Conversations with Change Makers: Looking at Housing Design & Microclimate Impacts

[sighs] On behalf of the American Institute for Conservation Sustainability Committee, thanks for joining us. This is our 11th episode of our conversations with changemakers series in which we're addressing energy use and the environmental impact of the buildings where cultural heritage is stored, exhibited, and studied. I'm Yadin Loro Rochett and I'm excited to introduce our two guests today to discuss housing designs and their impacts in creating both access and microclimates. Fellow AIC committee member Lindseay Williams is overseeing the chat and AIC staff member Christy Kaine is managing the Zoom platform and it's thanks to her that we are now able to convene. Thank you so much Christie for managing that bit of an emergency there that we've never encountered before. So before we get started, we have some uh general housekeeping rules. One is please enter questions in the Q&A, not in the chat as they might get lost in there. Feel free to comment on questions and upvote any that are important to you. And please don't raise your hand because I may not be able to see you. Um if we do run out of time for questions, uh we will be getting to the answers um after the webinar. So be, you know, make sure to post them um in the chat and we will then get back uh to you through our wiki page and uh the recording description. Captioning is enabled and yes, we are recording this event and the video will be posted on the AIC FAIC YouTube channel within the next few weeks and Lindsay will add a link to the playlist of the episodes that we've had so far in the chat. All right, now for the introductions. Stephanie Gowler is the book and paper conservator for the Northwestern University Libraries. She holds a certificate for advanced [clears throat] study in conservation from the University of Texas at Austin, a master of library and information science and a certificate in book arts from the University of Iowa and a BA in English literature from Earlm College. Stephanie has worked in conservation at a wide range of cultural heritage institutions including the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana State Library, the Harry Ransom Research Center, Bethany Theological Seminary, and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Film Archive. She is a professional member of AIC. Angie Ivara Mcgru is the preventive conservator at the Cancer Arts Center, Stanford University. Angie is an object conservator who has worked on two move projects of Native American materials. First for the National Museums of the American Indian Smithsonian Institutions collections when they moved from the Bronx to Sutland, Maryland. later for the Southwest Museum of the American Indian which is now part of the Autri National Center both within Los Angeles. In these moves, she designed and constructed travel and storage housings and she continues this kind of work as part of her duties at the counter arts center and she's also a professional member of AIC. So without further ado, let's go on to Stephanie's presentation. Okay. Can everyone see my screen and hear me? >> Yes. >> Great. Okay. Thanks, Aden. Um, let me move this. Thanks for everyone's patience this morning. Um, and thank you so much to the sustainability committee for inviting me to participate today. Um, I also want to thank my colleagues here at the preservation department at Northwestern. Uh, we work very collaboratively and so my presentation is really highlighting all of our collective efforts um to care for library collections. So my plan is just to provide a brief overview of our collections and our approach to housing. Um, showcase just a range of specific housing solutions we've come up with recently. Um, and then touch on uh microclimates and sustainability efforts. I'm speaking today from the Northwestern University campus in Evston, Illinois. Northwestern's uh sits on the traditional homelands of the people of the Council of Three Fires, the Ajiway, Pawatami, and Ottawa, as well as the Monomin, Miami, and Ho Chunk nations. Indigenous people are the original stewards of the land that Northwestern occupies. and the indigenous people today um are leaders in the sustainability movement through activism, research and the sharing of traditional ecological knowledge. Like any large university library, Northwestern is home to a wide range of collections. We have large circulating collections which of course include books um but also audiovisisual and electronic resources and we have a huge range of distinctive and special collections. Um, again, of course, these include rare books and manuscripts, but we also have objects, textiles, paintings, photographs, ephemera, and artworks. Um, you name it, we probably have at least one somewhere in the collection. Most of our collections are stored in the three buildings pictured here. Um, we have a 1933 uh, Daring Library there at the bottom. A [clears throat] 1970s building is our main university library. um in the top right corner of the slide. And both of these are in the center of our um Evston campus, which is located just north of Chicago, right on the shores of Lake Michigan. We also have an underground storage space on campus um where some archival collections are stored. And then we also have an off-site highdensity storage facility um located there in the bottom right of the slide. Um, and the Oakrove facility is about an hour's drive north of campus. Um, we currently have 11 full-time staff um, and a handful of student workers in our library preservation department. And this is just a list of most, uh, but not all of what we do. Um, we are a busy department. And if you're interested in seeing some of um some of the stuff we do, I think Lindsay is going to drop links to our um Instagram and our blog post. Um but today, of course, we're going to talk about this particular item, housing collections. So, I thought it might be useful to briefly just situate ourselves in thinking about why we're housing collections. Um