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House style and the zombie apocalypse: How a poorly thought-out style guide can cost you

Professional freelance editors will be familiar with a few industry-standard style manuals:

  • Chicago Manual of Style
  • Canadian Press Stylebook
  • Associated Press Stylebook
  • MLA Style Manual
  • APA Publication Manual

These references offer broad coverage of most style issues; they’ve been honed over several editions and generally serve editors well. Yet, the vast majority of organizations that regularly produce written communications and publications—including businesses, non-profits, government, as well as traditional publishers—will want to have their own house style. The key is to tame your house style before it takes on a life of its own.

Why do you need house style?

House style is important—for branding and identity, to accommodate audience expectations and ensure subject coverage, and for efficiency and workflow.

Branding and identity

As Barbara Wallraff of The Atlantic Monthly wrote in The Art of Making Magazines, “Even a bunch of highly skilled writers won’t do things consistently. And consistency strengthens the identity of a magazine.” The fact that you can see the word coöperation and know immediately that it comes from The New Yorker shows how powerful a style decision can be to a publication’s identity.

Even for non-publishers, house style ensures consistency of your brand: your organization’s name, its divisions and position titles, should always appear the same way. (For example, in Editors’ Association of Canada communications, you’ll see the organization called “EAC”—and never “the EAC.”)

Audience expectations and subject coverage

Industry-standard style manuals are fairly general and aren’t meant to cover specialized topics, so you may want your house style to fill in the gaps if you’re publishing in a particular genre. An example is cookbooks: publishers of cookbooks for the North American market have discovered that using only metric measurements and giving ingredients like flour in sugar in weight rather than in volume will basically doom the book to failure. These kinds of details would be helpful to have in a house style guide for a cookbook publisher.

Further, some specialized audiences have certain expectations; in some academic circles, for example, usage of particular words is restricted to specific situations, and capitalization and hyphenation can have carry special meaning. (For example, geologists will capitalize “Province,” “Zone,” and “Subzone” but not “subprovince.”)

Efficiency and workflow

Specifying a preference for one of several equally valid options helps establish your editorial authority and helps your editorial team work together. Nobody has to make the initial decision and communicate that to the rest of the team. You reap the most benefits if you use the same editors over and over—they’ll quickly adapt to your house style and use it automatically for your projects.

As for workflow, some house styles will also include special formatting and tagging instructions for editors to follow when they prepare a manuscript for typesetting. These elements are also important but, as I’ll argue later, should be separated out as process guidelines rather than style rules.

How do zombies fit in?

House style guides serve a legitimate role. The problem is that too many house styles are rife with zombie rules.

Zombie rules, a term coined by linguist Arnold Zwicky, refer to rules that may have made sense in the past but no longer apply. Some people like to make the distinction between zombies (which were alive at one point and are now dead) and bogeymen—which never made sense and were, in linguist Geoff Pullum’s words, “just mythical beings invented to frighten children.” For the sake of simplicity, I’m referring to all nonsense rules—previously alive or not—as zombies. Further, I’m extending Zwicky’s term beyond grammar and usage to all rules that should no longer rear their heads—because of changes in language, technology, or process. Other zombies creep into a house style guide because of personal preferences and pet peeves.

If you’re responsible for your organization’s house style, you can ultimately do whatever you want, but bear in mind that every zombie rule in your style guide is costing you money.

A case study of poor house style

Here’s an example from my own work: I’d sent an edit back to a journal publisher, and the in-house editor reviewed my work and gave me feedback, which I generally welcome. This time, however, the feedback was confounding. She wrote, “For future reference, please note that we use the serial comma before ‘and’ but not before ‘or.’”

Typically, when a client gives me feedback, I’ll thank them and let them know I’ll keep it in mind for the next project. This time I pushed back a little, explaining that I found that rule puzzling. After all, “and” and “or” are both coordinating conjunctions used in series, and usually, in most style manuals, we us a comma before both or before neither. I also told her that her style guide mentioned only “and”—and that she’d have to add the “or” rule if she really wanted to make the distinction clear. I ended by reiterating my confusion about the rule.

She responded, “It may not make sense, but it is our style.”

First, this is something I’d hope you’ll never have to say to your editors, who are likely to operate on logic and consistency. Second, think of all of the actions and interactions this exchange required. The in-house editor had to:

  • find my error,
  • fix my error,
  • correspond with me about my error (over several emails), and
  • update or clarify the style guide.

She would have to repeat most of these steps every time any other editor made the same mistake.

I had to:

  • correspond with the editor, and
  • add the item to my personal checklist.

Worst of all, I will be second-guessing myself about every rule and slowing myself down for every project I do with this client in the future. After all, if the style guide has this strange rule, what other ones does it have?

Each of these interactions cost the client time and money—and all for a rule that didn’t matter. It did nothing to strengthen the journal’s brand or communicate more clearly to readers, and it certainly didn’t lead to greater editorial efficiency.

Isn’t it a freelancer’s job, you might ask, to adapt to different styles? Absolutely—but rules that needlessly contradict industry standards are costly to both you and your editors. What’s more, freelancers are human. If your style guide is too long, we won’t necessarily remember everything when it comes time to work on your project. And any rule that makes editors stop or stumble will cost you money.

House style best practices

House style guides should supplement, not replace, industry-standard style manuals. Otherwise you’re not only reinventing the wheel; you’re essentially replacing a precision-engineered Formula 1 wheel with the wheel off a shopping cart. Because house style guides are supplements only, they should be no longer than five to ten pages—with the upper end reserved for extensive websites, magazines or series.

Further, house style should be audience focused in two ways:

  • the rules in your style guide should serve your readers, not editorial whims;
  • the guide itself should serve its readers—that is, your editors.

To make your house style the most efficient it can be:

  • regularly review your house style for validity (what I call house style audits)
  • separate policies and procedures
  • put it online
  • update to the latest edition of your industry-standard style manual

If you haven’t already chosen an industry-standard style manual to follow, that’s your first step. Next, you’ll want to audit your house style.

