the NFL star was previously living in a penthouse unit located in the Bellevue Plaza. Although it's said that Patrick was selling this place for around 485K last year, it's more likely he was just renting this spot. Considering he said himself the current home is his first property purchase ever. Either way, let's take a look at the apartment. With only 9 units in the entire building, the Bellevue Plaza offers luxury living and accommodations, even a coveted rooftop deck with views of Kansas City. Located in the heart of the city, the building was only a stone's throw away from Arrowhead Stadium which I'm sure made trips to work and practice convenient for Patrick. His previous penthouse unit measured at a relatively modest 1800 square feet but had 6 full rooms apparently with 2 beds and 2.5 baths. It was also described as the nicest condo in the building considering it's the only one with a rooftop deck and 2-car parking. Inside Patrick's previous condo was decked out in modern fixings including new hardwood floors and fresh paint throughout. The kitchen included granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, top of the line cabinets and built-ins. The spacious living area was open-plan, offering high ceilings, a fireplace and a wet bar for entertaining as well as glass doors leading to a balcony. The master suite had a fireplace, gorgeous floor to ceiling windows and black-out blinds for when you want to sleep in. Not to mention the attached bath was fitted in marble with a huge tub and vanities. There were large California walking closets in both master and guest bedrooms but even these didn't cut it for Patrick's mega shoe collection which we'll be checking out soon. He made sure his new home in Kansas City had an entire room for his kicks. Just last year in 2019 Patrick was celebrating another milestone but this time in his personal life. He and his longtime girlfriend Brittany Matthews purchased their first home ever for a price tag of just over 1.9 million. With the insane deal that the NFL star just made for 500 million, it makes the price of his home look like peanuts but the couple doesn't seem like they'll be moving anytime soon. Chief fans were hoping that this Kansas City home purchase signified a long stay on the team for Patrick and turns out they were more than right. The couple was over-renting places and wanted somewhere to call their own. Patrick explained, Renting a house wasn't for us. We wanted our own place, just being able to nail stuff into the wall and not have to get sticky tabs like you can do whatever you want with the home. Patrick's gorgeous home is located in the heart of Kansas City in a private upscale community beside the Mission Hills Country Club. It's described as a remarkable contemporary ranch on a state-sized grounds according to the listing and the lot spans about 1.4 acres. The house was built back in 1953 and has the clean lines and connection to nature that many of the best homes from that era are known for. Although they kept a lot of the original features of the home, Patrick and Brittany renovated much of the place to fit their tastes. However, most of this was left to Brittany's selections with the help of interior designer Marcy Knopf. I picked out everything. However, Patrick did pick one piece of art, but Brittany is definitely not a fan. We'll look at it soon. If you're wondering, this adorable couple started dating after meeting at White House High School back in the day. Like her quarterback boyfriend, Brittany is a professional athlete as well who also launched her own personal training business. The pair both agreed they'd like to stay in Kansas City for 20 years plus, which is why they carefully selected their current home and wanted to put their personal touches on the place. Their home spans over 3,700 square feet of living space with 3 beds and 4 baths. In terms of redesigning the place, the couple chose a lot of dark woods, fireplaces, white walls and gray furniture accents to give the home a relaxed and comfortable vibe. Sounds like the perfect contrast for a dude who spends work days evading 300 pound rushers trying to stop him from making a touchdown. There's a versatile floor plan in the house with expansive rooms, tall ceilings and ample windows. There are multiple living areas, most with fireplaces and glass doors to the yard outside. Both the large formal dining room and the kitchen offer floor-to-ceiling windows and the chef's kitchen has eaten bar seating, stainless steel appliances and opens up to the family room. Other highlights include a full bar in one of the common rooms, an office and a wine cellar.  The couple also loves their Google Nest which reads out Patrick's daily schedule for him and controls the lighting, music and home security system. Besides, they can also watch the dogs. The couple's home sits on a terrace lawn with a swimming pool, a new hot tub, large patios, rose garden and extensive landscaping. There's also a gorgeous screened portrait sunroom overlooking the backyard. With a yard like that outside, there's plenty of space for Patrick's dogs to play. Like I mentioned, Brittany and the designer Marcy got the go-ahead from Patrick to choose mostly everything in the home except for this. Patrick must have some eclectic taste in art because this piece hanging over the fireplace was the only thing he insisted on having. Mahomes said, I basically got one thing and it was like a baby with like tattoos that we have hanging up over the family room. While he described it, you can tell Brittany isn't the biggest fan but who could blame her. To be fair, the canvas costs less than a hundred bucks. Everywhere else in the house is completely Marcy and Brittany and then I have my shoe room that I literally wanted my whole entire life so that was big with me. One other design request Patrick had for the home was a proper place to display his impressive sneaker collection. Enter the shoe room. He stated, I literally wanted this, a shoe room, my whole life so this is big for me. When the couple did their home tour we got a look at Patrick's expansive space with lighted display shelves highlighting all his beloved kicks and racks for his sunglasses. There's even a security camera. Patrick's collection made up of 180 pairs includes several styles from Adidas, his sponsor since 2017 and even the pair he wore during his first photo shoot. He also was a Game of Thrones inspired pair called the Night's Watch Ultra Boost considering that's his fave show. But his fave pair of shoes is his Yeezy Boost 750 triple blacks telling Bleacher Report, these are my babies, they're big but at the same time you can wear them with anything. So now we've taken a look at where Patrick Mahomes, the now half a billion dollar NFL star calls home like his first and current home in Kansas City, his previous penthouse and more. With money like he's making now his 1.9 million dollar home looks like a bargain in comparison but he and his girlfriend Brittany seem to be more than comfortable in their new digs. After looking at the couple's starter home what did you think or what did you like best? I loved the way they redecorated the place and I got to see my favorite spot and the home was the sunroom. I would love to work from home in there, it just looks so peaceful. Anyways be sure to let me know what you liked or didn't like about Patrick's homes in those comments down below as well as what other celebrity houses you'd like to see. Follow me on Instagram to chat and I'll see you all in the next video. Bye!