kind of what our mindset and rationale is for what we're doing here. Um, of course, the theme today is thinking about how housings can protect objects and buffer the environment as well as make them more easily accessible to researchers or any users. Um, and I think it's also useful to consider how housings can protect us from hazardous materials. Um, they can help prevent loss and keep associated materials together like multi-piece items. Um, and they also communicate to our users um, that we are caring for our collections. Um, I think Lindsay is going to also include a link here to an article on the Stash website which is a overall a great resource related to housings. Um, but our chief conservator Susan Russ and I a few years ago wrote um, kind of a a overview of our kind of housing protocols here at Northwestern. Okay, so let's start looking at some housings. um for our circulating collections. Uh we're preparing materials for the open stacks. Um and so we obviously don't have control over the environment that these materials are going into when students check them out of the building, right? They might be taking them to their dorm room. They might be taking them to the beach. Um we can't really control the environment they're going into, but we can make sure that they are less likely to get lost on the shelf here in the building. and we can add that protective layer of buffering um materials for when they leave. So, just a couple of examples here on the left. Um we have a lot of pamphlets in the collection that get sewn into um pamphlet binders, some of which have these kind of clear plastic covers, but many of them are just um board covers. We also tend to keep dust jackets on our books. So, we use um polyethylene Cibbri covers pictured on the right here. Um, and we also make for larger art books, handmade polyester dust jackets. Um, so like I said, one of the primary goals of housing our collections is to make something big enough so that they don't get lost in the stacks. Um, we do have a minimum standard size, roughly 5 1/2 by 7 1/2 in, and anything smaller than that is going to go into a housing of that size and then get retrofit. Um so for these we um this is just an example of four flap wrappers. We'll buy these commercially available ones in that smallest size and then retrofit them using scraps of foam or corrugated board. Um and you'll hear a lot as I'm talking about our use of scraps. It's one of our kind of big sustainability efforts in the lab. um as and we find it especially useful in all kinds of housing applications um to use our waste materials, scrap materials. Um this is just an illustration from our lab instruction manual um which serves as kind of a training guide um for especially for our student workers and as as well as documentation of some of our standard procedures and materials. And I just wanted to point out here the illustration on the right shows just the variety of combinations of scraps that we use um or can use for retrofitting depending on the thickness of the book. Um I'll also note that we cover the exposed corrugated edges with um either Tyveck or paper to prevent um abrasion on the object. Um, we all order corrugated clamshell boxes, case boxes from the binder, um, from the HF group. And, um, this is just another example of a way that we retrofit those. And as you can see, this book is very small. Um, it fits better. It's less likely to get lost on the shelf here on the right. And this is these are just kind of tubes of 20 point board to fill in that excess space. for special collections. Um we individual items um books receive very similar treatment to those that I just showed you. Um [clears throat] we also um on the right here I'll just say this is a retrofit again of a case box for um using uh cellopoam to create these little sockets um for the different pieces. We have a lot of collections related to Fluxus artists which always pose um interesting housing challenges and you'll see some more John Cage related materials in a few slides but this allows this particular piece to be shelved just like a book would be shelved. Um on the left in honor of our [clears throat] current um World Cup excitement uh this is a box of Vuvu Zelas that are in our Herskovitz Library of African Studies collection. um related to the 2010 World Cup that was held in South Africa. Um the Herskitz library has a lot of very objecy collections that are used very frequently in classes um or in pop-up exhibits and for other events on campus. So we like to create housings for them um that require very minimal handling, minimal um need to sort of unpack um objects. So, these are stored in a litted box. And as you can see, you can just take the lid off and look at this particular collection of objects. Um, they're just resting on these corrugated and foam um little rests, but there's no other material that um that needs to be removed. Okay. So, this is an example. Um, and it's in addition to wanting to make everything standard sizes, um, we also try to make things into rectangles, right? Because they're easier to store that way. Um, this is a wedge shaped book that hasn't this attached metal chain. And I wanted to show um, this example because even though this is not a parchment book, these type of wedge restraints are really useful for parchment or vellum um, vellum covered books that can be very reactive to the environment, right? they're very um they have a tendency to kind of become more wedge-like and spllay out in higher humidity. So, this sort of restraint box can be um very helpful. But in this case, we've got this uh kind of socket for the chain that protects the lever the leather cover of the book from coming into contact with the metal. And it also alerts the the user as soon as they open the box that there is a chain attached to the book. um it's not going to get lost or kind of bumping around in there. So, we have many uh manuscript and archival collections that are mostly paper but have just a few three-dimensional items interspersed and whenever