Audit house style

Gather your editorial team and at least one external consultant, maybe one of your regular freelancers, to critically evaluate each item in your house style guide. The external consultant will be able to come at the project with more objectivity and ask why the rules you have are there.

For each item in your house style, figure out whether it matches your chosen style manual.

If so:

  • If the rule is a common one, take it out of your house style guide; your editors will know to follow the rule in the style manual.
  • If the rule is uncommon, cite the location in the style manual where the rule appears (e.g., “We follow Chicago 8.82, which states that…”). Referring to the style manual will let you give an abbreviated version of the rule in your style guide.

If not, ask yourself why:

  • If you can’t figure out a reason the rule exists, take it out of your guide.
  • If there’s a legitimate reason for it, such as specific audience expectations, explain it. Your editors may not know your topic as well as you do.
  • If there’s an illegitimate reason for it (e.g., Diana in marketing hates hyphens), explain it. Not only will the clarification help editors remember the rule, but you’ll also know that when circumstances change (e.g., Diana takes a job at another company), you can immediately kill this zombie for good.

Basically, each item in your house style should be justifiable. When you review your house style, watch out in particular for places where your style guide contradicts itself, which can happen if it’s the product of several people’s input.

Finally, ask yourself if you can live with internal consistency alone. If you publish books, for example, each book will have its own style sheet, and readers are unlikely to compare the style of two of your books or care if they differ.

Good times to review your house style are:

  • when people leave,
  • when you introduce a new process, or
  • when you upgrade to a new version of software or update to a new edition of a reference.

Separate policies and procedures

Is your house style document just a style guide, or have you inadvertently canonized it? Some organizations put everything into their house style, from their mission statement to publishing and editorial philosophy. New editors may appreciate the background information, but, for the sake of efficiency, make sure you separate it from the reference material that the editors will have to access regularly. Having to read through preamble to find a rule slows editors down, and you’re paying for that time.

Also separate out style matters (e.g., serial comma or not) from process matters (e.g., formatting and tagging for workflow). Process will probably change much more frequently with changes in technology.

Put it online

I’ve evangelized extensively about the usefulness of editorial wikis, so I won’t do it again here, but I’m a firm believer in putting house style online so that you have one master copy that is

  • easy to revise,
  • easy to search, and
  • easy to make modular.

In a wiki, it’s simple to isolate the parts of your house style that apply just to copy editing, for example, so that you don’t overwhelm your copy editors with irrelevant details that only proofreaders would need to know.

Update your industry-standard references

Use the latest editions of style manuals and dictionaries as your references. Many freelancers now have online subscriptions to their references and have access to only the latest editions.

Taking the leap to a new reference may be an annoyance for in-house staff, but the aggravation is temporary. Freelance editors have to switch between styles all the time, so you’ll adapt in no time. To ease the transition, keep a running checklist of changes to run global searches for (or better yet, make a macro to automate the process).

***

A house style guide is an essential piece of a communication or publishing operation. Despite the quality of existing style manuals, I’d never suggest going without a house style. Writers and editors benefit from having some guidance and structure on projects, particularly if they’re new to your organization. Just be sure to keep your audience(s) in mind as you develop and maintain your house style guide so that you’re getting the most out of it.

Book review: Starting an Indexing Business

You’ve taken indexing courses. Read the indexing chapter of the Chicago Manual of Style and Nancy Mulvaney’s Indexing Books. Bought yourself indexing software.

Now what?

For most would-be indexers hoping to start their own freelancing business (as many of us are now aware), the actual indexing work isn’t the biggest challenge. Getting that work, not to mention managing the financial and administrative details of self-employment, is the tough part, and it’s one that gets very little attention in most indexing reference books. Starting an Indexing Business, edited by Enid Zafran and Joan Shapiro, is a rare exception, offering people who are launching—or considering—a career as a freelance indexer some insider wisdom about running their own business.

The fourth edition of Starting an Indexing Business was published in 2009, but it was recently released as an ebook. With chapters about moonlighting as an indexer while holding down a full-time job by Melanie Krueger, the business of being in business, by Pilar Wyman, and liability and exposure issues for indexers, by Enid Zafran, this book tries to answer a lot of questions that a freelancer just starting out might have. It’s a quick read, and it’s packed with tips from indexing veterans who have spent years in the trenches. Seeing the issues from different indexers’ perspectives is helpful, and the diversity of contributors shows that, despite having similar traits that make us good at what we do, different indexers take different approaches to running their business. Particularly interesting is the debate about whether to invest in disability insurance, with Wyman advocating for it and Zafran saying she didn’t see the need.

Zafran’s chapter about liability has a lot to offer, spurring the reader to think about how best to protect their business and to assert their copyright to make sure they get paid. A sample letter of agreement for indexing services also appears as an appendix to the book, and it serves as a helpful tool for freelancers to communicate clearly with a new client and start off their working relationship on the right foot.

Although the book has plenty of solid advice for new indexers, much of it will be old hat to people who have had a few projects under their belt. Being five years old, it also needs an update. I suspect that cold calling and mailing out brochures to prospective clients, as marketing strategies recommended by a few of the contributors, have largely given way to email enquiries and websites. I would also hope that a fax machine is no longer a must-have in the home office. Workflow and file transfer technologies have also evolved dramatically since the book’s publication, and ebooks and self-publishing have exploded. Further, the book is geared toward a primarily American audience, with references to health insurance and U.S. taxes that wouldn’t apply to Canadian indexers.

New freelancers may find Starting an Indexing Business helpful, although I wouldn’t call it a must-read. For those with a few years’ experience already, there isn’t much in this book that you won’t already know. And beyond the sample letter, I don’t see much in this book that you would refer to time and again, so I’d be inclined to borrow it from the library, if you can. If you do want to add this title to your collection, I’d suggest waiting for an updated edition, so that the advice better reflects current practices and technology.