Here is our main Odysseus, his wife, his son, of course, his brother, Aenus, Zeus, Poseidon, Zeus' daughter, Zeus' brother, Aeolus, Hyperion, relevant part to us here is the Sirse, the goddess of enchantment, Calypso, the goddess of silence. The most important for tonight's, gives you a personality analysis of Poseidon, maybe, it says very phallic symbol, holding a phallic thing, one eye, has very focused, very versatile, is extremely passionate about one thing, and his men sailed on sad and weary until they reached land, right in the center of their forehead, they do not farm, relying instead on the good will of Zeus, whose thunderbolts, also although they neither plow nor sow, their crops still grow, they can live in caves high in the hills, and each of them makes his own laws, so they don't abide by anybody else's laws, and as a consequence of that, perhaps they don't work together very well, the crews beached their boats in a fine harbor, close in a grove of black, Shavdon was in the sky, Odysseus picked twelve of his men and set out a courtyard, it was clearly the home of many of these cheeses we can carry, drive the animals onto the boats, and set sail before this shepherd returns, said Pilates, one of Odysseus's most trusted, in the looks of it, he must be a giant, and home in the Cyclops's cave, they lit a fire and killed, after they had offered the gods the portion due to them, they ate, at last they heard the heavy tread of the Cyclops from a distance, he looked more like some vast mountain crag than flesh and blood, their courage failed, and they hid in a dark court, meaning to creep out, the Fumis came home, driving his flocks and carrying a hue, and he settled down to milk the sheep in the goats, something troubled the Cyclops at his work, a strange scent, he began to sniff the air, and searching the cave, he soon discovered Odysseus, he roared myself, reply, these Cyclops do not fear the gods, but we as are as strong as they are, nevertheless I may choose to spare you, tell me, how did you come here? Did my father Poseidon allow you to travel freely over the waves? Is your ship moored nearby? Ship was dashed against the rocks by great Poseidon and sank, my companions and I are the only survivors, Polyphemus asked no further quest, he reached down and plucked two men from the huddled group, he swung them by their ankles and dashed their brains out against the wall, he then tore them limb from limb and devoured them raw, like a ravining animal, the others looked on in terror, Polyphemus washed his meal down with milk and went, as the Cyclops lay snoring on the floor, Elpinor, the youngest of Odysseus's men, and as Rose and made a gruesome breakfast of two more of Odysseus's, he gathered his flocks and set out for the pastures, closing the rock door behind him, Odysseus and the remaining eight men were left to tremble in the cave, waiting for nightfall in the return of the Cyclops, and last Odysseus spoke, it may be that this Cyclops will eat us all and that our only choice is between a swift or a slow death, but it may be that we can fool this giant, I have with me a goat skin full of dark given me by the priest of Apollo, this wine is so potent that it should be diluted with 20 parts spring water, I shall offer it to the Cyclops tonight, and if he drinks it, he will fall into a fuddled sleep, Cyclops gorged himself once more on human flesh, he then sat down to drink some milk and Odysseus went up to him saying, Cyclops, you have caused my companions to drink the black wine of death, if you are to feast, if you are to feast on men's flesh, you should at least send them on their way with honor, out here, I have here, I have here a goat skin of fine wine, which I had brought to you as a gift, let me pour you a bowl full, the Cyclops drained the bowl in a single swallow, wiping his great, blubbery lips, he said, tell me your name little man, for I wish to make you a present in return for this wine, pour me some more, buddy I will eat you last, that is my gift to you, his great head longed to one side, and as sleep tugged, he belched forth a vile mouth full of wine, Odysseus and his men took the steak that they had made out of the olive wood and laid it into the fire until it was red hot, begging courage of the gods, for if the men took the steak and plunged it into this giant single eye, Odysseus above twisted it to and fro to drill it home, the eye bubbled and hissed with a sound like a smith tempering iron, the steak from his forehead and hid out wildly, but Odysseus and his men could easily dodge the blind, blundering giant, proliferous his screams resounded through the hills, waking the other Cyclops in their high gaze, they all rushed to help him, when they arrived outside the cave he called, what is the matter, who is attacking you, they called, nobody is attacking me, nobody has tried to kill me, nobody, if nobody is attacking you there's nothing we can do, you must ask your father Poseidon to help if you are suffering some torment of the gods, day before Odysseus and his men but he could not catch them and sat there himself with his great hands outstretched but crafty Odysseus had tied them together in groups of three so that a man could cling beneath the belly of the middle one and go undetected and so is six remaining men, so Odysseus' turn there was only one ram left, a big fat creature that was the best in all the flock, Odysseus clutched the shaggy fleece tightly and with his face pressed to its rank smelling belly sent it walking towards the giant, as it passed Polyphemus hugged it close to him, it's you my beauty, he said only you are the proudest of all and the first to leave the cave today you have lingered out of sadness for your master but I promise you nobody shall never escape now join your fellows in the meadow once clear of the cave Odysseus and his men drove the sheep down to the ships and made haste to put out for the sea knowing that the Cyclops made no boats and could not follow them into the salt waves when they were the length of a man's shout from the shore Odysseus cried Cyclops are you listening it is I nobody you scoffed at Zeus and the hospitality due to a guest now you must suffer for your evil ways at this the giant was so outraged that he hurled the massive boulder from the cave entrance at the ship it landed in the sea with such a tremendous crash that the waves from it drove the ship back but Odysseus was too proud to remain silent Cyclops he shouted if anyone asks who blinded you and tell them it was Odysseus Prince of Ithaca it was my wits that breached the walls of Troy though they were built by Poseidon himself and it was I who made a fool of you I fear that this has happened a wise man foretold that I would lose my sight at the hands of Odysseus but I thought Odysseus would be a great hero strong and tall not a puny weakling like you stand his arms towards the great great Poseidon earth shaker lord of the waves hear me if I am your son and if you are my father grant me this may Odysseus never see his home again or if he does let him come alone and friendless to a house of trouble and sorrows sent Odysseus and his men now to see there Odysseus sacrificed the ram on which he had escaped and prayed to Zeus for his help but Zeus would do nothing to turn aside the anger of his brother Poseidon


This is Susan Barger. I'm the Connecting to Collections Care Coordinator and I want to welcome you to this webinar on care of books and scrapbooks. I'm going to go through my little shtick quickly and then we'll get on to Rebecca Elder. If you need questions, if you need answers to questions about caring for collections, you can always post them in the discussion forum on our website. The one thing you have to do there is you need to register which doesn't cost you anything and it's mainly to protect people's privacy. So feel free to use that. There are always people there looking to make sure questions get answered in a timely way. And we have a Facebook page. We also have Twitter. And we also have the Connecting to Collections Care Announcements which is a list surf that's only for announcements. We only do a few announcements a month. So join that and we won't inundate you. You can always contact me. This is my email address. If you have any suggestions or complaints or anything, please let us know. And coming up in August, we're going to have a really interesting webinar on emergency planning when you have animals. And also it's about contingency planning. So if you have an emergency and you think something's going to happen, but do you have a plan in case something else happens? So by all means do that, take advantage of that. And then in September, we're going to have webinars on cap and map and one on steps. So we'll look forward to seeing you guys will be posted soon. And now I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca Elder who is our presenter for today and I'll let Rebecca introduce herself. So Rebecca, take it away. Hi there. Let me see if I can get to the next slide. I'm having trouble getting to the first slide in my presentation. There it is. Thank