|
|
The William Ready Division of |
| Archives and Research Collections |
Preservation The Preservation Department ensures the physical
integrity and well-being of the collections. Environmental monitoring, staff
education, stabilizing and restorative treatments, are the main tools. Our
primary challenge is to retain the historical character of an artifact,
while at the same time making it sound for researchers' use. A recent
project undertaken for the Lloyd Reed Maps Collection was the stabilization
of Second World War pilot navigation maps printed on silk. The conservators
are currently working on a pre-1500 antiphonal used in the Roman Catholic
service and apparently of Spanish origin: a large folio of vellum leaves,
red and black inks, and illuminated letters.
Cooperative Preservation Project The Department has operated a Cooperative Preservation
Project for the past sixteen years. Through this Project many hundreds
of books and other artifacts have been restored for Ontario university
libraries and other cultural institution members. Recent major projects
include the treatment of a fifteenth-century Koran owned by York
University. The original verdigris pigment of the text block had
reacted with the environment and eaten through the paper, necessitating
a repair with hand-tinted gampi tissue. The traditional
Islamic leather binding, which features a pentagonal envelope flap, was
also repaired and rebacked. Another project, completed for Guelph
University, involved twelve British charters dating from the fourteenth
to sixteenth centuries, which were humidified, flattened, and placed in
specially made boxes. Waterloo University has also benefited from
the Co-op Project: McMaster conservators dismantled a year's run of the
nineteenth-century newspaper The Berliner and housed it
in newspaper boxes. For further information about the services offered
through the Co-op Project, contact Audrie
Schell. Note: The Cooperative Preservation Project has been suspended
indefinitely.
|
|
Contact:
archives@mcmaster.ca
|