possible we try to keep uh these in sequence rather than separating them out. Um so these are just two examples. Again, we have a the John J the John Cage correspondence files um are again mostly paper, but on the left here is a note to John Cage from the artist Nanjene Pike written on a petri dish. Um and so that's in this padded folder that can then be filed in a document case. Similar idea here on the right. Another piece of male art. Um sent to John Cage. Um care of Morris Cunningham by the artist Albert Fine who we just saw a few minutes ago. Um padded folders so that all the materials are visible and then can be easily um filed in the document box. This is another housing solution we use frequently in the lab. our colleague um Laura came up with this and it's really useful for small collections of um photographs that are associated with each other or album pages um things that may have been previously bound and are not anymore that are likely to be viewed frequently. So it's really a variation on a postbinding. Um, so in this example, these are tickets from the Chicago World's Fair that were um in an album that had the binding was met gone. And so the pages are encapsulated in polyester film uh sewn together with these little mattboard stubs and then bound in just a simple binder board um cover. This item was called up by a researcher just a couple weeks ago in the reading room. And this housing makes it very easy and safe to view um this collection and again prevents loss of those associated and attached uh items. We frequently use commercially available three- ring binder boxes for archival collections of small objects or printed ephemera. And these are especially useful for collections of political memorabilia. Um, so on the right here is a large collection of buttons that are housed in sleeves um that are I think originally intended for baseball cards. We keep a wide variety of these different photo and memorabilia sleeves on hand um with various sized openings and that we can kind of mix and match in a three- ring binder box. Um we can also modify the openings using our ultrasonic welder. Um so these buttons are attached to um scraps of 20 point card. Um and on the left here are just some other examples of different sorts of objects attached to either a mattboard backing. We can use a foam backing um and use either uh polyethylene strapping or thread. um again kind of whatever makes sense for the object to attach them to the to the pages. So, like I mentioned earlier, we have many collections of objects, especially in the Herskovitz library and in our transportation library um and in some of those Flexus art uh archival collections. And so one solution that we've come up with for those large collections of objects that allows them to be safe safely stored and then easily kind of accessed um as a whole collection and so that like users can really kind of see and get the scope of the collection with minimal handling of each individual object. Are these corrugated board trays that then get stacked inside a banker's box. Um, again, especially useful for collections that get pulled a lot for classes or other sort of popup exhibits and tours. Um, so we use either one layer of blue board or if we need something more rigid like a double wall or even a a wave mount, extremely rigid board. And then, um, we can tie or sew things to the trays. On the left, these are beaded objects that are sewn to sheets of Vivebec with um like a monoilament film thread. And then on the right um and then the foam corners are what allow them to be stacked in the box. And then on the right we can also use corrugated corners um for stacking. And then objects can be tied to the board or we can make little sockets again out of board corners. Um, and one recent blog post that our um, my colleague Nicole wrote that I think Lindsay is going to link here is related to all of the creative ways in which we use and make corners for our housings. It's kind of a fun one. Um, we have a large collection of these uh, beaded bags that contain arsenic and lead. We tested with our portable XRF. Um and so we wanted to create a housing that protected them but also protected us. Um and so these are in again a different another version of padded folders that are being stored in flat litted boxes and each of the bags is then kind of folded into these um muslin sleeves um which is safe and protective for the bag. It also protects our hands. that allowed us as we were creating the housings to kind of move the bags in and out without touching them um and without constantly having to change gloves. Um and the the textile here al also is nice because it catches any debris or that might fall off the flaking um beads. I also wanted to include here in the slide this is we do a lot of picture labels on our housings um so that it's easy to know what's in the box without opening it um or in the folder. And in this case, we also have um standardized [clears throat] hazard uh labels for um various materials. Um this is a uh box and I know Angie is going to talk more about about housings with um viewing windows. This is an example. We have this movie clapboard from the Princess Diaries 2. Gary, director Gary Marshall is a Northwestern alum. Um, and so this the dry erase marker is really fryable um, and erasable of course. And so I created this uh, a padded folder with this Vivec window so that the object does not have to be removed at all from the housing to be able to see it. Um, and then also this is like a little lifting tab. So if it needed to be removed, it could be. Um, I'm going to move right ahead. um not talk about this one too much except to um just point out these are um paintings on Micah that are housed on a transparent um sheet of polyester film. But I want to go ahead because I know we're a little short on time um just to say to move into microclimates and sustainability. So we haven't done any formal experiments here related to microclimates in our standard housings. Um, but I roped my colleague Julie, who manages our environmental