you. So welcome everybody. I am delighted to see that right now we have over 150 people who want to talk about scrapbooks and books. They're some of my favorite things. Let me introduce myself first. My name is Rebecca Elder and I am a preservation specialist based in Austin, Texas. I am trained as a rare books and paper conservator. However, these days I don't do much bench work. Instead I spend my time working with libraries, museums, archives, municipalities, anybody who has collections, helping them figure out the best ways to take care of their collections. So I do a lot of preservation assessments, a lot of training, a lot of emergency preparedness work. I know just enough about enough things to get myself in trouble. So we are going to spend the next hour or so talking about books and scrapbooks. And yes, since Susan is posting, if you have questions as we go through, go ahead and put them in the questions and comments box that everyone seems to have found. And then we'll make sure at the end we have put in ample time for answering questions. So get all your questions in there because I want to make sure you know everything. Also, my contact information is right there on the slide so make sure you take that down. And let's go ahead and get started. So my plan for today is to talk about books, book structure, a little book history, and then how to take care of books. After that we'll talk about scrapbooks and some care and handling. And I'll leave you with some resources. So books, books are great. They're kind of a classic structure and they're fairly easy to understand, which is one of my favorite things about them. So the codex is the first thing that we really understand as a book, the way we think of a book, pages down between covers. And it was created in the early second century AD and used until the 11th century and they were actually created in Ethiopia. And what you are seeing on the screen, the illustration there, is what an ecoptic or Ethiopian binding looks like. So you can see that it's something you would recognize as a book. The next gigantic development was the Gutenberg Bible, which was printed in 1455. And that brought the print era right in and book publishing exploded. The next major thing that we see happening is in the 1820s. We're beginning to get to the rise of literacy and the need for cheaper and cheaper books. So publishers started figuring out ways to make books more cheaply and the earliest publishers' cloth bindings, which are books that are bound by the publisher and not sent to the bookbinder for binding for your personal library, were 1821. And by 1830, when we really needed cheap books, we had the first paperbacks. So that's just a really, really brief sketch of the history of the book. As far as technologies, papermaking was invented in 105 AD in China. And it slowly made its way around to Europe by the 11th century until then writing would have been done on parchment and vellum. And the handpapermaking era lasted until the early 1800s. The first papermaking machine was patented by a man named Fadrenier. You don't need to know how to spell it. And what you need to know with that is that there isn't a whole lot of difference in paper if you make it by hand or make it by machine if you use the same ingredients. How it moves is slightly different, but nothing to really worry about. Where we end up beginning to introduce problems are in 1807, when Alamrazin's size is introduced. Alamrazin is another way of saying aluminum sulfate. It's a common name for aluminum sulfate. And size is something that is put on the paper to prevent feathering in ink. So if your paper wasn't size and you were using a quill pen and ink from an inkwell, it would be like writing on a Kleenex with a magic marker. So not very, very useful. So in the handpapermaking era, size was just you dip the paper in a vat of gelatin, let it dry, you have your size. However, we're mechanizing things. We get Alamrazin size, which is a chemical you stir into the paper pulp. The unfortunate downside of this is that when the Alamrazin deteriorates, it releases acids that catalyze deterioration in the paper and makes your paper die much more quickly. And then wood pulp paper was introduced in 1843. This matters because paper that's made primarily with wood has a substance in it called lignin. Lignin is what keeps the trees straight up and down. If you didn't have lignin, your trees would not have the structure they need to stand up. So that's great. When you put lignin into paper, it deteriorates quite quickly. What you're familiar with probably is if you have a newspaper that's been on the front porch for a couple of days and it turns yellow, that's lignin doing what lignin does. So around the 1840s, you start seeing the beginning of brittle paper because of the wood pulp paper and the combination of that with the Alamrazin size that produces acids that catalyze deterioration. And we could easily talk about that for hours, but we're not going to. We are going to move on and just do a little terminology with parts of the book. My little arrow tool. So over here, number one, this is a publisher's diagram. One is called a belly band, which is something that publishers and printers put around the outside of the book. It's usually an advertising piece. Two is the dust jacket. The value of most collector books lies in the dust jacket. So if you have one, it's important to keep it in good condition. Depending on your context, you might wrap it in mylar, you might box the book. The three over here, that's referring to the end sheet, which is that when you first open the book, that's what you see. And the part that's attached to the cover is called the paste down and the adjacent sheet is the fly leaf. Over here, four, the back of the book is the spine. That's probably not surprising to anyone. The top of the book over here at five is usually referred to as the head. And over here is the fore edge, which is F-O-R-E-E-D-G-E. The bottom of the book is referred to as the tail. And then eight over here, the right-hand side of the page is the recto. The left-hand side is the verso. And technically the verso, really the verso is the reverse of the recto. And finally, ten there in the middle is the gutter. That's probably the most vocabulary you really need unless you're going to be going deeply, deeply into rare books. But it is useful to have at least some of the technical terms down. So now that we've gotten through all of the technical stuff, let's talk about what you're probably really here for, which is how to take care of books and scrapbooks. Or at least books for right now. It's useful to know some of the common forms of damage because that will inform how we think about handling and caring for the books. So the common things, your text block separates from the case. Something happens to separate your end sheets and your pages are in one hand, your covers in the other. It could be poor adhesive manufacture, it could be rough handling. One of the super common things is damage to the top of the spine. That happens almost invariably when people use the end cap of the book, the top of the spine of the book as a book removal tab, when they're taking it off the shelf. Book cloth gets brittle over time and putting that stress on it will cause it to tear. Yes, Berlin, it's the worst. Detached covers. So one of the covers gets torn off. I like, I think of that a lot in terms of leather bound books. That hinge just gets worn down over time, it detaches. Torn pages obviously from tearing and torn end sheets from turning pages roughly. So some tips on shelving. One of the biggest things I can tell you on shelving is to make sure that your books are straight up and down on the shelves. If you have things that are leaning, if they lean long enough over time they'll warp and that warp will be very difficult to undo, if at all. So what you see in this picture, I chose it because all of those books look how nice and straight they are. The problem with this is that this library wasn't using any bookends. And you really don't want to cram books into the shelves. You want to make sure there's enough room for the bookends because that will give you some extra room when you're shelving and unshelving. You can use the bookends to move them around. They keep shelves tidy and they do keep your books from leaning. I love to see books that are shelved by size. So if I had my own library I would try to have three sections. One for small books, say maybe six inches and smaller. One for normal sized books. And then one for oversized books which could be anywhere 12 to 14 inches and taller than that. Because if you shelve books by size you're going to keep pressure all the way up the sides of each book. If I have a little six inch book and our call numbers say that it should be shelved next to the gigantic Atlas that Atlas isn't going to have its cover held in place well. It will droop over the book in time. It'll be a gravity thing. If your book is too big to put on the shelf it's great if you can put it spine down or with oversized materials. So oversized