Engaging students in an online environment—Katherine McManus

SFU’s Writing and Communications program is increasingly shifting away from in-person classes and toward online courses, which are less expensive to run and can better accommodate adult students with rigid work schedules. An added advantage (and challenge) is that students from all over the world can attend these courses. My in-person indexing course for the program this spring was cancelled, but I’ve been asked to teach the online offering later this year. I’ve taken plenty of online courses but have never taught one, so I was keen to learn some best practices from Katherine McManus, who directed the Writing and Communications program until her retirement this past December and has been heavily involved in developing the program for the IC Clear certificate in plain language.

Online courses, McManus said, aren’t like old-fashioned correspondence courses, where students get the material and work on it on their own time. As online instructors we have to keep students engaged and on the course’s timeline. We’re also not trying to replicate the classroom. “We’re not trying to replicate anything,” said McManus. “We have to create something entirely different.”

1. Be present

Most students—as well as instructors—are used to walking into a room and listening to a person; the online classroom is unfamiliar and can cause anxiety on both the learner’s and teacher’s sides. To alleviate some of that anxiety, be sure to welcome the students. Before the course begins, send a welcome note to students from your email address (but be clear that the online classroom won’t open until the course actually begins). That way the students have a place to turn if, for whatever reason, the course management system (CMS) doesn’t work. Other ways to establish your presence in the classroom are to

  • be the first to post in the “introduce yourself” area,
  • be clear about how often and when you’ll check in on the class,
  • when students discuss topics, provide guidance—let the students know you’re there, and
  • intervene quickly if someone begins to hijack a discussion.

2. Create community

It can be hard for students in an online course to get to know one another. In courses shorter than three weeks, creating a true sense of community is practically impossible, but for longer courses or courses with difficult topics, giving students a chance to feel connected to each other helps them get value out of the course. Encourage them to introduce themselves, and post a specific question for each of them to answer, such as their favourite movie or their reasons for taking the course. Set up a problem-solving forum, like a repository of YouTube videos related to the course material, for example, that students can post to. Develop one activity where small groups of students must work together, but keep the stakes low to minimize anxiety.

3. Share clear expectations

These students are adults who have paid to achieve specific learning goals. Be specific about what they will learn in the course and how. Each week’s content should start with an outline of that session’s learning outcomes, assignments, activities, and discussions. Not only will the students appreciate this concreteness, but it will also make assignments easier for the instructor to grade. The learning outcomes should match the evaluation criteria. Canvas, the CMS, accommodates a grading matrix where you can keep track of both.

4. Avoid sameness

Use a variety of assignments and activities to encourage learning:

  • Include opportunities for students to find and post interesting articles or videos.
  • Encourage discussion in various ways—for example, you could have pairs of students interviewing each other or students taking a topic “to the street” and then reporting back to the class.
  • Depending on the content of the course, assignments could be games.

McManus said that students spend a lot more time learning in online courses: they end up following links down a rabbit hole and reading much more than they would for an in-person course.

5. Use synchronous and asynchronous activities

McManus doesn’t completely agree with this “best practice” of online teaching; for busy students or students in far-flung locations, scheduling synchronous activities—where the class participates in the activity at the same time—can be a burden. Break the class into small groups of three or four for synchronous activities, taking time zones into account when creating the groups.

Make sure when developing the content that you allow people to complete the course without having to worry about time- and location-dependent activities.

6. Encourage informal feedback

Ask students partway through the course to tell you if they’re keeping up with the material or if they want to know anything specific. As an activity every other week, for example, you could ask students to describe

  • the most interesting they they’ve learned so far
  • what they thought was a waste of time.

This feedback could be via email or through a survey—you don’t want it to become an open discussion.

Often the questions you’ll get about the assignments are good feedback in themselves. If more than one student is confused about something, that’s a clue you might have to adjust the assignment. The advantage of the CMS is that all questions are captured in writing, and you can refer to them later. Post common questions as announcements so that students who are wondering but not asking still get the answer.

7. Invite reflection and response in your discussion topics

  • Don’t ask yes/no questions.
  • Don’t ask questions for which there’s only one right answer.

Make it clear to students, if you’re awarding marks for discussion participation, that simply agreeing with a previous answer isn’t enough—they have to add to the discussion for credit. In Canvas, there’s an option to bar students from seeing what others have said about a topic until they’ve posted their own comments, which has the advantage of preventing latecomers from feeling discouraged that what they wanted to say has already been said but has the disadvantage of possibly yielding a slew of very similar answers without expansion on the discussion. Close a conversation at a specific time (e.g., two weeks after it’s opened) to make sure you don’t get students scatter-gunning the forums at the eleventh hour of the course to get participation credit.

8. Use technology that is easy for the learner to master

Hours of extra learning can be involved for students unfamiliar with technology. Give students time in the first week to familiarize themselves with the CMS. Avoid having students use software outside of the CMS to create content like maps, charts, and videos.

9. Combine core concepts with personalized learning

Core concepts are outlined in the learning outcomes. For advanced courses leading to professional certification, encourage students to apply those concepts to increasingly complex projects—perhaps some they’ve brought in from other aspects of their lives or from their work.

10. Plan a good closing

Online courses often just end, and everyone just stops talking to one another. You’ll make a better impression if you plan something specific for the end of the course—maybe an online chat (bearing in mind that some students might not make it) or an informal final discussion topic where you post closing thoughts.

For courses that have complex subject matter but where you only have the time and resources to cover the basics, McManus suggests using a “going deeper” feature: teach students the fundamentals but give them an opportunity to learn more if they’re interested. “Going deeper” not only adds value to the course in the students’ minds but may also be a good way to end the course.

