Interview with James "Jim" Dast

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Interview # DAST, JIM DAST, JIM (1939-) Book Artist At UW: Interviewed: 2018 Interviewers: Sarah Lange, Tracy Hahn Index by: Sarah Lange Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen Length: 1 hour First Interview Session (January 10, 2019): Digital File SL: Today is Thursday, January 10, 2019. I'm Sarah Lange with the oral history program at UW Madison. Tracy Hahn, a book artist, UW alum, former director of the Silver Buckle Press and former student of Jim Dast is my co-interviewer. We're talking with Jim Dast, the former conservator at UW Madison Libraries who also taught book binding. He was an academic librarian at the UW from 1968 to 1996, and he organizes the semi-annual book sale that supports the Friends of the UW Madison Libraries. We're at Memorial Library on campus, and a previous session with Jim was recorded in 2012. So Jim, you mentioned that you wanted to start out with a narrative. JD: Okay. This narrative really begins when I was still at Chicago. Garrett Frost, who was my mentor and supervisor there, asked me if I didn't want to come along with him at the class he was teaching at the school of the Art Institute in the evening. And maybe help out a little bit. I wasn't too keen on that, because my previous experience was as a teaching assistant in the botany department wasn't too satisfactory. But I did go along for several sessions and found that I really enjoyed it. I had something to offer to the students. And I decided that it was something that I wanted to do when I got back to Madison, which was in the fall of 1977. And right away, is started thinking about teaching book binding class. I developed a little curriculum and I tested it out on a few people. They were pleased and I was pleased. I talked to Phil Hamilton, who was head of the art department at that time, but there weren't any funds for me to do anything there, so I went to university extension. And they publicized the course and announced it and we went to the 00:01:00 first class. And the room was totally unacceptable. And there weren't enough students, so the class was canceled. And I said to those students, four students, and I'll give their names a little bit later, "Let's continue this class at my house. And you can just pay me the money directly." So those four, let me tell you who those four students were. Rick [Relahan], I don't know who he is. Robert [Retker], I don't know if he's of any significance. But Ray Gloeckler was in my first class. And [Carrie Hunkel], I think she was an art student. So that turned out well. And I continued until, I taught twice a year, spring and fall. But art students 00:02:00 didn't really start coming in until the spring of 1981 when I see a Vicki Burns, Janet [Shaw Bennett], Kathy Kuehn, here's a name I can't read, Laura Steinbush, and finally that really gets into the heart of the book arts people. [Barta Stock] or Beth Grabowski, Patti Scoby, [Shirley Shire], Stephanie [Newman]. SL: Jim, did you continue to teach at your house, then? JD: Say again. SL: Did you continue to teach at home? JD: I continued to teach at home, yes, on a private basis. At some point here fairly quickly, the art department asked me to teach a course. And I did teach that, and I don't know the date. Jim Escalante was in that class as a student. He should be 00:03:00 able to pinpoint that a little more clearly. I think I had twelve or so students. I'm sorry that I don't have a record of them. It's around someplace, I guess. But I don't know. That was only one. That didn't get renewed. I suppose they just had money for one shot. And we taught in Walter's classroom. And it may be that he was unhappy with - although he offered - his class for that course. But he 00:04:00 may not have been happy with the way we left things at the end of the day. So as I say. Let's see, what else? I think that's where we got started. I taught a little workshop in the library for, maybe once or twice. Just to give the librarians a sense of what it was like to put a book together. And there was a little exhibit of that activity where the exhibit cases were west, west entrance. I don't know, that might be before your time. And that got eliminated. TH: I don't remember it. What do you think the effect was of having a more professional book binding experience for students? What kind of effect might that have had on their work or on the department itself? JD: I'm not sure about that. What I realized was that the students were passing around the information that I taught them. Because I saw work that was based on what I was teaching, but the students hadn't taken my class. This brings me to this. After the fall, after Ray Gloeckler took my class, he invited me to his woodcut class to show him, have a little box making workshop. At the end of the class, Christmas party, last class, they gave me a box with all the student work in it. Now, Professor John Barker gave the Friends all his books about five years ago, four or five years ago. And in that was 00:05:00 this, which