materials that's obvious. But if you shelve your book spine down it will keep your textbook book adhered into the case. If you shelve a book spine up so with the fore edge down on the shelf over time gravity will cause your text block to fall out of the case. And then you'll be coming to me and saying where is your video on how to tighten hinges and get that fixed. When you take books off the shelf you want to push them back. Push the books on either side back and then pull the book off by its spine. And that avoids that end cap damage we talked about on the last slide. And finally in my dream world you would avoid wooden shelving because wood off gases chemicals that will catalyze deterioration in your books. If you can't avoid your wooden shelving like this is clearly in a reading room. I bet if that librarian went in and said we have to get rid of our wood the powers that be would kind of flip out because it's pretty. So you can line the shelves with mylar to provide a barrier or some kind of an alcohol and buffered board or paper to absorb some of those assets. Oversized books. Oversized books should be shelved horizontally and ideally no more than three high. So this library has some shelves that are about six to eight inches tall set up and there's a whole lot of them. They're probably ten tall. What we want to see happen is that you would shelve the largest book on the bottom. And that way everything is getting support across the surface of the entire book. So if you look at this blue book over here it's kind of one of the ugliest things in this picture because you see how much bigger it is than the books underneath it. That means that over time gravity is going to pull that cover out of alignment and cause some pretty serious warping. When you're taking oversized materials off the shelves it's really tempting to do the magician with the tablecloth to yank the bottom of the bottom book out from underneath all the books on top. That can end up with many books falling onto the floor. So ideally you want to take each book off of your stack to get to the book at the bottom and then stack them all back up. Which means that you want to have room in your stacks or a book truck with you so you have somewhere to put all of the books you're taking off the shelf. And finally when you're transporting books particularly when you're transporting oversized books it's much safer to put them on book trucks. If you're trying to transport multiple oversized books in your arms that is an excellent, excellent, excellent way to drop your books on the ground. I wanted to talk a little bit about storage enclosures, fragile books, deteriorated books, and things that are otherwise vulnerable should be boxed. So there's lots of different kinds of boxes out there. This box up top is a custom made cloth covered clamshell box and that's kind of the Cadillac solution to the problem. They are super beautiful and they also create an impression when you present a book to a patron in a box like that. That says this is a really important thing. They're also expensive so they may not be your first go to except for your very, very most special things. There are lots of different types of boxes that you can make and I believe I put some links on the resource list. You can also do a solution like this and I think most archival supply purveyors have a system like this where you buy just strips of board that are pre-scored and you fold them at the right places. You wrap the book in one, wrap it in the other direction with another and fasten it all up with Velcro dots. That's something that you don't need to have a whole lot of technical expertise or equipment to do and it works well as well. Then when you use books, one of the biggest things we think about when we're using books is how the book opens. Particularly for older books because if we open the book farther than it wants to open, we'll break the spine. So this book in the photograph, oh that opens nice and flat but as we're getting into rare and special materials that's really not the case with a lot of books. And if we open them so that they do lay flat like that, we will do some terrible damage to them. So in your reading room, you should have book supports available. Book cradles can be made in many, many, many ways. These are foam wedges of varying thicknesses and angles and you can buy them. There's also directions out there on the internet for making something called a velvet mailbox which is a cloth covered. It looks like a mailbox. Then you make them in pairs and use them to angle the book the way you want. But foam wedges are common, you don't have to be crafty to make them and they let you adjust the angles of your cradles infinitely to meet the needs of your books. And then you use weighted snakes which are these guys. They are tubes of cotton fabric with weights inside of them that you lay across the pages. And that keeps things open to the right page in a very gentle, organic manner. So this is useful for display, it's also useful for the reading room. And I just wanted to put in a reminder that likely your patrons aren't going to know how to use this equipment. So your staff is going to need to teach them how to use it safely. You also want to teach people to turn pages carefully especially when paper is brittle or weak or very large because all of those are easy to damage. All the brittle paper caused from the wood pulp paper and the alum rosin size. Most of that brittle paper is in books and careless turning will do damage. And then a few tips on using books. First, always when you're using books use clean hands. I don't use gloves when I'm handling paper. The primary reason you would use gloves for books would be to prevent fingerprints but books aren't going to get fingerprints on them. Paper just doesn't usually take fingerprints like that. They won't be visible. But you lose an awful lot of manual dexterity when you put those gloves on. So you're more likely to do damage. And if you are using cotton gloves the paper is likely to snag on that cotton fabric. And on brittle paper that can do damage. If you have gloves for books and paper you can just handle with clean hands. When you are using books leave them on the support while they're reading them. Don't hold them off the table. It's not like you are reading your paper back in the bathtub. One of my big bugaboos are pressure sensitive adhesives on special collections materials. I am. So anytime you use tape it's most likely to cause more problems than it solves somewhere on down the road. And post-it notes. If you are using post-it notes on, well when you use post-it notes even though they peel off you're leaving behind some adhesive. And also if you are using post-it notes on brittle paper when you peel that back you can take a chunk of the page off the bond between the post-it note and the paper will be stronger than the bond between the paper molecules and you'll just take a chunk of paper right off of the post-it. So use acid-free flags instead of post-it notes for marking rare and special books. Obviously dog-earing books does damage to them. Acidic bookmarks. Maybe not problematic in the extreme short term like five minutes. But what happens is invariably somebody forgets to take that acidic bookmark out. Your book goes back on the shelf. You repage it again five years later and there is a big old yellow mark where the bookmark is sat because the acids in the bookmark are migrating out into the less acidic paper of the book and you're getting some very serious localized deterioration there. I think we have talked about transporting books on trucks. And then leather dressings also tend to create more problems than they solve. They tend to over time actually dry things out and if you use them improperly and put too much on them and then put your books back on the shelf under the pressure of the book ends, the leather dressings will actually cause your books to stick together. So leather dressings definitely something to stay away from. Just a reminder that rare books should not be photocopied because photocopiers are notorious for breaking spines, even a nice book edge scanner. So it's better to photograph or use a scanner that's designed to scan books that has a cradle and you turn pages individually. Tracy had a book where someone used bacon. Oh dear, bless their hearts. Okay, the last thing I wanted to talk about before we move on to scrap books and albums is exhibiting rare books because books can be a fantastic thing to put on exhibit. They're often beautiful objects, they contain really interesting information and the contents are beautiful so I love to see them on display. The image that you're seeing is from National Park Service Conservogram 18-1 which is instructions on how to make an inexpensive and easy book cradle. It's made out of three layers of mylar. I have made them, they are easy and they look really sharp because they will just kind of fade into your background. So we want to minimize light damage and that means we want to exhibit rare books at low light levels, less than 50 lux or so. If you don't