monitoring program, into doing a little mini experiment with me this past month. So, I put two of our um we put two data loggers in boxes. So, I've got this one packed here with some corrugated board and paper and this one with ethophone just to kind of mimic um those other buffering materials. And then I placed these in two of our storage spaces with the worst environments to see if I could get some dramatic results. and I left them for the month of June. Um, just as a reminder, just to kind of let people know, we are located north of Chicago, right on the coast of Lake Michigan. Um, and that proximity to the water does impact kind of temperatures, humidity, precipitation, wind in the area. That's kind of the climate in which we are um existing and storing materials here. And I've just these are kind of our average temperatures. Of course, last week it was or you know 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but um that's an average there. So, the first storage space that um I wanted to look at is located in our main library, the 1970s building in a room that was not originally intended for collection storage. So, on an exterior wall with a covered window. And I think anyone who works in libraries or any buildings will be familiar with the idea that as collections grow, we end up using spaces that were never intended for collection storage. um if not permanently then at least temporarily in this space. There are collections here. Most of them are already in housings and they are being prepared for our much more tightly controlled environment at the off-site facility. Um but I just I think it's worth noting here this is from um conditions from last June. I we didn't have the data from this June yet when I put these slides together. So it's I'm not quite comparing apples to apples here, but it's conditions are close similar enough. Um but the big difference here that I just want to point out is that you see a lot of fluctuation um in the relative humidity chart here at the on the left in the in the room and the line is much more stable within that buffered housing on the right there. Um similarly in another storage space. This is a an area in our underground storage facility on campus. Um everything in this space is in a box right now. Um, and luckily because as you'll see, this is also um one of our less desirable storage areas, we do have a lot of good good environmental conditions on um for our collections, but this one you can see there's a lot of fluctuation um especially here in the temperature. Um and so it was interesting to me to note just how stable that temperature line is in that buffered housing. Um, again, this is quick, very unscientific, um, not an exact comparison, but I think the steadiness of those lines and both temperature and relative humidity is a really good indication that buffering um, of those extreme conditions is happening. Quick word about sustainability before I wrap up. Um, in 2023, our conservation lab was officially designated a green lab on campus. Um, thanks primarily to our technicians, Lindsay, who is on this call, and Nicole for leading this effort. Um, and Lindsay is going to drop links to the sustain in use site and the green lab site. Um, which includes, I just wanted to point this out, a PDF to the green lab certification guide. And I think this is a useful checklist for any any of you in any lab or space to go through and see if there are changes that you could make, see what you're already doing well um in sustainability efforts. Um these are kind of the the five uh broad categories that they're looking at um through that program here on campus. Um so just a you know highlight a few things that we do. We have a lot of stickers that remind us to turn off lights to close our fume hood sash. um to reduce our energy usage. I've mentioned many times that we love to use scraps in all sorts of housing applications. Um this is our one of our board scrap drawers. Um these are kind of a a reject pile of case boxes that might have not quite fit the their intended object exactly. Um but we often find uh reuse for those. And um I will point out that in addition to regular paper on board recycling, we do recycle plastics. So we're able to recycle our Tyveck scraps um through Dupant and then um other plastic film like the Cibbri cover scraps um polyester film, myar things like that. Um we recycle through the Terraycycles program. Okay. And then just a final link uh list of resources here. I think most of these have already been dropped in the chat and I'm happy to share this list with anyone afterwards. Um, but I just want to say thank you all so much especially to my colleagues. Again, this is all very um a big collaborative effort in doing all this work and putting this uh presentation together. So, I want to thank all of them and I want to thank this uh sustainability committee and that's my email there. Folks can reach out. Thanks so much. And let me see if I can stop my share. >> And you did. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Stephanie. That was incredible. Um, I had to look up Flexus artists because I had no idea who they were. I mean, now I know who they are. So, John Cage inspired everybody if you don't know. Um, and so before I have because of course I have a ton of questions for you, but we're going to um go to Angie first and have her present and then we'll take questions after. But please put your questions in the Q&A um and Angie and Stephanie will be able to respond post presentation. >> You have um There you are. >> Okay, >> we are ready. Yes, >> can you see this? >> We can see Yeah, your normal view, not the slideshow view yet. Um yes, perfect. Very good. >> Okay. Thank you, Yadine. Um, today I'm going to talk about the rehousing we do here at the Caner Arts Center, a project that was formally started in 2013 by our former curator for Africa and the Americas, Anna Solen, to improve access to her collections. We recognize that Stanford sits on the ancestral land of the Muqua Alomi tribe. This land is of great