LIBRARIES | Blog

By Julie Calcagno

Taking on a large collection housing project, especially if you’ve never done one before, can be daunting. There are so many questions! How do we measure heavy, fragile, oversized books and newspapers for custom enclosures? Does red rot stain clothing? Is it all over my face right now? Why is compact shelving so compact? Fortunately, staff of the Northwestern University Libraries Preservation Department recently completed such a project, so let’s walk through our process.

The variety of big heavy items.

Oof

It’s an essential first step to know what you are working on. In our case, Northwestern’s Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives is home to a large archival collection of Chicago Tribune materials. A portion of these (261 boxes to be exact) were moving to off-site storage and needed to be safely housed in custom non-acidic archival boxes for protection and easier handling. This portion of the collection is primarily cloth and leather-bound newspaper volumes, mostly European editions of the Tribune, spanning the mid-19th century to the 1940’s. Scrapbooks, magazines, ledger books, and unbound newspapers were in the mix, just to make it exciting. The majority of these items are folio-sized, averaging 19″ height,15″ width, and 2.5″ spine thickness. Several of them are the size of actual toddlers. But we managed, and so can you!

Here is our step-by-step guide to tackling a big project for big books like this:

1. Meet to discuss the project. Set expectations! Discuss your timeline and budget!
2. Journey to the basement (of course it’s the basement). Approach compact storage (those space-maximizing rolling shelves) and open. Stare wide-eyed as the seriousness of the situation becomes clear. Close shelves. Adjust expectations.
3. Locate a device and/or determine a method for measuring the items. If possible, this device should be heavy, wooden, and difficult to move around – like a special jig, which was actually pretty marvelous (Thanks Laura!). The jig was especially helpful to us though because many of the items are not square due to age and gravity.
4. Gather supplies including notepads, pencils, maybe a laptop, measuring tape, book flags, a book truck since the workspace is “not ideal,”  and a smock or two (unless 86-7530 Red Rot is the Pantone Color of the Year*). *It is not. The 2024 Pantone color of the year is 13-1023 Peach Fuzz which should be the cocktail you have at the project’s end.
   

   Julie’s essential lab coat

5. Put on a brave face and open compact shelving again. Determine that you will start by moving 3-4 items at a time, placing numbered flags in each of them so you can easily pair them to the boxes once your order arrives. We used HFGroup to create the KASEboxes, as they’re known. We didn’t need titles on our boxes, so the numbering was very important to us, but feel free to choose your own adventure!
6. Draw straws among your two-person team to determine who is responsible for measuring that day. The other person will be shuttling items back and forth between the shelves and the workstation—mumbling “scuse me” because there’s 2 feet of narrow space to navigate through. They will also create book flags and prep items for measurement.
7. We do not recommend working on a table that is too low. Measuring heavy books at kitchen table height is painful. Also make sure you have great lighting because millimeters are very small.
   

   Tom’s spine while measuring a book spine

8. Measure the height, width, and the spine thickness. Take multiple measurements of each dimension and go with the largest one since the items are misshapen.
9. Glance annoyingly at the problematic overhead fluorescent lights. It’s definitely the lights and not your eyes.
10. Record your measurements into a spreadsheet or on paper. You may regret either choice.
11. Finish up for today. Tidy up the mess you’ve made. Don’t be that person.
12. Stick to a weekly “boxing time” schedule.
13. Order too many KASEboxes at once so when they arrive you have a “situation” of boxes to unpack, sort, number, and store.
    

    
14. Back in the basement, acknowledge that these books cannot go into boxes “as is” and need to be vacuumed.
15. Place “clean” books into new KASEboxes… and realize that despite your best efforts, some of the boxes just do not fit snugly and require retrofitting.
16. Gather up archival board, box cutters, cutting mats, and ruler.
17. Drag a table in from the hallway to use as another workspace. That table is too low, so drag a plastic pallet over from the corner, lift the table onto it. Voilà.
18. Realize that you need more and better table space. Purchase an adjustable table for $30.
19. Start making those boxes perfect.
20. Place all the things into all the boxes.
21. Continue this for a few months.
22. Marvel at the beauty of your work!