is a student project. A student named Cara Sick or Cara Kick or Sick. It's a little term paper related to architecture on importance of windows in [Venice] and there are little etchings in here. The date on this is 1993. This is exactly the box that I taught to my students, and taught to Ray Gloeckler's class, which I think he continued to show his students how to do this every semester. So all those students at least knew how to make these boxes based on my box instructions probably that you may still have a copy of. TH: I do. What is that box, Jim, since the 00:06:00 listeners - JD: With the drop spine? TH: A drop spine box. JD: A drop spine box. TH: And how does that function? What's the point of that, do you know? Could you describe it a little bit? JD: I would say the point in this case is a way to present a little bit of work to a professor. A portfolio box, you might call it. It's just a way to keep a group of single sheet pieces of art, in this case, together safely. It's a storage way. Of course, there was a certain amount of design involved here. Decorated paper. So this can be a little work of art in itself. TH: But basically it's a protective enclosure with two trays - JD: It's a protective enclosure, right. TH: And that kind of structure comes out of the modern conservation movement, right? JD: I don't think, I don't know. I think it goes back before that. It's always been a way to store single sheet, valuable single sheet items. We'll say art prints. TH: What about the methods used to construct it, or the sort of - JD: I think 00:07:00 they're probably pretty much the same, yes. Or just if there's like a codex book structure started out five hundred years ago and it hasn't changed fundamentally since. TH: Right. I guess I'm thinking about what, then what would make - I've always seen an interaction between the modern conservation movement, interest in preservation, and book arts, something like paper book intensive, that PBI, is an example of where you have conservators and preservation-minded people coming together with artists. I believe that also happened here at UW, that you are pivotal to 00:08:00 that here. And I wonder what you think about that. JD: I never made any particular effort to connect conservation with book arts. In my teaching, I would probably refer to methods that related to preservation and conservation safe storage. Good quality material, what would happen if you didn't use good quality material. Acid paper problems, for instance. TH: Non-adhesive bindings? JD: I never was very comfortable with non-adhesive bindings. And they're relatively simple to learn, given some instructions. So I thought the sewing, traditional sewing and glue and paper were more important for people to get a sense of, than just plain needle and thread work. And in fact, I saw some really interesting non-adhesive bindings that came out of the art department, which were not taught by me. SL: Could you talk a little bit about the techniques that you did cover in your bookbinding classes? Do you remember which ones? JD: We did traditional sewn bindings. The first book that every student learned was a six-section, flatbed case binding. So we sewed it up, we lined the spine, we made the case. There was a quarter cloth case so that they would learn to work with glue and paper on the boards. The second book was a 10 or 12, 10-section, round back binding. And I think that was a whole cloth case. And that's a little bit different learning technique, especially with cutting the boards to the right size before you put the cloth on. Your first book, we cased it in, then we trimmed off the boards so we knew exactly 00:09:00 where they were going to be. And then we covered the boards with paper. And the third project was a box. And that took most of the course. But then there was time for the students to do something on their own. And quite often they did another sewn binding, or another box, or a little different format. But there was not very much interest in non-adhesive bindings in the class. TH: And what was your relationship with, you've mentioned Ray Gloeckler and Phil Hamilton. Walter Hamady, instructors in the department. JD: I think I had my closest association with Ray because he took my book binding class twice. And he always used, I believe, he always taught all his students this box making technique as we said before. Phil Hamilton, I was always friendly with, but we never had much interaction as far as teaching or much else. Walter, I didn't have much interaction with as far as book binding went. He almost always brought his class up to special collections. And we would bring out some books and I would talk about different binding techniques, different binding materials, styles, some problems with conservation and preservation issues that related to old books. And the students were quite interested in that, I felt. But it must have been satisfactory to Walter, because he just kept coming back time after time to do that. TH: You mentioned that art students started taking your class in, more of them, in 1981. JD: Early, early '80s, yes. TH: So those were coming from recommendations in the art department? JD: I think so. But I also put up posters on the wall around Walter's class and Ray's class, those 00:10:00 people I thought would be particularly interested in. But I'm sure there were recommendations from Walter and Phil and Ray and probably others, too, that I don't know about. TH: When I came to Madison, I had a little piece of paper. It was your name on it, Ray Gloeckler's name on it. I already knew about Walter. But it's interesting. I would give anything to have that little scrap of paper, because these were the people I had to meet. What about students who came to you and either worked for you in the lab or took your class? I know Kathy Kuehn is someone that worked closely with you. I thought you might talk about some of their work or teaching them. JD: Well, what I think about is the students who worked for me and went on to do graduate work in 00:11:00 conservation. And some were not art students. Some were. You mentioned Jana Pullman in this list. I gave her her first book binding lessons. She went on to do, I think, both the paper making and the book binding at Iowa, at the Iowa Center for the Book. Right now she's in the Twin Cities, extremely good design book binder. Has won several prizes, I think, from the Guild of Book Workers for her work. [Ursula Villa], who was Ursula Smith when she started here, went, I think, to Texas. No, no, it was New York. She went to New York. Not sure what school it was in New York. But anyway, she went to that conservation program that Paul Banks set up. And then she went to Ireland for her craft apprenticeship. And she's in private practice in New York right now. [Danya Kahn], who was a math major, came to work for me and went on to school someplace. But she's now a conservation professional working in some place in New York. New York State, I think. Who else would be - Ellen [Roblais], who worked for me in the lab as a book repair student. I'm not sure whether she took my class or not. Almost everybody that would have worked there did. But anyway, she went on to an art conservation program. And she is now in Alaska working as a conservator in one of the 00:12:00 museums there. Maybe Anchorage, I'm not sure what city she's in. Who else would [unclear] There might be another one that I could think of. Well, all right, Kathy Kuehn went onto a career in the arts. Ruth, Ruth - TH: Ruth Lingen? JD: Ruth Lingen, yes, started out with me in the art department. TH: Did Barb Tetenbaum also take your class? JD: Barbara Tetenbaum did not take my class. Marta Gomez. TH: Of course. She and I were in the first, we were in class together. JD: Yes. I think she took it twice. TH: 00:13:00 I did. JD: You did, too. TH: I didn't remember, but. JD: Okay. I'm at a loss for words. TH: That's okay. I wonder what you - you obviously love teaching, Jim. What was it about sharing that, or what did you get from students? Most people I know who went to school here studied with you when you were teaching. What was it about teaching? At first you had that - JD: The students were very interesting. Those art students, they were just alive and enthusiastic. They were working on interesting stuff that I found the projects very interesting. I found the whole social picture good for me. I went to those art openings and little social interaction that's sometimes difficult for me. But I just enjoyed it. And toward the end, the art students stopped 00:14:00 coming. There wasn't, I don't know whether people, I'm not sure at what point Walter retired and Ray retired and Phil retired. And those people that students came here specifically to study with were not here anymore, or whether just general interest kind of died out. But at any rate, I wasn't getting the interesting students, interesting work anymore. Just kind of got - so I didn't enjoy it too much. And there weren't very many people interested anymore. So that's when I stopped. TH: So there was sort of a heyday? JD: Yes, there was. TH: Do you feel like there was one period that was particularly - JD: The '80s. TH: The '80s. JD: 00:15:00 Eighties. You can look through this book and you will recognize those names and see what the period was. But those Friday afternoon and Saturday morning classes were just really a lot of fun for me. TH: Did you have handouts? JD: The only handout I had was the book box making instructions. TH: You should make sure that's in the archives at the Kohler. I have a copy. I'm sure you would have. JD: I've not, I've looked for copies once in a while and have not found one. But I think maybe I could dig one out someplace. I thought there should be one in the conservation lab, too, but I'm not sure about that. TH: Well, I probably could help with that. The other person, you said Bonnie Stahlecker, you mentioned her as taking your class. JD: Bonnie Stahlecker, yeah. TH: Because she did a lot of research on non-adhesive bindings. At least when I was in school, the handouts we had that weren't your box were from Bonnie. JD: Yeah. TH: And they were Coptic and two-signature