Book review: The Employer’s Guide to Hiring Freelancers and Managing Outsourced Projects

Jim Coutu is an arbitrator who works with freelance job sites; essentially he’s a judge in what he calls “project divorce court.” When a project goes sour, it’s his job to pore over correspondence between the client and freelancer, interpreting often vague contracts to figure out who ultimately gets the money. In other words, he’s an expert in what can go wrong in a project, and he’s written an ebook, The Employer’s Guide to Hiring Freelancers and Managing Outsourced Projects, to shed light on common problems and offer suggestions on how to avoid them.

This book fills a critical void: whereas freelancers have banded together to form communities online, whether for stress relief through humour or for advocacy, there aren’t that many resources out there for people on the other side of that relationship. Clients are left to feel out their first projects on their own, and, without guidance, many of them are liable to make mistakes—some of which may start out as minor but can snowball to the point of jeopardizing a project.

Coutu’s background is in software, but his book covers all kinds of outsourcing, from web and graphic design to writing and virtual assistance (although neither editing nor indexing are mentioned). Helpfully, he gives specific tips and examples for each of these areas, as well as more general advice about

  • writing a solid project description so that bidding freelancers will know what you’re looking for
  • assessing the quality of a freelancer
  • paying by the hour versus paying by the project
  • looking out for potential copyright issues
  • keeping projects on schedule
  • working across different cultures and time zones

Coutu offers advice about how best to use the freelance sites’ features to protect yourself. For example, some of these sites will take screen shots of the freelancer’s desktop as they work as proof that they’re billing only for work on your project; the sites will also allow you to hold money in escrow and store a record of all of your correspondence with a freelancer so that an arbitrator can easily review the contract (and any changes to it). Although Coutu advocates care and rigour on the employer’s part, what I appreciate most about the book is that he never describes the client–freelancer relationship as an adversarial one. In fact, one of the first suggestions he gives is to “set the freelancer up for success. Make sure that they have everything that they need before you accept their bid, including specific requirements of what you want completed.” Your aim when using a freelance job site isn’t to get away with paying the least; rather, “the goal for both parties should be to get the work done at a fair price. The employer is happy that the work got done for a fair price, the freelancer is happy that they are paid a fair wage.” He also urges wary employers to consider the freelancers’ perspective: “Remember, the worker is also taking a risk working with an unknown employer who may take their work and not pay them.”

Coutu gives sample arbitration scenarios to show how the process would assess and resolve different kinds of disputes. Not surprisingly, problems in projects often result from poor communication, and Coutu emphasizes that both parties share a responsibility of ensuring that they have a common understanding of the contract. “Ambiguous wording issues are the fault of the employer,” he writes, and if you’re not getting what you need, it’s up to you to communicate clearly what the issues are. “Unfortunately,” Coutu writes, “I have seen many cases where poor feedback and poor feedback alone has caused a project to fail.” When a freelancer doesn’t meet expectations, advises Coutu, “Even if you absolutely hate what has been delivered, resist the temptation to reply with an emotional response. Always be professional.” He adds, “Emotional responses lead to arguments, not discussions.”

Also commendable is Coutu’s attention to copyright issues. He tells employers to be vigilant about running images used in a design through a reverse image search and text through Copyscape or Google to make sure there’s no infringement or plagiarism. He also notes that “freelancers who come from countries where copyrights are not enforced are simply not aware of the issues.”

Although Coutu makes his living as an arbitrator, he advises employers to use arbitration as a last resort, encouraging self-mediation as a first step. “As an arbitrator, I am keenly aware that the arbitration process is difficult for all parties. Even if you have a rock solid case that clearly documents abuses by the other party, arbitration is going to cost time that would be better spent on other endeavors.”

Because this book focuses mostly on one-off projects through online freelance job sites, it probably won’t be terribly useful to managing editors and production managers in publishing, whose day-to-day work involves hiring editors, designers, and indexers for a steady stream of projects. It doesn’t, for instance, suggest places other than freelance job sites—such as member directories of professional associations—to look for skilled freelancers, nor does it address the all-important relationship building and need to create a strong network of professionals you know you can trust to work on project after project. These ties are essential to keeping training costs down and ensuring coverage for all of your projects through the publishing cycle.

In contrast, self-publishers may find a lot of value in this book; some of them may choose to use a freelance job site to find a cover designer, for example, or someone to convert a print book to an EPUB. Unfortunately, The Employer’s Guide isn’t a comprehensive reference for self-publishers, as it doesn’t talk about the role of editors or indexers at all. In fact, in his advice about how to give feedback to a freelance writer, he writes, “If something is awkwardly worded, give examples of what might work better”—a task that a professional editor would certainly be in a strong(er) position to do.

Incidentally, as a self-published book, The Employer’s Guide is clear and easy to read, although, as an advocate for my profession, I have to say that I’d have preferred the book if it had gone through a copy edit and had a linked index. In terms of its content, a managing editor’s manual it is not, but for those who want to explore what the global work force has to offer, this book brims with sage advice that will help maximize your odds of getting what you want while minimizing your risks.

PubPro 2014 attendees can enter a draw to win a copy of The Employer’s Guide.

Editors’ Association of Canada members who have contract disputes with clients can turn to EAC’s mediator for help: http://www.editors.ca/members/services/mediation.html.

Preservation Week at the UBC Library—Part II

Meet the microbe: why water and books don’t mix

Karen Bartlett is a professor in UBC’s School of Public and Population Health, and her Preservation Week talk gave us a glimpse into the role of fungi in the deterioration of our books and archives, as well as the health risks to people who have to work with and around mouldy books.

Mould (and fungi in general) is usually mentioned in a negative light, but Bartlett remarked that “life would not be worth living without microbial products,” including beer, wine, leavened bread, miso, and soy sauce, among others.

Fungi are nature’s composters, said Bartlett, and to them, a leaf off a tree and a leaf in the book look identical: they are both organic materials that can serve as food sources. Moulds consist of filaments called hyphae, which can be specialized into spore-producing structures known as conidiophores, as well as root-like structures that penetrate the substrate of organic material and secrete enzymes into it, breaking it down. So when moulds colonize a book, they are actively destroying its pages.

