By: Adele Torrance
Ingenium
Behind the scenes: Preparing Ingenium's library and archives for a big move
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
The rare book room with some new boxes.
How do you move a library and archives? Very carefully.
As Ingenium’s archivist, a big part of my role lately has been to prepare for a major move to the Collections Conservation Centre — scheduled for completion later this year. If you live in Ottawa, you may have noticed the construction site right next to the Canada Science and Technology Museum.
Ingenium staff will soon begin moving with two museum collections into the new building. Among the collections to move are the library and archival collections for the Canada Science and Technology Museum and the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum.
So how to go about it? After research into best practices, consultation with and training from our colleagues in the Conservation Services, and some planning, we set to work! Tasks on the intellectual and physical control of our holdings consisted of things like checking inventories, working through backlog to create basic records, and packing items.
The goal for packing so far is to, wherever possible, put material in long-term, archival grade housing before the more temporary pack for the move. For example, we’re putting photographs and negatives into envelopes meant to slow down their chemical degradation over time. We’re taking slides out of plastic sleeves that aren’t stable enough for the long term. We have added removable covers to our rare books that are suffering some wear from being pulled by their spine from the shelf many, many times over the years.
The gallery below shows our progress so far. I’ll give you an update in a few months — as the countdown to Ingenium’s big move continues!
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
Ledgers are being wrapped in buffered paper for protection against dust and from handling over time.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
A temporary work station set up in the library for preparing the rare books.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
Bookends abandoned after the rare books, trade literature, or periodicals they were holding was shifted or packed.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
An order of new boxes, ready to be used.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
New boxes for our holdings of the rare periodical, English Mechanic.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
A look inside a box of issues of English Mechanic. Chemically-buffered tissue paper is placed in between each issue.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
Boxes of film packed in our cold storage unit. Note the different sizes of boxes needed to accommodate the different sizes of film reels. This work was done partially by our archives summer student, Patrick Chisholm.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
Rare trade literature being removed from filing cabinets and packed in boxes.
Photo Credit
Photograph by Sylvie Bertrand, Ingenium librarian.
Library summer student Emilie Montreuil at work in the trade literature room.
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