A View from the Stacks : Interns' Journal - Week 2

Prior to beginning my internship at the Chrysler, I was told to be ready to “get my hands dirty” in the library. With my outsider’s knowledge of libraries and clichéd assumptions about internships I took this to be a metaphor for fixing someone’s coffee or sorting somebody’s mail. Upon starting my internship I was corrected in my assumptions—none of my tasks were menial or useless and “dirty” was meant literally. In the second week of our internship I and fellow intern, Casey, began the dusty work of library preservation with enclosing fragile and rare books in protective folders.

To begin, we donned protective gloves and looked at the 30 shelves of the Moses Myer’s family book collection with a certain level of awe—first over the age of each volume (some over 200 years old), and second over the sheer amount of time it would take ourselves and future students to fit and enclose each individually. Pausing often to study the books’ 18th century ideals of chemistry or the portraits and signatures doodled in margins, we measured each book for a 4-flap enclosure of archival paper. Over the first half of our preservation week we housed 34 books, protecting them from moisture, light, air, bugs, mold, and each-other. Though it felt great to complete our careful folding with a large chunk of the books protected, our next task certainly left a greater spatial impact.

In the latter half of our week Casey and I completed some lighter wrapping for a shelf of old and tattered books. After some organizing and dusting, we cleared 7 shelves previously covered in bits of aging books and German art periodicals to make light enclosures and some room for the museum’s scrapbooks. Previously crowded under shelves of auction catalogues, theses scrapbooks are now better preserved and more accessible to anyone looking for a visual history of the Chrysler museum, or just some amusing vintage photographs. All in all it feels great not only to accomplish so much, but to know and see how our work is serving the library. My week in learning the process and importance of library preservation has given me the valuable work experience I sought, as well as a feeling of achievement I had never expected.

 - Chelsea Reinhardt 2010 Summer Library Intern