Most moulds prefer a temperature range of 4°C to 30°C, which is good in a way, because it means that very few of them thrive at our body temperature of 37.5°C, but it also means that the 20°C at which we keep our homes and libraries is ideal for mould growth. Fortunately, most moulds also need biologically available water to survive, and we can keep mould at bay by keeping our things dry. (Humans had discovered long ago that drying or salting food preserves it by stripping away biologically available water.)

Mould growth happens when these three components come together:

  • spores
  • organic material
  • water

Spores are everywhere, especially in household dust. Organic material is everywhere. The one factor that we can control is the availability of moisture. Most of the time, we have a pretty good handle on humidity; the problem is if we have a flooding event. In very old buildings constructed with lath and plaster, the lime in the plaster does a good job of fending off fungi. Most modern buildings, however, are made with drywall, which, as Bartlett says, “happens to be fungi heaven.” The core is a mix of calcium sulphate and cornstarch, which acts as a water wick. When we have a flood, we may forget that the moisture has gone up the wall well past the flood’s water level.

So what kinds of health effects can moulds have on people?

The structural components of the fungi, including the spores and hyphal fragments, have antigens that can trigger allergic reactions. Fungi also produce immunomodulating beta-glucans. Mixed organic dust, including fungal spores, can cause a condition known as organic dust toxic syndrome, which manifests as flu-like symptoms as your body tries to deal with all of the antigens. Enzymes produced by the moulds can trigger baker’s asthma, an amylase sensitivity.

If moulds are actively growing, they can produce mycotoxins and volatile organic compounds (responsible for the “mouldy smell”), which can cause irritation and may be partly responsible for sick building syndrome.

Because of these risks, people cleaning up moulds in a highly contaminated environment should take precautions, including a Tyvek suit that minimizes dermal contact (some mycotoxins are dermal toxins) with a fitted respirator to protect mucous membranes. In the case of flood, organic materials need to be dried out or freeze-dried within forty-eight hours, which isn’t always possible if the flood has also knocked out electricity. When the material is dry, control the relative humidity to below 40 per cent, increase air exchange rate, and clean materials with a HEPA-filtered vacuum. Bartlett cautioned that even if the microbes are no longer alive, the antigens they had produced may persist.

***

Inherent vice: internal attributes of objects requiring conservation

External factors, such as temperature, moisture, and mould, can threaten our collections, but another problem is the natural tendency of some materials to self-destruct. Anne Lama, who worked for a decade in preventive conservation at the French National Archives in Paris, is now UBC Library’s conservator, and she spoke about the effects of this inherent vice.

Restoring books is a complex endeavour, explained Lama, because they have so many components: paper, glue, cloth, and sometimes leather or plastic. Most of the book is composed of organic materials, usually long strands of polymers. The longer these polymers are, the strong they are. The polymers tend to fold onto themselves and form covalent bonds, linking one strand to another. Where there are many of these bonds, the fibres have a more crystalline structure, which lends the material strength. Areas with fewer bonds are more amorphous, which gives the material flexibility. However, those amorphous regions are most vulnerable to damage.

For paper, the biggest threat is acidification. Some paper is inherently acidic: newsprint, for example, gets yellow and brittle very quickly. But even paper that starts out neutral can acidify over time as a result of oxidation. Using paper buffered to a pH of 8 or 9 can help counteract those effects. Conservators will sometimes put thin sheets of buffered paper between the pages of a book.

Sizing—starch or gelatin—on paper can react with light and lead to yellowing. After the nineteenth century, alum was a common sizing agent, but it is acidic and essentially impossible to stabilize. Inks used on documents are also a consideration: very old inks, made with carbon and gum arabic, are very stable. Iron gall inks, however, which were in standard use between the fifth and the mid-twentieth centuries, are very acidic; in some old books, the inks have chewed through the paper, and you can recognize letters in the text as holes in the page. Dye-based inks replaced iron gall inks about seventy years ago. These inks are not acidic but may be water soluble; even moisture in the air can cause a loss of contrast between the ink and the paper.

Parchment, which gets an alkaline treatment and is stretched on a frame to dry, is quite stable, although it is vulnerable to moisture. Leather gets a tannin treatment, which makes it more resistant to microorganisms but is acidic. Because of its low pH, leather is vulnerable to red rot, which turns the material to powder. That damage is irreversible.

Conservators may dip pages in a water or calcium carbonate bath to remove some of the acidity in paper. The water bath may also help restore some of the covalent bonds in the paper. To patch holes in paper, conservators can use a filling and repair lacuna, which has a suction table to draw pulp to the holes. Powdered resins and erasers are helpful in cleaning dust—not just surface dust but also dust within the pages. Parchment can be stabilized in a humidity dome, which allows the conservator to gradually increase the humidity until it’s at the desired level.

Conservators have to play a delicate balancing act: on one hand, they try to keep as much of the original item as possible. On the other hand, they need to intervene to prevent damage. Their intervention has to be at once discreet and obvious: they should do their best to use similar materials and techniques as the original to repair damage but also make the repair evident so that it’s clear the object has been restored. They have to use judgement in deciding how much of the patina to leave. Patina gives the object historical value, and you don’t necessarily want to get rid of it.

Preservation Week at the UBC Library—Part I

The American Library Association is celebrating its second annual Preservation Week, and UBC Library has been taking part by offering a series of public lectures and webinars. I’ve taken in a couple of them so far, and although they’re only tangentially related to publishing, I thought I’d still share a few of the tidbits I’ve learned.

UBC Library and digitization

Robert Stibravy of UBC Library’s Digitization Centre gave us a tour of some of their digitization equipment.