importance to the Aloney people and has been since time memorial. Consistent with our values of community and diversity, we have a responsibility to acknowledge, honor, and make visible the university's relationship to native peoples. Our formal rehousing initiative came about to address the art and objects that have been contained in boxes that were packed quickly when the building and collections were evacuated following the 1989 LMA Prieta quake that kept the museum closed for 10 years. We started with Anna's particular collections and after that we were successful in securing a regular budget for rehousing that allowed us to move on to other parts of the collection as you see with the criate pottery here. At the moment rehousing priorities focus on new acquisitions, art and objects coming off display and curatorial requests. For the last few years, I've been working on a book of box templates, um, box template worksheets to ensure continuity and to help with rehousing decision making. By far, the most useful tool I have is the Fletcher wall mounted board cutter. It makes everything easier. It is very accurate. It also comes with cutting and scoring heads for plexi and glass. The preps have mounted mine on a movable frame. For cutting, I do use the 2 by3 ft grided cutting mats, but additionally, all of our workts have this quarter inch thick cutting mat that is the full size of the table. These come in a lot of sizes and they can be trimmed and finished with a table saw and router. There are many places that sell these. U My Binding is the vendor that we use. Uh and then over the top of the tables, we have foam and Tyveet covers for regular object viewing and handling. I like to use these clear grided quilting rollers that come from craft and supply stores. I use a lot of punches. Here are some that I use and some suppliers I like, but I know there are a lot of good companies out there. Uh the punch on the bottom left, this the brand name is CS Osborne. They're good. The round punch next to it comes from McMaster car. You can buy these in multi-size sets. Um, wherever you get them, I would say stay away from the cheap ones because they take a lot of abuse and they tend not to be as sharp, meaning you have to hit them harder. I use a 2 lb sledge with a wood block. My table is sturdy enough to do this on as long as there's no objects up there because of vibration, but if I need more room, I do it on the floor. For uh for foam, we have a variety of punches that are made from EMT electrical conduit or cans. The edges are sharpened on the grinder. This takes a little while to do, so it'll need to be cooled off in water occasionally. Uh and then it's finished with a file, pulling outward with a slight rotation around the inside edge of the opening. When we began our rehousing project, we started by addressing small items and collections that could be easily stored in trays or baggies with minimum support. We had trays and clear lids custom made for us by Gaylord in half and quarter drawer sizes. Within those larger trays, we figured out small trays or small pallets that would also fit modularly. We decided it was okay to sometimes lose a little space in order to have the ability to go back and sort by object type and culture. And so here's an example of a page I made the key for making interior trays. After a while, I started adding little handhold to the trays to make it easier to get one item out at a time. Okay, so I talked about making templates. To the left is an example of a template that I'm still editing. All the worksheets have a place for the catalog number or description and a fraction key to prevent math mistakes. Anytime I'm doing a box that has non-symmetrical instructions, I'll use a pencil to mark up the board after cutting it. So, the first thing I would do on this one is use a pencil to write top and bottom and then mark where the tab closure will be. And um this is my instruction page for this box. And no matter how many times I make one of these boxes, I use the instructions and then I edit them anytime I have an opportunity. Okay. Um like this one on the cardboard, I would make some pencil marks in the middle and on the right to show where the board will be cut out and where the score lines will move. When it makes sense, we like to have a window in the box. Um, it's part of the accessibility, you know, invisibility as Stephanie was saying with the and and a nice label. So, to cut the myar for the window, there's a lot of different ways to do this. Like on the left, I might use the window cutout uh on top of the myar and use the grided mat to cut half inch all the way around. or on the right side, I would um like put the the myar on top of the cutout window, draw around it with a Sharpie. And after cutting, I would remove any remaining ink with an alcohol wipe. Before you put your myar down, make sure you vacuum or wipe the surface because everything sticks to it. And if you get some strands of hot glue on the myar, let it cool. See if you can pull it off with tweezers. any smeared glue. You might be able to get it off or at least reduce it with an alcohol wipe. It will blanch the surface, but then you can buff it out with a Kim wipe. Okay. So, you can cut a square window or you can make it a little fancier by making a rounded window. And I use the punches to do that. That's what the these look like. Um, you do the corners first and then connect them with a straight line. The punch on the right comes from a leather supply catalog, and this is used for finishing the ends of straps or belts. This um process takes a little more time, but I like it better because you avoid overcutting when you're making a a corner with a a box cutter knife. When I'm ready to take the window down with double stick tape, I put the cutout back in and leave it in until the box is done to keep the window clean. Okay, these type of boxes, I don't know what they should be called. I call them shallow boxes because it's a shallow box with a deep lid. This is when an object is easily handled and