December 4, 2019 (Wednesday), 9:00-2:30pm:

Hours completed: 5

Total hours completed: 55

In the morning, I continued work on the oral history transcript of the Vietnam photography series. I was able to pull up the slides Fr. Doll was referencing and follow along with the visuals as I went through the audio, which I think greatly contributed to the quality of the transcript. He was mentioning an ornate bridge that if I had just had the audio, I would not have focused on, but having the visual in front of me, I was able to identify by name. I will have to make this practice more routine when I do transcriptions of visuals, when possible, since I think it will help provide some additional information that makes the transcript richer. (1 hour)

Later, Dave and I learned that a professor who was doing a presentation on the Saint John’s Bible at the formal exhibit at the Joslyn Art Museum (a display of the original vellum pages, not the facsimile that Creighton has on loan) had requested some reference photos of the facsimile pages for her presentation. Therefore, I assisted Greg, the department’s photographer, to capture some high quality photos of the pages in the department’s studio. Some of the trickiest elements about the project included the book’s use of gold and platinum leaf throughout the illuminations. It can be really difficult to capture the gold and silver colors in a “glow” while also still getting a straight-on shot of the pages, i.e. not distorted by angles. Greg explained that reflective materials like gold leaf have a “black” reflection and a “white” reflection, where they look dark and flat at one angle and bright and reflective at another angle. We were able to position the camera and lights adequately that he was able to capture the gold leaf in a “white” reflection. (1 hour).

Now that Jon and I had agreed that the layout of the SJC exhibit was final, I drew a map of the items in their selected locations, listing their names and numbers, so that we could remove the tags. (1.5 hours)

While it's not the most artistic of renderings, the guide should hopefully help workers identify and match the removable item tags to the items when it is time to take down the exhibit.

Last, I received some instruction from the student worker Olivia on how to make phase boxes for the severely deteriorated rare books in the Rare Books Room. We used acid-free cardboard and acid-free twill tape to hold the boxes together. An important aspect of the boxes was that no adhesive was used that could migrate or off-gas, thus the boxes are made in two separate sections that are not glued or fastened in any way apart from the twill tape tying the box together. After the instruction, I made two boxes on my own (1.5 hours).