The TTI

The TTI is a reprographic copy stand: it has a large surface equipped with a vacuum that can keep documents flat (even those that have been rolled up or folded), along with an overhead 48-megapixel digital camera that can be moved up and down and can accommodate a zoom or telephoto lens, depending on the size of the material. The TTI can image items up to 40 inches by 60 inches, and it can take multiple shots of each pixel, isolating each colour, which allows for excellent colour reproduction. LEDs illuminate the work from an angle, so it’s possible to image a framed work without taking the item out of the frame and without glare from the glass.

The Contex

The Contex looks a bit like a wide-format printer or plotter, but it’s actually a scanner, accommodating material up to 54 inches wide;  it uses a row of light sources and feeds the material through. Whereas the TTI’s single-camera setup means that a very large image can have minute aberrations at its fringes, the Contex has no aberration issues and is ideal for materials such as maps, where the representations must be absolutely accurate.

The Atiz

The Atiz is a cradle (V-shaped) scanner used for bound material such as books. It’s typically used to scan fragile books, because it can capture images from a book without damaging it. You have to turn the page manually to scan each spread, so scanning a rare book with the Atiz is slow process. “But for rare materials,” said Stibravy, “The material always comes first.”

Flatbed scanners

High-end Epson 10000XL flatbed scanners are the stalwarts of the Digitization Centre; they’re used to image more than all other machines combined, and they produce excellent images.

The flexScan

A lot of material to be digitized is in microfilm or microfiche. The flexScan by nextScan is used to scan various sizes of microfiche. Among the Digitization Centre’s projects is the digitization of small-town newspaper microfiche, from the B.C. archives in Victoria. These documents are of enormous historical value, because “back in the day, that was the main vehicle of communication,” said Stibravy.

He also told us about a project launched by Library and Archives Canada in collaboration with Canadiana to digitize microfilm of the Canada Treaty Series and Parliamentary debates. Many of those records are hand-written, and the partner organizations will solicit help to transcribe them once they’ve all been scanned.

The Fujitsu fi-6670A

This high-speed document scanner can scan ninety pages per minute duplex and accommodates pages as small as a business card and as large as tabloid newspaper pages. One project that the Digitization Centre uses it for is to digitize a series of laboratory notebooks for the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. These notebooks contain a historical record of fish populations—information that will be essential to managing fisheries.

Other equipment

The Digitization Centre keeps older equipment, such as a ReVox reel-to-reel tape deck, to digitize legacy media. “Old-school” material, as Stibravy calls is, “is in dire need of digitization.”

OCR

Almost all of the textual material that the Digitization Centre images is sent through an OCR process. The Digitization Centre’s workflow and excellent OCR software (Abbyy) allow for a high recognition rate (mid- to high 90 percent). After OCR the texts become searchable.

***

Sarah Romkey, archivist for Rare Books and Special Collections, and Bronwen Sprout, the library’s digital initiatives coordinator, took the stage to explain some of the library’s digital preservation work.

People think digitization is a way of preserving print material, but digital preservation is its own complex beast with a unique set of  preservation challenges. It involves the “active management of digital information over time to ensure its accessibility” including well-thought-out policies that take into account the long-term impact of changes in technology.

UBC Library began developing its current digital strategy in 2011, in conjunction with Artefactual Systems. Their digital preservation tools include archivematica, an “open-source system designed to maintain standards-based long-term access to collections of digital objects,” as well as AtoM, an open-source web-based archival description software that allows people to search through digital archives and find what they need.

Romkey was also involved with developing policies and procedures for born-digital materials—which start life as digital objects and may never become print objects. One of the tenets of archiving is the concept of “original order”: the order of photos in a box or album, for example, offers important context. On storage media like CDs, however, or on legacy media such as floppy disks, original order is harder to pin down, because files can be sorted and stored in any number of configurations. To prevent the machine used to read the digital files from renaming and rearranging them, the digital preservation team has to use a write blocker to preserve their order.

The team also has to grapple with intellectual property issues. The digital rights to the materials has to be confirmed with the copyright holders. Some donors would like the library to provide access to the material but retain copyright, for example. The library has had to develop a donor agreement to deal with digital copyright.

Sprout mentioned also that an ongoing consideration of the digital preservation strategy was to integrate the growing archives into the library’s existing systems, such as the institutional repository, cIRcle.

***

Low-cost ways to preserve family archives

Karen E. K. Brown, preservation librarian for the University at Albany, SUNY, University Libraries, gave a talk via webinar on preserving family archives.

Preventing damage, she stressed, is far preferable to repairing damage, so it’s important to develop good storage and handling practices.

Family archives matter because they “tell the story of who we are,” said Brown, and give future generations “a record of where they came from.” Family archives can also be an important part of the community’s history.

Family archives—usually a collection of original letters, reports, notes, photographs, etc.—provide historical evidence and data about the person who created them. They may have sentimental value, of course, but some might also have financial value (such as a deed on a parcel of land). They provide proof that an event occurred and might even explain how.

Before storing the archives, Brown said, take some time to organize and document them. On separate pieces of paper, note what you know about each item: for a photograph, who is in the photo, who took it, when and where it was taken; for a letter, who wrote it, who received it, where sender and recipient lived, and when it was sent. Avoid taking notes on the original, if possible; if you absolutely have to, make light, small notes in pencil only. Whenever possible, respect the material’s original order. Diligent organization and labelling can prevent information from getting scattered or misidentified.

The main ways to protect your collections are to:

  • control the environment
  • use the right type of enclosures
  • handle the material as little and as carefully as possible
  • use copies rather than originals

You might also consider how to protect your collections in emergencies.

The environment

Temperature and relative humidity are the two biggest environmental risks. For every 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.6 degrees Celsius), the rate of deterioration doubles. If the humidity is too high, you might encourage mould growth; too low, and leathers and adhesives may dry out. In general, avoid extremes; ideal conditions are 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 to 18 degrees Celsius) and a relative humidity of 30 to 40 per cent. Practically speaking, these conditions are pretty hard to achieve, so just do what you can. Avoid storing your archives in basements, which are prone to flooding and are notorious for humidity, or attics, which can harbour pests and may get very hot in the summer. Store them in the central part of your home in suitable enclosures, and keep your home cool. Measures like sealing cracks in windows and walls and using insulated curtains, as well as dehumidifying damp areas, will not only preserve your archives but also boost the efficiency of your home.