really it just needs a simple box and lid, but the shorter side makes it easier to get your hands inside. Um, the footprint is the same for both the box and the lid. So after I cut the pieces and before scoring the before creasing the score lines, I put them side to side, length to length and width to width to make sure they line up. If they don't line up, it won't work. So this is an example of a worksheet that I'm still working on because it needs to be simplified. And here's another example of a shallow box where I cut an extra window into the wall. And then here's another example. This is the same thing, but because the lid is so tall, I wanted um more of a ledge. So, I trimmed back the wall to improve the access. And this one, I hand trimmed it. But this is the same thing. And I did a cutout using a punch so that it looks clean. And here's another way of using punches for making compartments in vela or using a punch to as a lifting aid on a tray cover. For small items in baggies, we stand them up in little file boxes. And this is when the Fletcher board cutter is really good um for cutting multiple slab pieces. I usually cut the slat pieces 1/2 in or 3/4 in wide. After gluing them down on the board, um I cut it down the center with the box cutter or on the Fletcher. And then I line the sides up so they match the grooves. um peeling paper from the board. I don't know why it took me so long to figure out how to do this, but it is really easy. You just put the point of the bone folder or a spatula into the corugation and it detaches pretty easily. So then you can use that paper for a lot of things like this big box. This is a travel box for a very large basket. Inside there are marvel seal covered wood supports that have been screwed into the box corners. The screws were covered to distinguish them from the screws that are used to secure the lid. So there's no mistaking what is meant to be removed to open the box. I keep a lot of scrapboard around, maybe for taking notes, but I also use the pieces maybe for uh making a paintbrush to spread jade instead of um you know a normal paintbrush and needing water at my workstation. You can also take a stack of them and use them to um find the angles for cutting foam wedges. For our most common box instructions, I had rubber stamps made that are used with archival quality ink pads. Um my vendor is Simon Stamps. I've used them for more than 20 years, but I know there's a lot of good companies out there. You probably have some good local vendors. They're all going to have fonts to choose from, but I had a particular look that I wanted. So, I wrote it out like this on the right. I used Illustrator to edit the text, and then I saved that as a JPEG and uploaded it as an image. On the bottom left, you can see what my order would look like. You can buy clear labeling sleeves and you can also sew myar onto your Tyveck dust cover with the sewing machine. They're both slippery. So, I tape it down and sew on the inside. Okay. So, now I'm going to talk about um a learning progression I had after getting a new tool. So, I was making these no glue folded boxes and someone told me I should get an oblong punch. I never heard of this. These are found in leather tool cataloges. They are used for making saddles or purses, things that have straps. And then it made it so easy that I started making the boxes so that one or both of the sides folds down. And so that's kind of what that looks like normal on the left side. And then on the right, you can see how you would trim it to have the side fold down. And then I thought, well, now since I have the punch, maybe I can use slot and tab for just doing a regular drop front box like this. or even fully open. Um, like this one. No, no glue. And this works and it's it's fine, but there's a lot of matching things up. And if even one part of this isn't accurate, it is hard to fix. So, I decided the slot and tab idea was more important than the limitations of using the punch. And I can make the slots any size. So, I just started making them as large as I wanted, cutting out the slot by hand with a box cutter. And then I remembered that I could still use the punch like I do with a rounded window just by placing the punch at either end and connecting them. And now it looks neatly finished. Okay, so that drop down works great, but any drop down you have to consider how much room that piece is going to need for the object to slide out. This ceramic is safer with a drop front wall, but it is taller than I would prefer. So, for that, I combined the drop front box with a shallow box, and I made the side with both a ledge and the tabs. And here's some more views of that. There's a removable insert to provide support to the front of the ceramic when the box is closed. And here's another example of tab and slot. This is a cover for the structure our prep made for our Ruthasawa sculpture. It's very large. So instead of making a one piece sleeve that would be lifted on or off, it is instead three sides with one fully detachable side that tabs in. We wanted to store these three bowls all together, but have them individually accessible. There was a space in storage we hoped the box would fit into. So to make them fit that space, I angled the trays. They also become self-placing when returned to the box. And here's what they look like flat. You only need to figure out the angle one time. And that's when the grided rollers come in handy again because quilting rollers have 30, 60, and 45° angles printed on them. So, here's a picture of that process. And you can see how I trim the tabs. I glue them to the outside. This is um this kind of sequence of instructions I've included in the handouts. Okay. So, when I was scoring the lid for this, I accidentally cut part cut through part of the front. So, instead of redoing the whole thing, I peeled some paper. I rounded the corners to blend it in. And I used my cardboard scrap paintbrush to glue it on with jade. And then another mistake. So, when I made this, I made this whole box in the lid before