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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.

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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

***

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!

Christine Middlemass—Libraries in an evolving landscape (EAC-BC meeting)

Christine Middlemass, now the Vancouver Public Library’s manager of collection and technical services, has been at the VPL (recently named best library system in the world by researchers at Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf) for thirty-five years. Over that time she’s seen the library undergo massive change, and she joined us at the March EAC-BC meeting to give us a glimpse into that evolution, noting that developments are happening so quickly now that “what I tell you today will probably be different in a week.”

In the beginning, the VPL aimed to build a balanced collection at each branch. At that time, the time of the card catalogue, it wasn’t easy to know what was available at another location, so each branch was effectively independent. Print was king, with hardcover being the main format, and the library operated on a “just-in-case” basis, meaning the librarians had to anticipate what users would want. Back then, the library would also provide print-based reference services: “I, as the reference librarian, was the search engine,” said Middlemass. “It’s amazing to think about it now, but the information really was all in our heads.” The VPL’s focus was on a creating a product—this perfectly balanced collection—and the strategy “worked great for at least twenty of my thirty-five years.”

What changed? The short answer is technology: thanks to Google and the Internet, librarians don’t get the same number of questions. At the same time, they’re deluged in other ways, today having to consider the entire VPL system rather than focusing on an individual branch. They also have to review a mountain of information, including print catalogues, e-catalogues, databases, self-published authors, and many other sources, when adding to the collection. What’s more, the VPL is expected to buy the same content over and over again, in different formats: print, ebooks, audio, e-audio, DVD, Blu-ray—and all with more and more budgetary pressures. The library no longer owns much of its collection; licenses for ebooks and other electronic media are all different, and each has to be negotiated separately. For example, HarperCollins limits each ebook to twenty-six circulations, and Penguin offers licences limited to one year. “They’re making up their own minds about what they’re going to charge us. And they’re not always sharing the logic behind it.”

According to a January report from the Pew Research Center, 28 per cent of adults read an ebook in 2013 (up 5 per cent from the previous year). 47 per cent of those were under 30, and 17 per cent were over 65. “Part of my career was spent lobbying for quality books in large print,” explained Middlemass. But now people can simply bump up the font size on a tablet. At the VPL, ebooks make up 2 to 4 per cent of lending. Borrowing ebooks can be challenging: if the library has only one license for a book and someone else has borrowed it, you have to put a hold on it and sit on a waiting list for it to be available. Once you get it, you have a limited amount of time to read it before it evaporates off your device. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense to most of us. With a physical book, sure, but with a digital resource?” It doesn’t help that some devices use proprietary file formats and many vendors insist on bundling their content, offering books you want only in packages including a bunch of books you don’t want. Bundling is something librarians and advocacy groups like ReadersFirst are actively fighting. “I don’t want to be using taxpayer money to buy books that people won’t use,” said Middlemass.

These days a selections team of seven librarians oversee acquisitions for the entire system, although each branch still has its own profile that the team keeps in mind. A portion of the library’s collection is “floating”; some items don’t have a permanent home. The VPL also collaborates with other libraries in the Lower Mainland via InterLINK to share collections, and patrons can access other libraries’ collections with an interlibrary loan.

The VPL has shifted from offering a product to a service: librarians now aim to get you the material you’re looking for, when you need it—and the material that people request reflects the library’s changing community. In the early days, The VPL carried mostly English books, with some French; it now offers fourteen additional languages and are figuring out how to add more. The library has strived to balance public demand with acquisitions made based on positive critical reviews and embraces patron-driven acquisition, where, as Middlemass explained, “‘suggest a purchase’ meets interlibrary loan.” Knowing that one of its strengths is its collection of local books, the VPL is strengthening relationships with local publishers, including self-publishers. If the library finds out about a local self-published book, it will usually acquire a copy. “Some authors can be naive and end up spamming everyone at the library,” laughed Middlemass. “But some self-published books are very, very good.”

The VPL is experimenting with different ways of promoting reading, advocating for readers, and bringing readers and writers together, from holding workshops on writing and on self-publishing to hosting writer-in-residence programs and book clubs. It is also promoting its physical spaces, offering quiet places for users to work and read, as well as venues for groups to meet. By the end of this year, the VPL hopes to open its Inspiration Lab, a digital content space that will support users as they generate their own content.