pamphlet, and a lot of structures that were useful if you didn't have time or didn't have the funding to do board binding, or if that weren't appropriate? JD: Well, on the other hand, as a student, your time is limited. You can't do a 300-page book. TH: Right. JD: So those poems were 00:16:00 just right, and they're very suitable to two or three-section binding. TH: Exactly. JD: Walter Tisdale did some really wonderful stuff with non-adhesive binding. I often look at some of his things and how the hell did he do this? TH: (laughs) That's interesting. What about Joe Wilfer? He was one person I had - JD: I never met Joe Wilfer. TH: I wondered if you had any interactions with him. JD: He was gone - TH: He was? Okay. JD: --before I went to New York. From here to New York. TH: But I bet you just didn't, there was part of the time you were here Joe would have been around teaching, I think, when you started. JD: Yeah, I never had any - TH: You probably didn't - JD: Maybe I saw him once up at that art fair on the square. But I didn't have any other interaction with him. SL: Jim, can you also tell us when about you did stop teaching the book binding courses? Because you said in the '80s when you were teaching a lot there was a lot of interest. JD: We have it all written down here. This is the first book I ever bound. [Al Dela Rosa] was my instructor for 00:17:00 that. The fall of 1996. SL: Okay. JD: Caitlin Davis. Oh that, she's later. Amanda Stanton Ghettis, Nancy Dast, Shirley Aveland. She was in art school, wasn't she? TH: Mm hmm. She was one of - JD: Greg [Sines], Pat Moore. So I think [Cheryl] is the only art student that was there that time. So that's, yeah, fall of 1996. And that's when I retired. So I just gave everything up. TH: Book arts was a big deal at Madison. JD: It was. TH: And you were part of that. That's a modern thing in itself - JD: Yeah. TH: --though it's related to fine printing, it's related to traditional book binding, there is a different thing that was happening in that period 00:18:00 because of Walter's coming, because of the interest of other faculty. JD: Well, there was just, I think it's just one of those things where everything comes together and produces a wonderful effect. When I went to meetings, I would sometimes talk to students from other schools. And one of the things that I gathered was that the situation here was somewhat unique in that the students cooperated with one another. A couple of students told me that would never happen at their school, that everybody was 00:19:00 kind of secretive and kept their work to themselves. But I think that, what do I want to say? Symbiosis? The product of working together produces a better effect than you get working by yourself. And I think that's somewhat unique here. Certainly Iowa, where everybody did what Kim Merker told them to do, was completely different from this situation. So you can look at the work of Walter's students and you can say, "This is from Walter's students." But you can look at the work of Kim Merker's students and it's all just kind of straight down the road, everything's the same. SL: Could you talk a little bit about how you see the work of Walter's students? Like how would you describe that? What makes a book a student of Walter's-- JD: Well, it's a mirror of Walter to some extent, but also the students are allowed to do their own thinking. Within certain parameters. Walter wasn't going to tell them what to do. He was going to tell them how to do it, but not what to do. TH: What were those qualities, would you say, if you were to describe the look of - JD: Well, I'm not trained to think that way, because remember, I'm not trained as an artist, and I don't consider myself to be an artist. I'm just kind of a hanger-on of a skill that I can pass on to people. I don't know if I can describe it. But certainly you can look at it, it's sort of a kind of connoisseurship or cognoscente kind of thing. You've looked at so much and you say well okay, this looks like somebody's influence, Walter, Ray. You can kind of see Ray's technique in the woodcuts that his students make. It's not as clear as Walter, because there's not so much room for variation. But certainly Walter was a key figure in that process, in his ideas and attitude to teaching and to what his students did, I think, is very important and critical to both the department's development and the students' development. TH: What do you think about his, Walter 00:20:00 has an interest in book binding. JD: Right. TH: But at the beginning, he didn't have a lot of experience in that. Where did his learning come from and his - JD: Well, I'm not sure. I was always hoping Walter would take my course, but he didn't. Mary did. I think that - TH: Mary Hamady. JD: --[unclear] in Chicago, he kind of taught himself how to do that, how to do that sewing. I'm not sure that he ever did a full hard cover binding on an edition, but I think he bound up a lot of paper stuff by himself. And at the end, he asked me to do some little bit of box making and binding up some of the last few journals after he couldn't