accounting for how much taller it would get after I made the interior support. So, as we did with the shallow box, it has the ledge on the outside. This is the same idea, but the ledge is on the inside to lift the to lift it up. Okay, this template seems to work okay, and I've also included this in the handouts. If you have a lid that fits, but it's a little too tight to remove safely, you can see about easing the fit by rubbing a bone folder along the outside edge of the box and the inside edge of the lid. Most of the boxes um I'm showing you are meant primarily for storage. Some are suitable for travel, some can be modified for travel, but the work is to provide levels of accessibility and safe handling with as little direct contact as possible. We are a research institution and we have a very active schedule of visiting scholars and class requests for object viewing. Additionally, our donors like to come visit with guests and when their gifts look nice, they notice and they appreciate it. We have also been thinking about the environmental benefits of object housings. Our HVAC system is ready for replacement. It is so old the last we built involved scouring the world for parts. We've been told due to the age of the building, there is not a system that by itself would keep us perfectly in our preferred range. And our university district manager has urged us to think of what will replace it as a box within a box. This makes perfect sense. For many years, we've been monitoring the interior of a cylinder box that houses our FM paintings. This is a two-month snapshot. You can see the RH is flattened out. The locker is just sitting inside that box. This is very encouraging as we have a lot of art in cylinder boxes. Um, please feel free to contact me. In the handouts, I've included a template for a basic box and lid for beginners. I'm happy to talk to any of you further or come you know, if you're here, come visit and I can show you boxes in person. Thank you so much. So, >> thank you, Angie, and thank you, Stephanie. Really incredible. Uh, I don't know what's more beautiful, the templates or the boxes themselves. Really, really stunning. And if you have any questions, please put them in the Q&A. Lindsay, as far as I can see, I don't see any listed yet, but I want to make sure that I'm not missing something. Um, so I I'll start off with a question just to get the ball rolling. And um, just FYI, everyone, since we had such a terrible uh delay, I think we can just continue until 7:15 for those that can Sorry, it's 15 after the hour. I'm I'm in Germany right now, so I'm off. Um, oh, you don't see a Q&A on your view, Brian? All right, then. just put questions in the chat if it's easier because at this point um you can we'll be able to see everything. Um so my question actually was for Stephanie on the Tyvec recycling because um I had looked into that a while ago in terms of trying to find out who to talk to there and how the program works. Can you go briefly um talk about that a little bit? >> Yeah. Well, I can't say much other than that um our technician Nicole really manages that though. Lindsay, do you know I might um Lindsay might be able to jump in on the specifics of how that works. Um so I don't I don't know I don't know the details >> the details. Okay. Well, it's just great to know that it actually does exist because when I had >> Yeah. when I had tried reaching out to Dupont, it was that there were names associated with the recycling program and nobody ever got back to me. So, great to know. And then we'll we'll find the details. >> Yeah, I know there's an address that that they send it to. Um, but again, I don't Lindsay might actually be able to answer that at the moment, but it does it is >> Yeah. So, so as far as I know, it is through Deont, but I believe we ship it to a place either in Maryland or Virginia. Um, but I know I've shared it with a few people on the sustainability committee, so I can get the information from Nicole and maybe we can share that when we share this as well. >> Perfect. >> We do have one question in the chat or in the Q&A. >> Uh, the do you have any tips for how to cut unusual shapes into foam? The case for the work by the Flexus artist looked beautiful and we're wondering if you have any special equipment. Well, I might throw this to Lindsay because she was [laughter] four pieces of special equipment yesterday. Um, I mean, we have a variety depending on the type of foam, you know, that that particular foam. Um, the cell cushion is like very easy to cut with, you know, an exa exacto or a little Ulfa knife. Um, I I don't remember who did that particular box, but, you know, it's kind of easy enough to trace to trace on. though we do have um Lindsay can say something about the cutter that we have for um unusual shapes and ethofoam. >> Yeah. So I found a I think it's through a model building kind of supply warehouse. Uh it's called a hot wire cutter. Um but it's specifically for different densities of foam. And I think it goes up to about 3 in of [clears throat] worth of foam to be able to cut through. Um, but the only downside I really think of it is depending on what type of foam you're using, it can get really um smelly just because it's it's actually burning through um the polyethylene or whatever you're using. Um, [clears throat] but it it it cuts through it like butter because it's a hot wire and you only have to kind of change the tension from time to time. Um, but if you've marked out pretty much the shape that you want on the foam, you can then cut through it and make the shape that you want. >> So, it has kind of the curve on it so that you can um carve out threedimensional pieces. >> Yeah. Let me see if I can find a picture of it. But in the meantime, we do have one more question that popped in. Yes. Uh, is anyone using low melt glue guns for adhering foam? Do you want to expand on that a little bit either, Angie or Stephanie in terms of a lowmelt glue gun and its benefits over >> um well those glues? Um I don't remember the last time I've seen a test on