have a light meter, I would encourage you to buy one and honestly, you can buy a really, really expensive light meter from an archival supplier but a couple of years ago I needed several and I bought some 25 buck ones from Amazon and clocked them against my expensive light meter and they were fine. If you email me, I'll give you the exact reference for the light meter that I bought but you probably don't need a $250 light meter. If you're going to display a book open, use a cradle and if your pages won't stay in place, you can use mylar strapping that you can buy from archival suppliers to hold your pages in place if needed and then turn your pages regularly so that you get even light exposure through the book and things don't, how do I want to say this, you get even light exposure and also the book doesn't get used to being in any one position for too long so turn your pages every couple of weeks and that's kind of a whole bunch of books very quickly so let's go ahead and move on to scrapbooks scrapbooks are one of my favorite things in collections, scrapbooks and albums are also a challenge because they add on multiple layers of complexity to books which are for something that's so simple and everyday are actually remarkably complex pieces of engineering so scrapbooks and albums, sometimes you just have to say oh bless their hearts scrapbooks and albums were popular from the Victorian era around the Victorian era photographers started making standardized sized photographs cards to visit and cabinet cards that were album and prints mounted on a little piece of board Queen Victoria loved collecting them so it became a fad to collect especially the cards to visit and albums were developed to hold them so Queen Victoria was responsible for albums there are lots of types of structures for albums there are ones that are sewn those are problematic because once something is sewn there's not a lot of way to adjust the thickness for putting in objects that force your spine to expand some sewn albums will have stubs put between the pages to help with that but you'll also see albums that were created by somebody taking a book of wallpaper samples and pasting over the wallpaper samples for example you also have albums that are laced so there are holes drilled in the sides of the pages and then some kind of a tie is threaded through them and tied I love those and there are ones that are done with posts which are just metal posts into pieces that screw apart to the right thickness and you'll see all of those out there and probably more and more I think I wanted to talk specifically about our friend the Magnetic Album which is to say our enemy the Magnetic Album those are ubiquitous from the 60's forward all of my childhood photographs were in Magnetic Albums they are the pages that are covered with adhesive and then they have a plastic overlay that you open up smack your pictures onto the adhesive and then drop the plastic back over them they are everywhere they are the worst because they are extremely damaging to the contents the adhesives are acidic the boards they're made from are acidic the plastic is a poor quality plastic and the plastic doesn't breathe so all the acids in the adhesive and board have no real choice except to attack the objects that were trying to safeguard by using them and you find lots of things in albums so the obvious ones are things like photos, news clippings, ribbons, pressed flowers programs and tickets, locks of hair when I was growing up my granddad had an album someone had made for him that had candy stuck to the pages because quote he was so sweet I have heard stories about people's body parts fingers and toes being preserved in albums you just never know what you're going to find I hope you never find a straight toe the thing to remember is that including all of those objects then means that you have to think about how all of those objects deteriorate when you think about caring for your album common forms of damage that we see we see acid migration maybe you'll have a newspaper clipping opposite a theater program and you'll open it up and you'll see on the theater program which was on good quality paper a big yellow mark that corresponds exactly to your newspaper clipping that's because the newspaper clipping is super acidic wood pulp paper and those acids just rush right out into the better quality paper and cause damage there you'll see lots of brittle paper albums were designed to be inexpensive consumer commodities not preservation vehicles so they're made with cheap paper which becomes brittle all adhesives will fail over time it's just how it happens so you'll see things falling out that were put into albums with adhesive for magnetic albums when the adhesive starts to fail it's a blessing for other things maybe not so much sometimes you'll see people putting things into albums with staples or pins over time those can corrode especially if they're not a good quality metal and people will cram albums so full that you can't shut them and when you try to shut them you'll end up doing some damage to the spine so they are super problematic little creatures so what kinds of options do we have when we're dealing with photo albums? first we can rehouse them and we'll talk about that on the next slide but I believe that every album you have in your collection should be in its own box to protect it and keep all the pieces together because invariably they will fall apart at some point if your album's in very poor condition or your scrapbook you might consider reformatting it or if it's heavily used you might consider reformatting it so you could photograph it you could digitize it you could photocopy it and make that be what people use first before you offer them the original artifact maybe you have a bunch of photos in a magnetic album and for some reason you want to retain that album format there's something special about that you can buy a better quality album and recreate the album very carefully matching up placement on the better quality pages and use better quality ways to adhere use good quality photocorners instead of glue stick maybe for putting things on your page and finally you can also, depending on the album if there's no great artistry and it's just four photos smacked together on a page like this one page that you're seeing you can think about removing the objects from the album and either storing them separately or just throwing away the album so this particular pay album yes it's not going to ever come apart because whoever glued those on whoever glued those pictures to that page they were serious this is one of my demo pieces the edges fall apart but those they're not going anywhere, that glue is sturdy but if you have something that you can remove there's no great artistry to it, no notations you might be better off just taking a picture of all the pages and then pulling it apart getting rid of that non-descript black paper and storing the photos in a box in terms of housings for scrapbooks so there's a couple of rules you put them in boxes and you always want to store them flat that's so that if anything falls off you know where it came from it won't be floating around at the bottom of your box if you're seeing acid migration you may want to consider interleaving the pages with Mylar or acid free paper to provide a buffer between your objects and I really like to see people at least interleave at the front and the back page of albums because the adhesive that was used to attach those end sheets is pretty viciously acidic and finally something I do fairly often is take out the posts or the laces if it's an album that's stacked pages I take those apart hang on to the posts or the laces so we know what was originally there but that way when we turn the pages we're not bending them they're just turning flat it doesn't to my mind damage the bookness of it but it does make it safer to handle as far as to disassemble or not to disassemble that's a call that you make on a case by case basis and the three questions that you're going to ask yourself first is the scrapbook damaging to the contents if the scrapbook is damaging to the contents then you might well want to take it apart you also want to think about the value of the scrapbook as an artifact like that page we looked at on a couple of slides ago that were just the four pictures smacked on the page no great artistry there but if somebody spent time assembling it and making it beautiful and there's some artistic intent then yeah that you're going to think twice about disassembling because there is some greater meaning it's the total is more than the sum of the parts and finally you have to think about whether you can safely remove the contents like that black page from a few pages ago I would love to take those photographs off of there but I'm going to do more damage that's quick and catastrophic by trying to lift those pictures up somehow then the incremental damage of being adhered to acidic paper so it really is a case by case by case basis you also are going to be thinking about how much time you have because I'm here to tell