see very well anymore. But I think he was self-taught. And he just decided he should learn this, and so he did. TH: And what about Gary Frost? Did you keep up a correspondence with Gary after he - JD: No. He went to New York. Followed Paul Banks there. And then after Bill Anthony died, as you know, he went to Iowa. I met him once or twice, but we're not in contact. I'm 00:21:00 sure he must be retired by now. He's certainly in his mid-seventies, I think, yes. TH: And what about Kathy Kuehn? Could you talk about Kathy a little bit more? JD: Kathy worked for me for, I don't know, most of the time she was a graduate student, I think. And I think at one point she told me her job with me allowed her to stay in graduate school. So I think she was probably one of the best examples of a student who took my class and took those skills on. I don't know how much book binding was involved in her work in New York. But I think she was an extraordinary person. And she kept turning out those books. And I don't know what Ruth Lingen did with any book work. But she works as a printer at that South Seaport Museum, wasn't she? TH: Yes. At Bowne & Co. before she went to Pace. JD: Yeah. Yeah. Ruth was another student that I'd like to see again. Phyllis McGibbon was one of my students. And she's teaching someplace. Or was. TH: Wellesley. JD: Yeah. I don't know whether she teaches any book binding or not. But those skills must come into the work to some extent. TH: I'm sure. I'm sure there are students also who do special projects. She's teaching printmaking. But I think many people who would have had your class or studied here in books continue to be influenced by that and pass it on to their students. I think it's a really important part of the UW Art Department legacy that there was this program. JD: I'm not sure how many book arts programs would teach you book binding at the undergraduate level. TH: I don't, either. JD: I think it was a happy accident that I came along here. And certainly I saw great 00:22:00 improvements in book structure. Holy smoke. I remember when I went to talk to Phil Hamilton I [unclear] all his books were sewn together on the side with colored yarn! TH: So it was craft and professionalism that - JD: Yeah. Yeah. I think that there was a realization that could, in fact, put a book together without too much trouble, and it would turn out just fine. SL: Jim, could you talk a little bit more about the work that you were doing with your students when they were working for you? As opposed to the teaching? JD: Well the students, when they were working for me, were working primarily on book repair. And depending on how interested they were and how competent I thought they were, I would let them kind of go on to a little more extensive projects. I was up in Special Collections the other day. And you were with us, when [Zanthy] was - TH: No, sir, I wasn't. JD: Oh, okay. Nancy was. Robin brought out several books for [Zanthy] to look at. And one of these was a book bound in not quite this cloth, but similar. Robin said, gave me credit for binding that book. And I looked in the back and my initials were not there. And I thought - CGD and a date. And I thought, who is this? Caroline Gilderson-Duwe. So she had taken that book apart, washed it, deacidified it, rendered the folds, sewed it back up again, put a case binding on it, [up in rare books?]. Not every student did that. But Caroline went on to do some professional conservation work. She was another one that I didn't mention. She's out of the field now. There was no work for her up in Green Bay so she became a nurse. I used to hear from her every Christmas. TH: She had beautiful hand skills. Very beautiful work. JD: Yes. She was very good. So - TH: Could you talk about what you're describing there? The initials in the back. Because one pleasure for me is sometimes in the stacks here I'll come across a book that I repaired. JD: Every student, every book that got repaired, I asked the students to put their initials in the back and the date. And I 00:23:00 think that's an interesting record. Now, I don't have the slightest idea what those initials stand for anymore. (laughter) There must have been dozens of students who worked for me over the years. And thousands and thousands of books in the stacks with those initials and dates in them. TH: Actually, I think it is a good thing to get into the oral history, Jim, something that I realize isn't in your earlier one explicitly. The work done in the lab was on the circulating collection - JD: Yes. TH: -- mostly. Could you talk about the philosophy of repairing? A lot of places, you'd think - JD: Well the point, my argument was that we could repair these books into original condition more cheaply than they could be sent out to the commercial bindery. And the less change we do to a book, the more possibility there is for its treatment in the future. If it comes to break down completely, then it can be commercially rebound. But I felt that all of our books could be re-repaired without damage, using the techniques that I taught the students. I