September 26, 2023
Exploring Library Careers: Conservation
UW Libraries Welcomes New Senior Conservator
Did you know?Each year, Conservation staff repair, bind or make enclosures for an estimated 10,000 items in the UW Libraries. This care helps to preserve, stabilize or restore the usability of book, paper, and photograph materials. See also: |
Are you interested in art, history, science and working in a library or museum? You may want to explore a career in conservation, just like Leith Calcote, the newest member of UW Libraries Conservation Center team.
What is a conservation?
In a library or museum setting, conservation includes all the actions taken to preserve library or museum collections.
What is a conservator?
A conservator has the skills and training to provide conservation support. This includes the treatment or repair of individual library or museum materials. It also includes preventive care or reducing damage to collections through careful handling, storage, emergency planning, and collection management.
Conservators focus on a specific type of material or “specialty” during their training such as books and paper, photographic materials, electronic media, objects, or textiles. Most conservators have a background in studio art, art history, science, or other related fields. This allows them to have a thorough understanding of the materials in their care, the context in which they were made, and their scientific make-up to help prevent deterioration. You can learn more about becoming a conservator from the American Institute for Conservation.
Leith Calcote joined the Conservation Center team as Senior Conservator for Books & Paper on August 28, 2023. They worked most recently as the Collections Conservator at The Newberry Library in Chicago.
Leith’s work focuses primarily on planning and performing complex conservation treatment for rare books. This involves a wide variety of skills to repair and restore delicate and aging materialsin order to preserve as much of the original structure and materials as possible while making the items safe to handle. This requires a knowledge of historical bookbinding techniques and how the original and new components interact chemically.
One of the things that attracted Leith to the UW Libraries was the breadth of collections. “I am excited to work with the diversity of the UW Libraries’ collections from early printed books and manuscripts to modern artist books and everything in between.”
“I am looking forward to introducing students to the conservation field and helping them move towards applying to graduate school,” says Calcote. The summer conservation internship is typically posted in early winter on the UW Library Jobs page.
Photo: Leith conserving a rare music score.
Leith is currently working on mending torn pages in some newly cataloged rare 19th century music scores and reattaching a partially detached board for a popular travel book by author Anne Newport Royall. The book is an interesting example of a temporary binding that ended up being not so temporary. Leith says, “It was common during this period for printers or publishers to sell books in temporary bindings, or without any binding, so the owner could bind it to match other books in their library. These temporary bindings rarely survive so long, making it important to preserve the binding as evidence of practices at that time.”
Leith will also provide support for the Mellon Sustainable Collaborative Conservation Services grant by leading the summer conservation internship program and providing additional planning and support for collections conservation projects as needed.
“I am looking forward to introducing students to the conservation field and helping them move towards applying to graduate school,” says Calcote. The summer conservation internship is typically posted in early winter on the UW Library Jobs page.
Prior to working at The Newberry Library, Leith held professional and intern positions at The Boston Athenaeum, University of Michigan, and Iowa State University. They completed a Master of Arts and Certificate of Advanced Study in Art Conservation at Buffalo State College and a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry at Carleton College. Leith also received a Certificate in Bookbinding from North Bennet Street School in Boston, MA.
To hone their practice, Leith also enjoys creating historical bookbinding structures in their own time. These sometimes evolve into more creative work. One of Leith’s pieces, Araneus liberius, was chosen for the Guild of Book Workers exhibition, WILD/LIFE. This very diminutive piece is a traditional leather binding sewn on raised cords, but the traditional structure is used as a base to create a book in the form of a spider.
Created in 2012 with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and many Friends of the Libraries, the Senior Conservator position has dramatically increased the Libraries capacity to care for the fragile rare books and manuscripts in our special collections by allowing the Libraries to perform more complicated conservation treatments in-house.
Learn more about UW Libraries Preservation and Conservation Work
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