you that taking a scrapbook apart is a time consuming process you may just not have that kind of labor resources if you do end up with the disassembly option please remember that you should always create a digital surrogate it's so easy to just take photographs or scan pages so that you have a record of what it looks like before you took it apart you never know what researchers may need that so finally just some general resources and you can download the resource list that has links in it national park service conserve programs you probably already know about them they're some of my favorite resources for all kinds of museum objects but that's where you will find the do-it-yourself Mylar book cradle there's also a handout on deciding what makes a book rare and they're awesome likewise the northeast document conservation center preservation leaflets is very good on books and photographs the library of congress has an excellent page on preservation of scrapbooks and albums the American library associations technical services group ALCTS has another webinar that you can listen to for observing scrapbooks archived on their website Missouri state archives has some really good handouts and I like theirs on scrapbooks and finally if you want to dig deeper the American Institute for Conservation has a wiki that has some good information on scrapbooks and it also links out to resources that are aimed more at conservators than the general public but depending on how deep you dive into this it's a very very very good resource and the last thing I wanted to do before we move over for questions is just let you know that my email address is on your screen and if you come up, because I always come up with my questions four in the morning three days after I learned about something so if that happens don't hesitate to shoot me an email I'll be happy to talk to you about whatever just stay in touch so that's everything that I have prepared so maybe we should move over to questions and answers Okay, do you want me to read the questions? Yeah, why do you? Because I can only see half of them on my screen Okay, so I will read the questions I want to put the evaluation link up here the evaluations are really important so please take time and fill them out and I look at them just so sometimes people think oh you don't look at them so the first question is from Marguerite Callum at Crazy Horse in South Dakota I love Crazy Horse in South Dakota it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been sorry she says I need help with scrapbook preservation after being digitized so after being digitized you would treat them like you would treat them before digitization if you've taken them apart for digitization box them and store them flat okay and if there was anything that's kind of if there are more specifics you can go ahead and put them in the questions and comments and maybe we can get a better answer than that okay Catherine Collett had a question is it signatures or choirs for modern books this is on terminology I call them sections signatures are so a lot of people use signatures it's actually more technical than that it has to do with early printing where you would print maybe you would print 16 pages on one large page and then fold it up and that became the signature for modern books from a publisher these days, sections okay Molly Hall says does anyone have an issue where someone will donate a book to the library that's thrown away the dust jacket imagine that happens a lot I would say and there's not really much you can do about that because it comes to you like it comes to you yeah I've had a lot of problems with detached pages not covers in the center of a book I am guessing you are probably talking about paperbacks yeah because paperbacks the adhesive that they use to make modern paperbacks is pretty akin to what comes out of your hot melt glue gun which if you use one you probably know is a quick setting but not very sturdy adhesive I believe and I'm going to type it into the chat box so have a look over there there is a group called the Sustainable Heritage Network that if you google you'll be able to find and a couple of years ago for them I did a video on how to tip pages back in that you should be able to find on their website so there is a way to do it I don't know you essentially put a very very thin bead of polyvinyl acetate adhesive it's not a special collections technique that you want to get a conservator involved in but for just normal books you can put a eighth of an inch bead of PDA adhesive and just glue it to the page in front of it and that will work like a charm and I'll add that link to the resources before I post a recording oh thank you the Sustainable Heritage Network that's really amazing work and they have tons of videos on all kinds of preservation topics and Karen DeWitt asked about laying over size books on their flat and so I think you answered that one should bookends be used on rare books that are not yet boxed? yes because it's still going to be safer than shoving too many books into a case into a shelf to keep them standing up straight so yes and I've made plenty of pretty fancy schmancy rare books libraries that you just you can't box everything in your collection you can't afford to once you start boxing everything your collection gets a lot bigger you don't have this space so if something is really fragile absolutely box it if it's not fragile it is fine to just be on a shelf with a bookend okay Molly Hall in Netherland, Texas said we actually laminate the covers because we found that mylar covers were falling off of being torn I assume that means paper back books my question to you Molly is are you doing that on circulating collections or special collections materials for circulating collections do what you want the books going to fall apart or it becomes a problem but for something that's special collections that you're not circulating you don't ever want to laminate it because they're not in the 5 or 10 year range but in the 50 year range that's going to deteriorate and cause problems for you but circulating collections if lamination works for you I have no problem yeah okay book supports on the cheat book futons I've used I've made four or five of them this is Tracy Hampton and she said she'll send us instructions on how to make book futons and I will post those along with the recording I can't wait to see them a little after the recording gets done because Tracy says she needs to put something together but that's great book futons are really nice and I just was at the Newbury Library in Chicago and they have a group of volunteers that makes book futons for them and they can make set aside a day and ten of these little ladies and make book futons and they just put them in the washing machine and wash them when they get dirty so it's a nice solution okay what if the book has significant dirt or dust do you use I use gloves to keep my hands clean this is Hailey Dodie Vadim so if the book has significant dirt or dust I would love first of all I would love to see you set up a book cleaning program periodically so that that doesn't happen but the best way to handle that is you want to keep the book closed and use some pressure so you're not going to force dirt and dust into the book and either use a vacuum or a soft cloth or a soft brush to dust the book off and Michael Nagy asks what about red rot treatments or suggestions so there's not really a way to fix red rot for stabilizing it that's something that's best left to a conservator what I recommend for people to do is to use Mylar to create a dust jacket because Mylar has a static electric field associated with it and it'll keep the red rot contained okay there were several questions about what to use in books next so let's talk about the use of shocks anything else I just talked over you curtain weights really you should be able to go to the hardware store potentially a really good fabric store and buy weights that are strung together really anything that is heavy and flexible you could put into a book weight but honestly I think if you price them you'll probably find that they are inexpensive enough to buy easier to buy them than to fool around with making them yeah and make sure they have a cover you can take off and clean yes okay then Evelyn Fieler had a question about stuff press flowers bookmarks and she says we keep the context as part of the artifact though I will admit to not keeping the flowers and leaves and then Berlin Lois said we separate them and make a we record them and then we make a separate separation reports show I think you talked about that too what I tend to do for something like a flower something that has oils that might transfer or something that's super crumbly and real like a pressed flower is make a little mylar envelope tuck it in the mylar envelope and put the mylar envelope back where it came from yeah then there was Michael said how accurate our smart phone looks measurements I'm sorry can you read that again how accurate our smart phone looks measurements I have never messed with that so I do not have a