can't, I'm not in a position to see that stuff anymore. But I see enough of it occasionally in the stacks to know that it's held up very well. As long as the paper quality is good, there isn't any reason to not keep doing that, keep that stuff in its original format. TH: What are the numbers of repaired books? I'm sure you don't know exactly. But do you have a thumbnail? JD: Well, there are a number of students who repaired a thousand books in their time with me. When I retired, I estimated, and I don't remember what it was. But it was six figures. It was six figures, books in the stacks that we had repaired over a 20-year period. I'm trying to think. There was a number of books, I had a goal of a number of books to be repaired in a year. And I never made it. And I can't think what that number was. Maybe it was ten thousand. But I remember once I had a really competent crew of student workers. I said, "Boy, next year we're going to really do - " And then they all went away. SL: I wondered, for the students who did manage to repair a thousand books, how long were they working with you, about? JD: Well, I'd say two or three years. SL: Two or three years. JD: Like Katie Beard repaired a thousand books. Cindy [Hennig] repaired a thousand books. TH: Who's Katie Beard, Jim? JD: Walter Tisdale's wife. TH: And what was she doing - JD: Katie Beard Tisdale. TH: And what was she doing here at Madison? JD: She was working on a PhD in the geography department. She took my class. Walter didn't. He signed up, then he didn't. I guess he didn't have the hundred dollars. But I don't know why. TH: Katie Beard is a really important geographer. JD: She used to work in my lab. She liked doing that stuff. And there might be other students that did that. But then we stopped counting that way. So other students could have repaired a thousand books. Caroline Gilderson-Duwe, for instance, worked for a long time. Joel Specter was another person who worked for me and went on in conservation. He went to the Iowa program. And then he had some kind of throat cancer and he just died quite 00:24:00 unexpectedly. It was a very tragic situation. TH: The idea that the books that were repaired here wouldn't be harmed by that work - JD: Right. Right. TH: That's a principle related to your conservation. JD: Yes, it is. Oh, yeah. TH: Could you talk about what those principles are, Jim? What are the main tenets? JD: Well, I'm not sure that I can explain that in words. TH: Reversibility? JD: Well, not, up to a point. I think that primarily I'm concerned with being able to re-repair the book without doing any harm to it. And as long as the paper rolls up. There's certain things you can't do with a brittle paper. That's one of those things that you might as well send to microfilm, because that's not going to last very long. But a newer book, and particularly modern paper, since the 1970s, everything's alkaline. The paper's not going to deteriorate. And the book is not really going to wear out. The paper's not going to wear out, and the binding is not going to wear out if it's done well. What's going to wear out is the cloth cover. And the cloth cover wears out, you still have the text block. As long as the text block's intact, you just make a new cover and you're all set to go. Use the original cover material. Marta's got this technique now where she Xeroxes the spine labels. They're just beautiful, that color Xerox. You can't tell - at least with my poor vision, you can't tell from five feet away whether you have a real or a copy 00:25:00 of a spine. TH: It looks nice. JD: And I'll say Marta's far better technician than I was. SL: Can you talk a little bit about your relationship with Marta? Because she worked for you. JD: Marta worked for me, yes. And she seemed to be - well, at one point, she needed a job so she could stay in the United States, get a green card. Then she got married, so that took care of that problem. But she was good. And I recognized that. And since she was married to a faculty member who was beyond the point where he might be invited to go somewhere else, she was a stable, she would be a stable employee, and it was worthwhile putting some effort into teaching her. And she learned very well and quickly. So I considered her my second, my assistant, from almost the very beginning, and gave her as much responsibility as she was willing to accept. Because I didn't, toward the end of my time here, didn't want to get into anything very extensive that would take a lot of time. Because I was often called away to go someplace and talk to people and give some advice or do what conservators do administratively. Committees, all that kind of stuff. So I just did little short tasks. I left all the teaching up to Marta and the other students. If we had a new student, I put them next to an experienced student and let them do the teaching. And that worked out quite well. And we did have volunteers in the lab who became quite competent. Mary Harshaw is one that I 00:26:00 think of. Joan Box is another one. Connie Blanchard, physics professor, did a lot of work. I'm sure that