Flood in Florence, 1966: A Fifty-Year Retrospective

Contributors

Morgan Adams is conservator for special collections for the Columbia University Libraries. She has a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA in art history and an advanced certificate in conservation from the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2013). In 2011, she was awarded the James H. Frantz prize for student research. Prior to her current position, she worked in the conservation departments at the Morgan Library and Museum; the New York Academy of Medicine; Bobst Library, New York University; and the University of Michigan.

Cathleen A. Baker, a paper and book conservator and educator for more than forty-five years in England and the United States, is author of numerous articles and books including the award-winning From the Hand to the Machine: Nineteenth-Century American Paper and Mediums: Technologies, Materials, and Conservation (2010). She holds an MA in art history from Syracuse University, and an MFA in book arts and a PhD in communication studies from the University of Alabama. Cathy taught paper conservation for fifteen years in the SUNY graduate program at Cooperstown and in Buffalo, New York. For the 2015 fall semester, she was the Judith Praska Distinguished Visiting Professor in Conservation at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Cathy is conservation librarian emerita at the University of Michigan Library and currently serves on an advisory committee to develop a book and paper conservation graduate specialization within UCLA’s Department of Information Studies. Cathy is also proprietor of The Legacy Press, established in 1997, which specializes in publishing books about the printing, paper, and bookbinding arts.

John Comazzi is associate professor of architecture in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota and was the director of the undergraduate BS degree program (major in architecture) from 2012 to 2015. His areas of research and scholarship focus on architecture photography, mid-century Modern architecture and design, design theory and criticism, design-build, and active learning environments for PK–12 education. He is the author of Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography (Princeton: 2012), which is the first monograph on one of the most prolific and celebrated architecture photographers of the Modern era. He holds a master of architecture and MS in architectural history and theory from the University of Michigan. He taught at the University of Michigan as a lecturer in architecture (1999–2006) before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota in Fall 2006.

Martha O’Hara Conway is director of the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Michigan Library. In this position, which she has held since July 2011, she provides vision, leadership, strategic direction, and administrative oversight for the operations, services, programs, and resources of the Special Collections Research Center. She worked previously for the Newberry Library and at the Yale University Library and the Library of Congress. She has a BA from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied French and Russian, and a MILS from the University of Michigan, and is an active member of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).

Paul Conway has been associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Information since 2006. His research and teaching focus on archival science and the digitization and preservation of cultural heritage resources. His research projects at Michigan have included developing a model of expert user interaction with large collections of digitized photographs, modeling and measuring the quality of large-scale digitization as represented in the HathiTrust Digital Library, and exploring the conceptual roots of e-books in nineteenth-century photographically illustrated books. His prior career includes serving as archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration and as a senior administrator for the libraries at Yale and Duke universities. The American Library Association awarded him the Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award for his contributions to the preservation field. He is a fellow of the Society of American Archivists and holds a PhD from the University of Michigan.

Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa is associate director and head of preservation and conservation at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. She received an endorsement of specialization in administration of preservation programs for libraries and archives from Columbia University’s School of Library Service and has a PhD in American studies and an MLIS from UT–Austin. From 1985 to 1987, she was project archivist at the Johns Hopkins University Peabody Institute. In 1988, she became the first preservation officer for the UT–Austin General Libraries and, in 1996, the first Digital Programs Librarian for the Libraries. Ellen was the founding director of the William and Margaret Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record, a position she held from 2005 to 2009, in the UT–Austin School of Information. From 2005 to 2009, she was president of the Association of North American Graduate Programs in Conservation, she is an affiliated assistant professor with the University of Delaware/Winterthur Program in Art Conservation, and she consults with the art conservation education programs on the library and archives specialization. In 2016, Ellen was awarded the American Library Association’s Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award.

John F. Dean became Cornell University Library’s first conservation and preservation librarian with the establishment of the program in 1985 and served as director for nearly twenty years before retiring in 2003. John’s background includes a six-year apprenticeship in bookbinding in his native England and a few years as a journeyman bookbinder. He was leader of preservation programs at the Newberry Library and Johns Hopkins University, and has two graduate degrees in library science and in liberal arts with a concentration in the history of science. In 2003, John was the recipient of the American Library Association’s Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award for his contributions to the field. John remains passionate about preservation and conservation and has endeavored to help institutions around the world through education, training, and consultancies in developing countries, including Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Viêt Nam, Myanmar, Java, and Cambodia. He created seminal online tutorials for library conservation and preservation in Southeast Asia, Iraq, and the Middle East to give librarians and archivists a set of basic guidelines to inform their preservation efforts. In retirement, John continues to assist local institutions in caring for their book collections.

