Hello from the Conservation Lab!

[Erin Secord]

Hello / Salut RASI 2012 scholars!

I'm writing on behalf of my fellow Conservators at the Canada Science and Technology Museum - Kevin, Sue, Tony and Patricia. We'll be helping Bryan and Sharon put on a great week of hands-on artifact investigation. Much of the Institute will be held in building 2495 - which is widely known as the most fun place on the CSTM campus.  It's a huge warehouse of computers, cars, bicycles, trains, lab space - and oh yeah, the five of us.

Part of our contribution to the Institute is to help you develop judgement that will allow you to care for your own sensitive resources. These may be delicate books, old photographs, newspapers or artifacts in your collection. While we wish we could spend the whole week discussing book-binding, paint consolidation, padded foam supports, alloy identification and storage best practices, Bryan and Sharon have wisely held us back so you can spend most of your time with the artifacts. 

A great - but not at all assigned - reading list for preservation issues are the CCI notes available at http://www.cci-icc.gc.ca/publications/notes/index-eng.aspx I hope you think about the preservation and stability issues of your historical material - whether it be sorting out a huge pile of informative correspondence, a leaky basement storage space, broken bits or sticky photo albums. You can send me an email if you have material preservation questions at ese...@technomuses.ca, or bring them up during the week of RASI. If we don't have a good answer for you, we can find someone who will have a good answer. You can also get in touch with me if you have questions about what-where-when-how to have a great visit in Ottawa. I'm not a travel agent but I'm sure I can point you in the right direction.

You can check out some of our lab activities and recently treated artifacts on the interwebs at Twitter: @SciTechPreserv and Pinterest at Canada Science and Technology Museum Collection.

Take care and see you in August!

Erin Secord
Conservator
Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation
613-991-3061
ESe...@technomuses.ca