Plain Language: Clear and Simple

In 1991, in the heyday of the push for plain language in government, Supply and Services Canada produced a sixty-page plain language writing guide, in each official language, called Plain Language: Clear and Simple and Pour un style clair et simple. According to one of my colleagues, every federal employee at the time got a copy, and the guides were also available for sale to the public. Three years later, the same federal department published the companion volume Plain Language: Clear and Simple—Trainer’s Guide, which, in 220-odd pages, contains all of the materials a trainer might need to lead a two-day plain language course, including

  • text detailing the steps of (and reasons for) the plain language process,
  • before-and-after examples,
  • exercises,
  • transparencies,
  • a checklist,
  • handouts, and
  • references.

I found out about these resources when I was volunteering for the PLAIN 2013 conference in the fall and was able to dig through the archives of Plain Language Association International. “People still ask for them all the time,” Cheryl Stephens told me, “but they’re not easy to find.”

She wasn’t kidding. As of right now, on Amazon.ca, one “new” copy of the sixty-page English booklet is available for $94.36; used copies are going for $46.39. I can’t find the French booklet or the trainer’s guide on Amazon at all.

And it’s no wonder they’re so coveted. Despite their age, they are still among the best plain language writing guides that I have come across. The smaller booklets are succinct and easily digestible, and the trainer’s guide is detailed and persuasive. The references are out of date, of course, as is some of the design advice, but otherwise, they remain solid references and are certainly great starting points for anyone hoping to learn more about plain language.

The federal government tweaked Crown copyright in 2013, leaving each department to manage its own copyright, but seeing as Supply and Services Canada no longer exists, I’m going to assume Crown copyright still applies to these publications, meaning that I am allowed to make copies of them as long as I distribute them for free or on a cost-recovery basis.

Before I returned the PLAIN archives to Cheryl, I photographed the pages from all three volumes and have rebuilt them from scratch, replicating the originals as closely as possible, down to the teal-and-purple palette that was so inexplicably popular in the nineties. And here they are:

The PDFs are free to download. I also published them via CreateSpace in case anyone wanted a hard copy (the list prices are set to the lowest allowable and are for cost recovery only) but primarily for discoverability, because within a few weeks of this post, all three should come up in a search on the extended Amazon network. The two little booklets are in colour, which is why they’re a little pricier, but I chose to offer the trainer’s guide in black and white, because the only colour was in the “Tips for trainers” inserts and I didn’t think it was worth increasing the price for just those twenty pages. The PDF of the trainer’s guide has those supplementary pages in colour.

Notes

  1. If anyone from the Government of Canada would like to reclaim copyright over these publications, please get in touch. I’m not making any money off of them, of course, and I don’t mind relinquishing my rights over the files, but I would like them to be available.
  2. I don’t know if a French version of the trainer’s guide exists, but if someone has it and would be willing to lend it to me or scan it for me, I would be happy to rebuild it as well. (UPDATE: Dominique Joseph tracked down a copy of the Guide du formateur, and I’ve added the rebuilt file to the above list.)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Cheryl Stephens for providing the originals and Ruth Wilson for supplying a couple of pages that I was missing. Huge thanks also to my extraordinary volunteer proofreaders: Grace Yaginuma, who cast her eagle eyes over the English booklet and trainer’s guide, and Micheline Brodeur, who proofed the French booklet and supplied the translation for the descriptive copy on CreateSpace. Finally, a tip of the hat to whoever created these enduringly useful resources in the first place. We owe you a great debt.

UPDATE—July 21, 2014: A million thanks to Dominique Joseph for finding and sending me a copy of the Guide du formateur, proofreading the rebuilt document, and drafting the descriptive copy for CreateSpace.

Back to school: A self-indulgent personal post

This week I got an official letter of acceptance to the PhD program in SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences, where I’ll be studying knowledge translation. In particular, I’ll be looking at ways to apply plain language principles to mental health research to make it more accessible to patients, practitioners, advocacy groups, and policy makers. I’m thrilled by the prospect of applying my editorial skills and clear communication knowledge to increase health and scientific literacy.

Although I’m heading back to school, in no way will I be leaving publishing; I adore my career, and my plan (although plans may change, of course) is to come right back once I’ve completed the degree. In the meantime, I’ll be dialing down the amount of publishing work I take on to a small handful of projects a year so that I can focus on my research.

I’ll also be drastically cutting back on my volunteer commitments with organizations such as the Editors’ Association of Canada. Over the past two years I’ve been a member of EAC’s Certification Steering Committee, which oversees the national program that certifies editors who have demonstrated excellence in proofreading, copy editing, stylistic editing, or structural editing. This committee is made up of some of the smartest, funniest, and most dedicated people I know, and working with them on projects to promote and strengthen the certification program has been a huge privilege. Leaving this collegial, optimistic, and productive group in August will be bittersweet.