them, but they they generally it's a 3M glue. They they have passed every test I've ever seen. Um and be you know it's safer for yeah for for the foam because um it doesn't melt it as much, you know, and and also just like >> when you're using it like on your person, it's still hot, but you're not burning yourself as much >> if you get the glue on you. But yeah, so they're um they're considered um like storage safe. >> And is there a specific brand that you use or >> three? It's the 3M. Um I know that by heart. It's the the orange girl. It has to be a low melt glue gun. And unfortunately, they look very much like the regular hot melt glue gun. So you have to be if you have them both, you have to keep them separate because you'll ruin your low melt, >> right? >> You'll ruin hot melt. Yeah, >> ruin the hot melt if you use low melt >> glue in there. >> Um, that makes sense. And Margaret Guys Mooney has a question too on how the myar pieces are attached to the inside of the paper board windows. >> That's just the 3M double stick tape. >> That 405 or 450. >> Oh, yes. I should I just have this one, too. Yeah, it starts with four. >> It start Yeah. Yeah, I >> I do know it. >> I've used it a lot in the past. So, um, anything else that Anyone else have has a question? Lindsay put in the link to the hot wire cutter on the chat for those who are interested in seeing that. And I interrupted someone. I was going to say I don't see any more questions in the Q&A. So, oh, sorry, just one just popped in now. Uh, as you standardize the boxes for storage, did you run into problems with having to rearrange shelving or losing space in your storage? We did. Um, the shelves moved pretty easily. um we there were cases where the it expanded the you know the space that we needed. For instance, we had a very large collection of um fragments of Coptic textiles that were kind of all stored together, stacked up and now they're in individual trays, which means that they can be shown, they can be um used for classes. So, we were happy to lose that space. On the other hand, we standardized the our textile boxes to fit the full footprint of our shelf shelving uh in two different sizes. So, instead of like we had a bunch of those metal edge boxes that were kind of a little too narrow um hard to get into, but by using the full space and rehousing all of the textiles that way, we actually gained back one and a half bins of storage. That was a very And now everything is accessible because everything's on a slip sheet or um and isn't a drop front box to reduce the handling. We have a lot of Mrs. Stanford's gowns that have shattered silk. So improving the box was important for um you know just for use, >> right? For access. Well, I think that one of the things that really struck me from both of your presentations is that the care and attention to the um design and uh the actual artifacts that you're rehousing is equal to the care and attention that you're giving the materials. um in terms of organizing your materials, in terms of making sure that you have, you know, that you have access to the reuse of of scraps. And I think that's really really inspiring um in terms of, you know, being able to use everything you have and and um and reduce waste, which is great. >> I have a followup, but Angie, you might have mentioned this a little bit already. Can you approximate the percentage of space that you lost or where it came out uh evenly if you gained it elsewhere? And also, do you box everything or is it just select items? >> Um, well, no, we don't box everything. there is we would love to be able to do everything but it it's I mean I'm the only conservator on staff so that is only a fraction of the duties that I have and I don't really have like a like a mentor anybody else who's doing it right now. Every once in a while we'll get a an intern who can do you know like like you saw the little trace with the net. We had an intern do that all summer and it was really nice. Like I don't think it saved us any space but we can see everything now like in in its number. Um I'm sorry what was the the question? Um >> oh just about space saving. >> Yeah space. Well every time we seem to make space we get new stuff. We we have some cur I mean the curators are like we have some really wonderful new items come in and every time they want to get something they're they're so nice. They ask like do we have room for this? And maybe um we do have off-site storage. So I think we're going to have to start thinking about how to prioritize what goes over there. There's there's some space. Um I my boss who just retired I think liked to keep it kind of a secret what space there was available. >> We we won't say anything to anyone else. >> We're not quite overflowing yet, but her request was that they only um acquire things that fit in a shoe box. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's always a constant struggle, right? As >> I mean, in the main though, like that first picture I showed you of the storage that we're trying to recover from from the LMA prieta quake, there's actually I think that if we were able to get into that, we would get a lot of room back because it's a lot of old gray foam and bubble wrap. >> So, there's some really big boxes that don't have a lot of things in them. I think that we would there there would if we could ever get to it or when we get to it, we will be happily surprised at how much space we get back. Well, I think it's a win-win, you know, in terms of more space and buffering um so that you're not having to rely so much on on the building envelope to support all of the the strict requirements. Um so really inspiring. Thank you so much to the two of you for sharing all the work that you've been doing and all the work that your teams have been doing too. So um if there's anything else to add, please do so now. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for your patience for starting off at a you know with a difficulty there with the glitch in the zoom and um we'll see you next time. Thanks so much.