each of those three people easily repaired a thousand books over the time they were here. SL: How did those relationships form? Did the volunteers come to you because they were interested? Or were you kind of advertising that you could use some help? JD: I don't believe we advertised. There was some point where the library was actively seeking volunteers for things. I don't think they're doing that so much anymore. I don't know how quite, how people found their way in to me. But Joan Box and Mary Harshaw both took my class. I don't think Connie did. Linda Roach took my class. And she worked in the lab for a while before she became head of collection preservation. And I think, there are probably other, shall we say, adults 00:27:00 (laughs) that volunteered in the lab. But those are the three that come to mind, because they lasted the longest. Several years, in all three of those cases. TH: Jim, in your first interview, you talked about some work you did to educate librarians about preservation. JD: Yes. TH: And you said there was a time when we were here because of that work, kind of at the forefront of what was going on in libraries across the country. JD: We were. Very briefly. TH: There were handouts? Or how did you do that presentation, that education? JD: There was a slide tape unit. TH: Is that extant? JD: The olden times. Olden times. TH: Is there any evidence of that now? JD: I don't know. Andrea might know. TH: Okay. JD: But that was sent all over the country. Dennis [Damanchek] was in charge of that, of the actual mailing out of things. But Elizabeth Breed and I put that slide tape unit together. And somebody wrote a script. A professional reader read it to go along with the slides. SL: Can you explain what you mean by slide tape? JD: (laughs) TH: I think that would be helpful for people listening. 00:28:00JD: Oh, you make me feel like an old man. SL: I'm sorry. JD: Well, you know what a slide is. SL: Yes. JD: Okay. And you know what a tape cassette is. SL: Mm hmm. JD: They were able to coordinate playing the tape and showing the slides at the same time. So the tape would run and the slides would come up on the screen. There'd be some narrative. The next slide would come up and there would be some different narrative. But they were coordinated, so this was kind of automatic. I don't know what it's analogous to. TH: YouTube video today? JD: YouTube video? I don't know what a YouTube video is. TH: (laughs) Same thing. It's basically a slide tape. Who wrote the script? JD: That I'm not sure about. TH: Did you participate? JD: Maybe Elizabeth Breed and I wrote that. I suspect so. TH: What did it cover? What did it cover? JD: Well, it handled book handling, mainly. Trucking. I'm not, that's 40 years ago. I'm not quite sure. It was safe handling of library materials, in a 00:29:00 nutshell. It had to do with how you could keep your books from being damaged just in normal library situations. Don't get your books wet. There was a picture of Nancy in the bathtub, holding up a book and a glass of wine on the edge. There was a picture of me walking in a snowstorm with a pile of books under my arm. There was a picture of a book truck tipping over. That was a wonderful thing that I did. It was one of my students at the medical library while I was still there. But what put this library out in front a little bit was the development of the Preservation of Library Materials Committee here in the mid-'70s. That was pretty much before anybody was thinking about that kind of stuff. And that's why I think that slide tape was so popular. Because it was new. It was new material [thinking]. TH: Now we're so used to, those ideas - JD: Yes. TH: --are so generalized now. JD: Yes. They're part of our culture. TH: That's because of the educational work that you did, and others on the same - JD: Well, up to a point. TH: But yes, you contributed to that. JD: I certainly 00:30:00 did. Yes. TH: When did you, do you remember when you might have first heard the word "archival" in the preservation sense? JD: No. Probably would have been at the Newberry. TH: Because that's ubiquitous now. JD: I mean, I knew what an archive was. TH: Right. But - JD: But archive as an adjective, that's a different, that comes later. And in fact, I'm not sure when that term came into general use. It may have been a little bit beyond the dawn of preservation thinking. TH: Is alkaline paper, you were saying now that's not a concern so much. Was that change in paper making and standards related to conservation work? JD: No. It was related to the economics of paper making. It was realized that there are ways to make good quality paper without using that acidic material. TH: But wasn't there a push from libraries for standards? JD: Well, there was a push in libraries, but libraries weren't very effective. TH: Really? JD: I don't think that book paper is really a very significant part of paper making. So the effect of acid on the paper making machinery 00:31:00 was much more of a concern, and environmental concerns as well. And it just as an unattended good consequence for libraries