Beth Doyle is the Leona B. Carpenter senior conservator and head of the conservation services department for the Duke University Libraries. Following an undergraduate arts degree in photography from the University of Dayton, she earned her master’s in library and information science and certificate in library and archives conservation at the University of Texas at Austin. She worked as a book conservator for Harvard University before joining the Duke University Library in 2002. An active blogger on all things library conservation, she has written on topics from edible books to disaster planning to ergonomics for conservation labs.

Bryan Draper is the special collections conservator for the University of Maryland Libraries. His interest in conservation was sparked by the Terry Sanders 1987 film Slow Fires: On the Preservation of the Human Record. His first job in preservation was at the University of Delaware Library as conservation technician. After coordinating aspects of the conservation program at the Library of Virginia, Richmond, he pursued an apprenticeship at the Etherington Conservation Center, North Carolina. In 2007, he assumed the conservator position at Maryland. He has graduate training from Winterthur and a certificate from the Rare Book School.

Jeanne Drewes has been the chief of binding and collections care at the Library of Congress since 2006. After earning a BA in English from the University of Missouri–Kansas City and her MLS from the University of Missouri–Columbia, she spent a year as a Mellon preservation intern at the University of Michigan—and found her career. She has held positions as preservation services manager at Pittsburgh Regional Library Center, head of preservation at Johns Hopkins University’s Milton S. Eisenhower Library, and assistant director for access and preservation at Michigan State University. A person of tireless energy, she has been an active leader, presenter, and writer in the context of many professional organizations, including the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, the American Library Association, and the International Federation of Library Associations. She has fostered the translation of preservation literature into Spanish and worked to extend training opportunities to the people of Cuba. In 2015, she received the American Library Association’s Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award.

Don Etherington has been engaged in bookbinding and conservation professionally for more than sixty years. After extensive training in England, including a year working with conservators Roger Powell and Peter Waters, he established a four-year program in bookbinding and design at Southampton College of Art in 1960. From 1967 to 1969, he was a training consultant to the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, Italy, and trained regional volunteers in book conservation after the 1966 flood. In the 1970s, he served as training officer to the conservation staff of the Library of Congress and, in the 1980s, as the assistant director and chief conservation officer at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. He established and served as the first president of the Etherington Conservation Services, a division of ICI, from 1987 until his retirement in 2001. Since then, in addition to his work as director of the book conservation program at the American Academy of Bookbinding, he engages in an intensive teaching schedule and continues work in private practice. His fine bindings are held in major libraries internationally.

Doris A. Hamburg has been director of preservation programs at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) since 2001, where she oversees preservation of collections across twenty-four facilities nationwide. Following a bachelor’s degree in medieval studies from Mount Holyoke College, a master’s in art history from Columbia University, and an MS and certificate in conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware program, she joined the Library of Congress as a paper conservator. She rose through several positions of increasing responsibility at the Library of Congress, including eight years as the head of the preventive conservation unit, before moving to her current position at NARA. She has presented and published broadly on topics of conservation and preservation management. In 2003, she was called to aid what became a significant project to salvage records documenting Iraq’s Jewish community, which were found by US troops in the flooded ruins of a basement under Saddam Hussein’s intelligence agency in Baghdad.

Megan Holmes is a professor of Italian Renaissance art history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She received an MPhil from the Courtauld Institute of Art and her PhD from Harvard University. Her scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti, the Getty Research Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her scholarly interests include Italian Renaissance social and cultural history, miraculous images and image cults, popular religion, monasticism and the arts, early modern print culture, and iconoclasm. She has published two books, Fra Filippo Lippi the Carmelite Painter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) and The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), the latter receiving the College Art Association’s Charles Rufus Morey Award and the Ace/Mercer Award. She is currently working on a short book on the scratching and marking of Italian panel paintings circa 1250–1550.

Nancy E. Kraft joined the University of Iowa Libraries as the preservation librarian and head of the preservation and conservation department in 2001. Circumstances—including the 2008 flooding of the Iowa River and the Cedar River—rapidly developed her expertise in disaster recovery for cultural heritage. She received the Midwest Archives Conference Presidents’ award the following year for her assistance to local institutions, including the Johnson County Historical Society, the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, and the African American Museum of Iowa, as well as the UI libraries. In addition to teaching in the University of Iowa Center for the Book, she has taught workshops and courses on disaster planning widely across the US and in Europe. She is a member of the American Institute for Conservation Collections Emergency Responders Team. She holds an MLS degree from the University of Iowa.