Light is also a major environmental risk; visible and UV light can cause fading and discolouration and can cause materials to become brittle. This damage is permanent and irreversible. Limit your archives’ exposure to light. Display copies if you can, while keeping originals in the dark. Use low-wattage bulbs with dimmers. Incandescent and LED bulbs are preferable to fluorescents, which put out a lot of UV. You can use UV-filtering Plexiglas, but it’s expensive, and the protection doesn’t last forever.

To protect your archives from dirt and dust, which may scratch, be acidic, or act as food sources for pests, regularly dust and vacuum. Vacuums with HEPA filters are best, and heating systems should also be properly filtered.

Storing and handling archives

Never repair items with pressure-sensitive tapes or commercial adhesives, even if they claim to be archival. Segregate acidic items like newspaper clippings or faxes. Remove all paper clips, pins, rubber bands, etc. View your collection items in a clean area, using clean hands.

When caring for books, shelve them fully upright, using bookends if you need to. Oversize books can be shelved spine down (never spine up) or flat. Don’t pull books out from the head cap, and don’t fold over page corners or use Post-It notes. Store books closed.

For documents, hanging files in a filing cabinet are best. Boxes should be sturdy, chemically stable and have snug lids. If using plastic, opt for polyester, polyethylene, or polypropylene and “avoid anything that has a funny smell,” said Brown. Using folders rather than envelopes to store documents minimizes the chances that you’ll damage them when you insert or extract them. Avoid using coloured folders, which can transfer colour to the documents. Any enclosures like envelopes and folders should be acid free and lignin free (lignin is a component of tree bark that can acidify paper and cause discolouration). Buffered paper—which is slightly basic—is also available, but don’t use buffered paper with colour-sensitive documents like blueprints.

For photos, the best enclosures are those that have passed the Photographic Activity Test. Don’t use plastic sleeves if you’re storing photos in high-humidity areas. For albums, use mounting corners, not self-adhesive or magnetic albums. Preserve albums intact whenever possible and store them in boxes.

Oversize collections should be stored flat whenever possible. If you do have to fold, fold items like newspapers along the original centre fold. Stack newspapers in fitted boxes in chronological order. If you have to roll, use the double-tube method: roll it around one tube, secure it with tissue paper and cotton tying tape, then place it into a larger tube capped at both ends, to prevent the item from being crushed.

For AV materials, handle grooved and optical discs by the edges or the centre hole and open reel and magnetic tape by the edges or outer shell. Don’t touch the spools. If it’s deteriorating badly, consult a conservation specialist to get the content copied to new media.

Framing items for home display

People think that framing something is preserving it, but if you’re using adhesives and acidic backing and exposing the item to light, you could be accelerating its deterioration. If you do frame an item, always use 100% cotton mattes and mounting boards. Use a window matte so that the item isn’t in direct contact with the glass. Never use spray adhesives. Don’t fold or cut the item to get it to fit. Keep all original labels. For the best results, consult a conservator for help. When you display your items, hang them in interior rooms, away from heat sources. The mantle may not be the best place to display your family’s treasures.

Prepare for emergencies

When going through your archives, identify ones that are essential:

  • vital records
  • legal records that may help you protect your rights, document your property and financial assets, etc.
  • historically important records.

Make duplicates and store them in a safe place outside of your home. Use a “grab and go” bag to store items that you’d absolutely want to take with you in an emergency. If your archives do suffer damage, items should be air dried or frozen within forty-eight hours to prevent mould growth. Consult a conservator to help salvage damaged items.

Further reading about personal archives

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Preservation Week events continue Thursday and Friday, and I’ll give a rundown of those sessions in a few days.

International editing—a panel discussion (EAC-BC meeting)

Anne Brennan moderated a lively panel discussion about editing beyond Canada’s borders at last week’s EAC-BC meeting. On the panel were:

  • Theresa Best, who spent several years editing educational policy documents in the UK, working not only on texts but also on metadata tagging for digital content;
  • Eva van Emden, who has clients in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, many of whom found her because of her background in biology and computer science; and
  • Carol Zhong, who specializes in academic editing for clients in Hong Kong as well as in Europe.

Both Zhong and Best worked abroad and kept those clients when they returned to Canada. Van Emden began editing for international clients early on in her freelance career, beginning with a magazine based in the U.S., which had posted the job on the American Copy Editors Society’s job board. The posting didn’t mention anything about the editor’s having to be in the U.S., so she applied for it and got it. Although some international clients find editors via EAC’s Online Directory of Editors, Best emphasized the need to be proactive in marketing. “All jobs I’ve ever gotten [with UK communications and editorial services agencies] were because I approached them.”

Van Emden maintains a mix of Canadian and international clients, but Zhong works exclusively internationally, as did Best before she took an in-house position in Vancouver a few years ago. Zhong had worked in house at the Open University of Hong Kong, where she got into academic editing, and after she moved to Vancouver in 2000 she continued working for them. She also helps a lot of professors prepare their journal articles for submission.

Jean Lawrence, who had referred some European clients to Zhong, also attended the meeting and had prepared a detailed handout of international editing resources (available in the members’ section of the branch website). “International academics are under pressure to get published in English-language journals,” she said, and “there’s an enormous need for editors in this area.” Agencies that pair academics up with editors exist all over Europe and Asia. “A good way to find reputable agencies is to look on journal websites,” which often have an “instructions to authors” section that strongly urge academics to have their work edited before submission and may list several agencies they would recommend.