good answer for you I think if you take the time to calibrate the smart phone looks measurement it's probably okay and then there were several questions about magnetic pages one about to freeze or heathen to remove the stick of stuck items one about using a heated scalpel another about whether or not you should use dental floss what do you recommend okay so there are lots of schools of thought on this I know lots of people like dental floss I know lots of people like heating things up personally I use a micro spatula and if you don't have a micro spatula with collections you should order like 16 because they're the best tool ever so I use a micro spatula to lift them and if I'm encountering resistance I put the book away for a year and come back and try it again and wait for the adhesive to fail because I worry about the residue that would be left behind if we heat it up and I've never used the whole dental floss thing I think it sounds much more difficult than a micro spatula I think that's something that might have been created by people who don't know what micro spatulas are no I mean and I do use dental floss to cut cheesecake though so there you go Rachel Barber says my historical society is the happy recipient of a local historian's collection of photographs business letterhood, advertising materials etc well sorted by geography and subject matter he used a wallpaper sample book as well as regular scrapbooks with paper pages he used cellophane tape for all four corners to attach them should we try to remove the materials from the books or do you have another suggestion okay so if everything is put in with cellophane tape over time cellophane tape is going to fail it just that's cellophane tape tends to go fairly quickly so probably I would use my micro spatula to see what I could do it's going to depend on the time you have but I might so I don't know it's hard and it's hard without seeing it there's a certain charm to having them in the wallpaper books for as long as you can have them there because that says something about the creator too but if you're going to take it apart now and the adhesive isn't failing but he just taped across the four corners and I guess I would want to know if he did it with little loops of tape so that it's neat and tidy and the tape doesn't show or if he just slapped tape across the corners because if they did that you could use a scalpel blade and slit that tape and pull it apart but eventually that tape is going to fail and it might be easiest to wait to take it apart then if that's your call you could also do a digital copy of the pages because it sounds charming and as before you take it apart make sure you have a copy of it Melissa Thompson in Wichita says I'm consulting with a women's club that is preserving their old albums but they refuse to reformat they won't remove objects either and they want to display them Any suggestions? Well so reformatting does not necessarily imply destruction but I would go back to them and urge them to take photos because that's not going to damage the album Ultimately it is their object and they're going to do what they want to with it as far as display I'm assuming I love women's club scrapbooks the most they're my favorites For display I would encourage them to take the ties or posts out of the scrapbook so you don't have those pages bent and just display them as stacks of pages I think that still gets the point across in terms of removing things from the albums It's hard to talk about something as complex as albums without seeing them and if you want to shoot me some photographs by email I am happy to take this discussion offline too I try not to remove things from albums that have a whole lot of craft to them unless there is a really pressing reason to do it Melissa said she'll be in contact taking photographs Rachel Barber asked how would we remove photographs from the black paper like in your slide If they're glued on both sides If they're glued on both sides you're probably not going to If they are really really really sturdily attached chances are there's not much you can do about it I'm really sorry to be that person that has to tell you that If they're in photo corners you can just pop the photos out gently But when stuff is glued down even photo conservators probably don't want to get into un-gluing those I've heard that the gold edging on photo albums flake and it's bad for they cause damage to photos I could see where potentially it might scratch things Also you're probably stuck with it because it's there You might before you open the album hold it tightly closed and use a soft brush like a HAKE brush which is H-A-K-E They're inexpensive brushes made out of bamboo and goat hair that are good for dusting and just give that a dust to get any loose particles off before you open the album and use it Okay I've lost my place Okay Sarah Brower says now Michael Nagy again What about modern scrapbooks made with craft store materials and kits in the last 30 years but still popular right now, the scrapbooker stuff Oh yeah I just treat that like I treat any scrapbook Where we're lucky is that the scrapbooking industry seems to understand that acid free is a good marketing tool When something is marketed as acid free it means that it's acid free at the time of manufacture so that's not a guarantee it will be acid free for the long haul But yeah, if people are making scrapbooks now I tend to encourage them to use materials that have passed the photographic activity test which I didn't really talk about today but it's kind of a it's a chemical test that ensures that there's nothing in your paper that's going to be damaging It's going to chemically interact with your photographs It's going to be nice and sturdy But again, it's one of those people that are going to do what they're going to do to deal with the after effect when it comes into your collections So I treat them just like I treat any other scrapbook and hope that they may last a little longer because the manufacturers knew that if they marketed something as acid free and quote unquote archival which has no meaning Archival means something found in an archives Anything could be archival But if they're marketing it as something that's quote unquote archival and acid free, hopefully it's going to last a little bit longer I'm going to join two questions together Victoria Estes says How would you preserve scrapbooks with newspaper clippings and photographs glued on the same page slip acid free paper between the pages or try to remove But Julian Novakovic in Rochester said we have some scrapbook albums, mostly photographs with some newspaper clippings and other camera on black acidic paper from the 1890s to the 1920s that were interleaved with paper in the 1980s However the pages have swelled and this warped the bindings I've removed the interleaved papers for now but what supplies would you recommend for interleaving the papers and I put those together because I think they're related Yes, so to the first question I would indeed interleave with photos, you would want something that is non alkaline buffered so something that is acid free and lignin free but non alkaline buffered because the chemicals could interact with the photographs For the other one it's another one where I would dearly love to see the album and you are more than welcome to shoot me some photographs If the album is sewn together we don't have as much leeway but if it's laced, we can loosen the laces so that there's room to put that interleaving in Yeah, and Berlin Lo has suggested using Mylar Any thoughts on that? You can use Mylar as well Mylar might be what you have at hand What about its electrostatic charge? I'm not particularly worried about it and when I would be worried is maybe one of the things in my album is pastel drawing then I would be worried about the static attracting the pigment from the drawing but if it's just newspaper clippings and photographs, not worried at all but that is an excellent question Yeah Okay Rachel when Pulizian I probably just now secured your name, I'm sure I have questions about postcard albums from the early 1900s The sheets are grey pages with four slots that hold postcards on four corners and some have leather covers, what's the best way to care for them? Should I remove anything? Also the way the albums are they only allow viewing of one side of the postcards so researchers can't take them and view the back sides without removing the cards How could we better use them? Should I digitize the cards in place and back in the albums? Carefully Rachel, I really like that suggestion I don't want your researchers really no way pulling the cards out of the albums The other thing you could do is photograph each of the pages and then just take the albums apart Hang on to the albums so anyone who wants to can see what they look like and put the postcards in boxes that are sized for postcards That would be another option How do we separate photos of stuff together? That is a really tough one That is not something that usually happens well and it is something I would refer to a photo conservator