BARTERING BLOCKS: In antiquity, cuneiform tablets hardened in the hot sun. These clay facsimiles—replicas of the originals, which reside in Special Collections—were baked in an oven. Their inscriptions detail a transaction between two individuals exchanging animals for feed.

CHILD'S PLAY: Lothar Meggendorfer’s 1890 children’s book Greedy Julia featured pull tabs and moving parts to tell the story of a little girl, hungry for honey, who discovers a mouse beat her to the honey pot. Only one tab worked on the library’s copy; Minter collaborated with experts at Penn State’s Center for Quantitative Imaging to figure out the pivot points on each page and create a large-scale facsimile that moves exactly like the parts in the original book.

RISKY READS: In the 19th century, many cloth-bound books came in bright colors like this popular emerald green. No one knew until 2019 that that green dye contained arsenic. Kellerman’s team has identified a dozen of these so-called poison books in the libraries. They have been isolated from circulation and require PPE when handling.

RESTORATIVE PRACTICES: Minter’s team restored this 1750s Spanish songbook by removing the binding, mending individual sheets, sewing the book back together and into its original cover, and storing it in a protective quilt case.

A WAR HERO'S WARDROBE: When the Centre received Ernest Hemingway’s World War I jacket and cap last summer, the items were immediately placed in a special freezer to kill the many insects that had made homes inside. After two weeks, the jacket and cap were removed and fully vacuumed to remove any residual larvae and other deposits. The team then made a special storage box that protects Hemingway’s wartime gear from moths, bright light, and other environmental factors that could cause damage, and preserves it for years to come.

NEATLY PACKED: Making boxes for old and fragile books, like this 1815 cookbook (above), is one of the Centre’s fortes. These custom creations, typically made from bookbinder’s board that is cut and fitted to size, help protect unique items including artists’ books and limited editions from Special Collections that are vulnerable to wear and tear. Once a book is placed in its box, the excess space around that book is filled out with Ethafoam, an inert plastic foam that does not harm the item in any way but allows the box to keep its shape.

SKILLED CRAFTSMAN: Minter, who as a young man trained with a bookbinder, continues to hone his bookbinding skills. He enjoys making special design binding out of leather for commercially printed books to create something totally unique. On the book pictured above right, leather onlays produced the letters “RHM.”

PAPERMAKING: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centre’s staff became interested in making paper from paper, including paper towels and junk mail. Kellerman would love to explore papermaking further, and one day she hopes to produce it en masse. For now, her team has been offering papermaking workshops in the Children’s Garden at the Arboretum, which are popular with both children and their parents.

FISH FINESSE: Catherine Orochena ’19 A&A, preservation and conservation specialist at the Centre, discovered that the unique properties and aesthetics of fish skin translate perfectly to parchment. She removes the skin from a simple piece of salmon purchased at Wegmans, soaks it in salt water, them stretches it out to dry. The parchment can also be used as book binding.

FROZEN BOOKS: Any books that experience water damage are immediately frozen in the Centre’s special vacuum freeze-drying chamber to ward off mold damage and to prevent the likelihood of the pages become warped.  

WELDING WIZARDRY: Prior to his arrival at Penn State, Bill Minter, the libraries’ chief conservator, designed and developed an ultrasonic welding machine to seamlessly—and attractively—seal fragile paper by stitching two sheets of polyester film around the perimeter of the paper. Minter’s machines are used in libraries around the world; last year, he shipped one to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

UNDER THE LENS: Minter and his team use this recently acquired, high precision Olympus CX43 RF microscope to determine the exact composition of paper and to figure out if it’s made from flax, linen, cotton rags, or wood fiber. The microscope camera’s large field of view can replicate on screen and for a broader audience exactly what the viewer sees.