Julia Miller, educated as a historian, trained in book conservation with Jean Gunner in Pittsburgh. She left her position as a conservator at the University of Michigan Library in 1993 and has since engaged in researching the history of bookbinding. Her widely acclaimed Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook for the Identification and Description of Historical Bindings was published in 2010 by The Legacy Press. Julia has taught and lectured widely on historical book structure both in the US and in Europe. At the University of Michigan, she has curated five exhibits related to the history of the book. More recently she has served as series editor for Suave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding, also published by The Legacy Press, of which volume 3 was released in late September 2016. At present, she is writing a second book with the working title Looking Again at Selected Historical Bindings. She received the Laura Young Award for service from the Guild of Book Workers in 2014.

Carla Q. Montori is the head of the preservation department at the University of Maryland Libraries. In this position, she has managed the transition from a comprehensive preservation program to one focused on the assessment, care, and conservation of special collections and archives held by the Libraries. Her prior positions include preservation projects manager and head of the preservation division at the University of Michigan Library, head of the preservation department at Indiana University Library, Mellon Intern for Preservation Administration, and conservator for general collections at the Yale University Library. She has written about the preservation of library and archival materials and has spoken and led workshops and seminars worldwide.

Sherelyn Ogden recently retired as head of conservation at the Minnesota Historical Society and currently continues her work as a conservator in private practice. Previously director of field services at the Midwest Art Conservation Center (NEDCC) and the director of book conservation at the Northeast Document Conservation Center, she has taught, published, and consulted widely on conservation. Her books Preservation of Library and Archival Materials: A Manual (NEDCC, 1992) and Preservation Planning: Guidelines for Writing a Long-Range Plan (American Association of Museums, 1997), and her numerous advisory leaflets have provided go-to resources for heritage organizations for more than forty years. She originally trained in conservation at the Newberry Library in Chicago. She holds a BA from Bucknell University, an MLS degree from the University of Chicago, and is a fellow of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

Michael F. Suarez, SJ, has served as director of Rare Book School, professor of English, university professor, and honorary curator of special collections at the University of Virginia since 2009. He formerly held a joint appointment as J. A. Kavanaugh Professor of English at Fordham University and as fellow and tutor in English at Campion Hall, Oxford University. He received a DPhil, MSt, and MA/BA from Oxford University, an MTh and MDiv from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and a BA from Bucknell University. He has written widely on various aspects of eighteenth-century English literature, bibliography, and book history and has held research fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Sheila Waters is a renowned calligraphic artist and instructor whose career has been devoted to calligraphic commissions for royalty, museums, libraries, corporations, maps for publishers, and art works for collectors for nearly seventy years. Born in England in 1929, she gained her master’s at the Royal College Art and Fellowship of the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, London, in 1951. She married fellow RCA student, designer-bookbinder Peter Waters, in 1953. They immigrated to the USA in 1971 with their three sons when Peter became chief of conservation at the Library of Congress, a direct result of his work at the National Library of Florence after the flood of 1966. Sheila has taught across North America and abroad, and continues to lecture and teach workshops and master classes. Her best-known works include the Roundel of the Seasons wall panel and the illuminated manuscript of Dylan Thomas’s play Under Milk Wood. Her classic textbook, Foundations of Calligraphy, was published in 2006, and her book Waters Rising: Letters from Florence was published by The Legacy Press in 2016.

Shannon Zachary has been a conservator and library preservation specialist for the University of Michigan Library’s collections since 1994 and has been head of the library’s Department of Preservation and Conservation since 2005. She began studying bookbinding and conservation with Anne and Theodore Kahle at the Capricornus School of Bookbinding in Berkeley, California, in 1977 while a graduate student of classics and comparative literature at the University of California. Subsequently she earned a City and Guilds of London Institute Certificate in Bookbinding at Brunel Technical College in Bristol, England, and a Higher National Diploma in paper conservation at the Camberwell College of Art in London. She was book conservator for rare and special collections at the Cornell University Library from 1987 to 1992 before moving to Ann Arbor to earn a master’s degree in library studies at the University of Michigan. She teaches library and archives preservation as an adjunct lecturer at the U–M School of Information.