Amanda says When turning pages what about books in exhibit cases that are hard to get to? Should we remove the book or make a copy of the page to display over it? I had exhibit cases that are of pain to use What I might consider doing there is displaying the book closed and a good photograph of the page I don't know if that would be an acceptable solution but it would certainly be one from a preservation perspective it would be a good solution Sherry Klein said Working on preserving three library scrapbooks When a peer surfing created with Elmer's glue does not appear that the photos will be able to be taken out Any suggestions after digitization? I would just handle it like I would handle any other scrapbook and put it in a box and store it flat Elmer's has a tendency to fail after a while so it may be in five years you can get things out but yeah just digitize and then I was going to say throw gently put things in a box and store it flat We have early we have early city directories that are used regularly and some spines are detached Is there a way we can stop further damage while still allowing access Currently we don't have the resources to digitize Oh man City directories are so heavily used that they're almost always in poor condition What I think I would do if at all possible is try to track down duplicate copies and allow people access to the one that's in poorer condition and restrict access to the one that's in better condition and let the poor condition one get torn up And there are a lot of places that have digitized city directories People like the Mormons in Salt Lake City and you can access their materials for nothing So that might be something you might want to check into too You might look and see if somebody else has already digitized them It's entirely possible Yep, you are correct Susan Samantha Schaefer in Canadian Texas If anyone's interested in seeing all sorts of crazy interesting scrapbooks I follow at Paper of the Past on Instagram So that might be something that you want to look at Rachel Barber says thanks for the answering We are so charming when we have 15 boxes of wallpaper not so charming when we have 15 boxes of wallpaper sample books and scrapbooks with everything taped to the pages That's part of the problem But I think is that the information contained on the items tagged into the books is not so easily accessible so she'll send you pictures And Sarah Brower says we have an autograph collection with letters and papers interleaved and attached to pages of books The creators stated specifically in his will that the autographs were not to be removed from the books We don't know if he had a reason for placing the autographs and letters as he did There's no way to remove the autographs without damaging the books There's no deterioration of the books These are autographs of famous people and we have about 20 of them into the book I think I would probably just box them so that if anything fell out you would know where it was But you have a restriction on them that you aren't allowed to take things out So I would just box them and love them like they are and if people ask you tell them that he was an eccentric donor Ishtel has recommended several times using Gore-Tex to help humidify things to remove them What are your thoughts on that? I get I've never used Gore-Tex to get adhesive damp to remove it I get really nervous recommending willy-nilly to non-conservators that they start humidifying things because things can go wrong If you're going to experiment with it make sure it's on something that you understand that you can do damage and that you're okay with that Otherwise, put it in a box is always a valid solution You could ask a photo conservator but the problem with photographs is they can be kind of quirky so you want to be really careful about that and you could find yourself out on the limb with nowhere to go Photos are scary Samantha Shaffer says again we have an exhibit on loan with rare books that we did Some of the books are displayed closed and photos of pages were blown up and displayed on poster boards I think that's a lovely solution to the we can't get into the case to turn the page question There have been a couple of people who have said that directors made them into PDFs I think I saw a suggestion about photocopying also pass along and that might be a good way to handle because there wasn't a budget for digitizing the city directories but maybe a volunteer could stand and make photocopies of the pages which would be tedious but it would allow you to cut down on access Timothy Walsh says the scanner pro iphone app by reedle provides excellent results in PDF format it's fast and easy to use I'll look that up I can add it to the resources and then let's see and then a couple of people have given places where you might find city directories and what about a scrapbook where the contents have been loosed from the pages already and it's a wide variety of types of materials like papers, clippings, cards, photos leave it all in place and then you can put it in the book or remove it and store it separately that's a really interesting question and I guess my question is do we have an idea of where things originally were on the pages if they're already random and jumbled then I don't see any reason to not just take them and put them into file folders that might be by page if you know where things were on the page you might just take put things where they were and take pictures and then have the photographs and put things in folders that might be the easiest there's one question I forgot what do you do about books you know places that no longer have their collections on stacks but have thoughts you know I have absolutely no experience with those so I don't have a good answer for you I'm hoping that anything rare or special that you're using some kind of a robot system for to have boxed because that will protect them a lot of damage and for circulating collection books I just have a really hard time getting worked up about anything because my assumption is that they will be used until they die and then thrown away Ashley Kowalski says we have a small number of older books that are captain's collection storage rather than because of author's signatures or rarity they're currently laid flat on shelves and sometimes two or three are stacked there's no feasible there's no longer feasible space would it be better to box and stack many on flat shelves or box and store standing so the question there Ashley is going to be if something is oversized or not if something is normal book sized then box it and let it stand on its end that's how they were designed that'll work great if something is oversized I would want to see them boxed and flat and in my dream world maybe you'd investigate adding some shelving you you can go in and add more shelves to it is adjustable shelving and that might be a way to make it so you don't have to stack things ten high yeah and there have been a lot of suggestions for Sarah about city directories and Randy Reese says that the Los Angeles public library has digitized Santa Monica city directories and I think that's about it I'm pretty sure we've answered them all so that's great thank you all thank you Rebecca this was so much fun and I want to remind you about the next webinar and if you don't have animals but you know people that do have animals please tell them about that webinar and we have the American zoological and aquarium folks are giving it and what I've learned is that many places they might have a cat or anything to a lion or something and they have an emergency and they just let the animals out so you don't want to do that I told your animal shelter Susan right you can't move them so please make sure that you that you do that so we'll see you next month and I hope you're all enjoying the summer bye bye


Let's go up to Denver and get a new socket made for my prosthetic leg. I had one of these made two weeks ago, unfortunately my leg is shrunken so much because it was so swollen after surgery that I need another one already. The process of getting a prosthetic leg that fits well to your leg to your body is pretty nuanced. Honestly, it's more of an art than a science. At Extremity Prosthetics up in Denver, we recast my leg, got new measurements, talked about new pain in uncomfortable spots, and then we pulled an entirely new socket. There's a lot of walking up and down hallways when it comes to making sure it fits right and getting the alignment correct. This one felt a lot better than the old one, so I got to take it home. Okay, so it's a couple days later and it's actually feeling pretty good still. Oftentimes, as an amputee, when you're getting a new socket made, it might feel really good in office, but then by the second or third day you bring it home, you realize that there are spots that are sore, causing pain, pressure, uncomfortable, so you gotta go through the whole process all over again. Thankfully, so far, I'm not feeling anything that needs any major adjustment, and I have been able to wear it for longer periods of time. So far, so good.