Lawrence warned, though, that there’s a disconnect between what we expect to be paid as editors in Canada versus what people in some parts of the world can afford. And PayPal fees in some countries can be outrageous. An audience member chimed in, saying that on the flip side, to some businesses and organizations in countries like Iceland and Switzerland, Canadian editors are “cheap offshore labour” and that there are opportunities if you look for them. “How much can you charge an international client?” Brennan asked the panel. Best was able to make 30 to 40 pounds per hour; Zhong charges one of her clients 230 Hong Kong dollars per hour. Frances Peck noted that on an Editors’ Weekly blog post was a reference to what editors typically charge, but those rates are from the U.S. and are considerably lower than the going rates in Canada.

“How do you get paid?” asked Brennan. Van Emden has a U.S.-dollar bank account, and she transfers from the U.S. account to her Canadian chequing account. She also keeps an account in Holland. “It’s easy for Europeans to do bank transfers within Europe,” she said. Best and Zhong also maintain separate accounts for different currencies. Otherwise currency conversions have associated fees, and the bank may put a hold on foreign-currency cheques for up to thirty business days.

Brennan wondered, is it helpful—or maybe essential—to speak another language, if you want to edit internationally? Best worked in the UK, so English was all she needed, she said. Zhong speaks French, some Spanish, Italian, and a bit of Cantonese and Mandarin. “Absolutely it helps,” she said. “It helps with the text, because you know how they’ve translated what they’re trying to say.” Van Emden does a little Dutch-to-English translation and so can correspond easily with her clients in the Netherlands. Zhong said that she never has to communicate with her Hong Kong–based clients in any language other than English, because English is the language of academic instruction there.

Brennan asked the panel which style guides or style manuals they had to use. Van Emden said that one of her Hong Kong clients uses The Economist Style Guide, and her U.S. clients use the Associated Press Stylebook. Each journal, in contrast, has its own way of doing things, which can be frustrating. In the UK, Best said, everything is Oxford—Oxford English Dictionary, as well as the Oxford Guide to Style. One of her current clients uses the UN Editorial Manual. Zhong says that her clients sometimes use a mixture of U.S. and UK spelling and punctuation. The Chicago Manual of Style is used quite a lot, and she’s also had to use Harvard style for citations.

Brennan capped off the evening by asking the panellists what they considered the best and worst aspects of international editing. Van Emden struggled with time zones, which Brennan acknowledged could be a problem even in Canada. “In Europe, their working day is our midnight to 9am,” van Emden explained. “The turnaround times are short. Once, one of my projects got spam filtered, and I didn’t find out until eight hours later.” Sometimes, though, time zones can be an advantage, Zhong remarked. If she receives something during the Hong Kong working day, she can spend her day working on it and send it back to the client, who would receive it first thing in the morning. “What I love most [about international editing] is that I get to read interesting manuscripts that I wouldn’t normally get to read. It’s a cultural education. And it’s always gratifying when clients appreciate your work, especially when a journal accepts an article you’ve edited for them.”

PubPro 2014—Registration opens soon!

Registration opens this Friday for the second annual PubPro unconference for managing editors and publication production specialists, co-hosted by the Editors’ Association of Canada’s BC branch and SFU Publishing Workshops. This year, the event will take place on Saturday, May 24, beginning in room 1420 at Harbour Centre, and, like last year, it will consist of a day of participant-driven presentations and group discussions and a mid-afternoon networking tea.

People who do publication project management and production tend not to have the same kinds of professional development opportunities as professionals in other areas of publishing. PubPro is an attempt to close the gap and offers us the chance to learn from one another. Presenters and discussion leaders are invited to share their slides and notes, which are shared with all registered participants.

This year, in addition to sponsorship from Friesens, Scrivener Communications, Talk Science to Me, and West Coast Editorial Associates, the Association of Book Publishers of BC is offering a travel subsidy to ABPBC members outside the Lower Mainland who want to attend. Contact Margaret Reynolds if you’d like more details.

Freelancers who want to chat up a roomful of managing editors are invited to join us for the networking tea for a mere $5. (The networking tea is included for participants who’ve registered for the unconference itself.)

At PubPro 2013, participants presented about such diverse issues as interactive editing, print on demand, and editing platforms beyond Microsoft Word and held discussions about project management software and digital workflow tools. I was heartened to see that the event reached two populations that EAC traditionally has always aimed, but has sometimes struggled, to reach: in-house and senior editors. I’m hoping that participants who came out last year and witnessed the process will be more comfortable coming forward to give a presentation or lead a discussion this year.

For those of you who plan to be there and are thinking about possible presentation or discussion topics, here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • The care and feeding of freelancers: What are some simple ways to build solid relationships with your best freelance editors, indexers, and designers? What kind of training, if any, do you give your freelancers?
  • Testing, testing: Do you test your new freelancers? With a test you developed in house? Is it reliable? Would you trust a third-party test? Would you trust credentials resulting from a third-party test?
  • One house, many imprints: Whether you’re a book publisher that has recently merged with another or a periodical publisher that puts out several different titles, you have a lot to juggle. How have you integrated your workflows? How do you reconcile differences in style and process?
  • XML first: How close are traditional publishers to an XML-first workflow? Some communities, like the technical communicators, have been “single sourcing” for years. What can we learn from them?
  • Editorial archiving: After each project, you’re left with a large stack of documents—whether physical or virtual. What do you keep? What do you recycle? What do you shred? How do you store the documents for easy retrieval? What security, liability, and ethical issues do you need to consider? What is the historical value of a set of editorial archives?
  • Mentorship: Thirty years ago, when publishing programs weren’t nearly as prevalent as they are today, in-house mentorship was the foundation upon which editors built their careers. Does mentorship still have a role to play? What does it look like? What should it look like?
  • Indexing: Are your publications indexed? Should they be? How do you find quality indexers? What is your indexing workflow? Do you have your indexers do embedded indexing?

Please spread the word about this one-of-a-kind event. For more information about PubPro 2014, visit the event’s main page. Read a recap of last year’s event on EAC-BC’s newsletter, West Coast Editor, or my previous blog posts.

UPDATE (April 12, 2014): Registration is now open!