and paper and books, books and paper. TH: That is a very interesting thing to say, Jim. I misunderstood that history as being driven more by consumer demand coming from libraries and - JD: I don't think so. I think you'd have to study that a little bit. But that's my understanding, it was economics of paper making. TH: But an unintended consequence, a very good one. JD: Yeah. Right. Unintended good consequence. SL: Can you talk a little bit about, you mentioned the environmental concerns of paper making. Can you talk about that? Like what the effect of paper making - JD: No, I can't. SL: You can't. JD: I'm not an expert on that. It takes somebody who has a more chemistry background than I have, and 00:32:00 more understanding of what the waste products of the paper making process are. But it's certainly, paper making is cleaner now than it was fifty years ago. There are no PCPs going into the rivers and lakes surrounding paper mills. TH: Do you see conservation as having an impact on publishing today or the way that people in general think about - JD: I would say not. But maybe some more recently trained people with a broader perspective than I have might know. Remember, I've been out of the loop for 20 years. So I haven't made any effort to keep up with that stuff. So I don't know, but I don't think so. TH: Do you think there are lasting, there's a lasting impact of this post-Florence Flood effort of people to - JD: Well, I think there's a consciousness raised, and people understanding what to do if, in fact, your library's flooded. And there are professional services now available that you can call on to help you clean up a mess or get your books into the freezer. Big semi-trucks that you can load your wet books into and bring them down to, to freeze them until you have time to work on them one by one. It may be that librarians in general are a little more conscious of the dangers of water, water damage, and maybe trying to design libraries to eliminate or reduce the possibilities of that. I think we still have lots of books stored in basements. But maybe, yeah, maybe they're above the flood plain. I haven't heard of any recent mass disasters in libraries. TH: Brazil. Fire. I was thinking when I referenced Florence more that I date that, that seems to be a 00:33:00 place where we recognize many young people got interested in - JD: Yes. TH: --preservation and conservation. JD: I think that's true, yes. TH: So my question was really about not literally, but I think preservation effort in libraries have changed because of that. But more broadly, effects on how people think about the world. Or the things that they receive, how they're affected by the work that people in conservation started because of those interests. JD: I think that's [right] and I think maybe the consciousness is raised among librarians and people in general who are interested in books. That these dangers exist, and they can be prevented to some extent, and they can be, the damaged materials can be brought back with skilled workers if they're available. What I see is now not a diminution of interest in library conservation in a formal way, I don't think there are any more training programs in the country. They just kind of started up and boomed and then faded away. I don't know where anybody would, I think there are places you can learn book binding. I think maybe there are still schools of book binding. But I don't think there's any 00:34:00 place where you can learn the theoretical basis of conservation. There was a Texas program and a New York program. And I'm not sure even what the Newberry's doing anymore. TH: I don't know, either. It's a field that has so much, there are so many people interested and enthusiastic talent. But it's also a place where you could still come up in a sort of 19th century bench training way now. I think that's how people probably are doing it. At Iowa. I bet someone from there could go into - JD: I wonder if the Iowa program is still going, and who's running it. TH: Yes. But I don't know - JD: Tim Barrett? A lot of this stuff is based on a single, individual person. And as soon as that person retires or dies, then the program dies. Paul Banks was an innovator and a leader. But nobody followed him. Bill Anthony, another one. And I'm sure we could think of two or three other people in that same position 00:35:00 that set up programs, made great progress, and then they faded away and then the program went, followed it the same way. It's just, it's too small a field. It hasn't reached a critical mass. But I think that there's, thinking about it is now kind of ingrained into librarians, even though they not so much formal training. It's just sort of there in the background and they're thinking about it. TH: I think that's true. The impact. SL: Well, Jim, we covered a lot. Was there anything else that you still wanted to add? JD: No, I don't think so. That was quite, I thought this was quite an interesting session. And I hope that something useful came out of it. SL: I think so, yeah. TH: Well it's very interesting to me. I learned a lot.