At the branch level, I’ve worked with Frances Peck for the past two seasons (and with Micheline Brodeur last year) on the EAC-BC Programs Committee to set topics and invite speakers for our monthly meetings. We managed to put together an impressive lineup of speakers on fascinating subjects from forensic linguistics and cartography to subcontracting and the evolving role of libraries. Our ideas have spilled over into next season, and whoever takes over on the committee next year will be able to hit the ground running.

I can’t emphasize enough that my experiences on these committees—not to mention the professional relationships and friendships I’ve forged—have been tremendous for professional development, and I urge anyone considering volunteering for EAC to seize the opportunity. I will still be an active EAC member, and I am still happy to volunteer for small jobs here and there or for one-off events, but I’ll no longer have the time for ongoing committee work. If there’s still demand after this year’s PubPro unconference, a peer-driven professional development event for publication production professionals, I would be more than willing to run it again. And I still hope to attend EAC meetings and conferences and write up what I’ve gleaned from the sessions on my blog (although once I’m off the Programs Committee, I may allow myself to miss the odd meeting).

Speaking of my blog, my intention is still to post regularly on editorial, indexing, publishing, and plain language topics, but you might start seeing a bit more of a knowledge translation, health literacy, or mental health bent to my writing. Realistically, though, I won’t have time to do any more book reviews once school starts up. I’d love to keep crapping out my dumb little cartoons, but I might not be able to keep up with my monthly schedule.

Finally, I’d love to keep teaching in SFU’s Writing and Communications program. Changes are afoot in how those courses are being offered, though, so I’m not sure if I’ll still have a role to play. If it turns out that I will, I’ll be sure to post news about upcoming courses.

I’d like to thank all of my friends, colleagues, and mentors who have given me encouragement and advice as I’ve plotted this next step, which I have wanted to take for a long time. I feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing, supportive people.

Luca Pellanda—Posture for editors (EAC-BC meeting)

Luca Pellanda, a registered massage therapist, spoke at last week’s EAC-BC meeting about the importance of posture for good health. Married to editor Eve Rickert, Pellanda knows all about the particular stresses we face. He bases his work on the three concepts in his health triangle:

  • REST
  • nutrition, and
  • mobility.

They are all interconnected. Rest is in capitals, he explained, because “it’s important. But as editors, you don’t seem to do much of that.” Figuring out when and how much to rest can ultimately make you healthier and more productive. Even when we face a deadline crunch, it’s usually better to take breaks and recharge rather than trying to power through.

Sleeping posture

Restfulness usually begins with getting enough sleep, and Pellanda showed how having the right support when you’re lying down—the kind that keeps your spinal column from overrotating at the neck or pelvis—can help you stay asleep longer and give you a more restful night.

Back

When you sleep on your back, make sure your pillow isn’t too high, pushing your neck forward. A pillow under the knees can help keep your pelvis aligned with the spine. A thinner pillow—you can use a folded towel—at the small of your back can also be a huge help, supporting your back and allowing your back muscles to rest.

Front

If you sleep on your front, be aware again of whether your pillow is too high; if it is, it increases the curve of your cervical spine. Although Pellanda doesn’t recommend against sleeping on your front, he does point out that, to breathe, your head needs to be turned to the side, which can fatigue the neck.

A thin pillow in the midriff area keeps the pelvis from rotating downward and causing pain. Again, a folded towel can serve this function well.

Side

Find a pillow that is at the appropriate height so that your neck isn’t tilted and so that your spine is aligned. An advantage of ergonomic pillows is that they are designed to give your ear and nose enough room when you’re on your side. A pillow between the legs helps keep the hips level. Finally, a small pillow in the midsection helps take weight off the shoulders, making it less likely that your shoulders will collapse toward one another as you sleep and strain your neck and shoulder muscles. Your arms, when you’re on your side, may also need their own supports. Pellanda says that a down pillow—provided you don’t have allergies—is a great option, because you can shift the feathers around and adjust the heights of different parts of the pillow to accommodate your head and your arms.

The common theme to all of these sleeping postures is the advantage of the thin pillow at the midsection, which supports your weight no matter your position, helps keep your spinal column aligned, and allows your muscles to rest.

Sitting posture

Even when we have the best of intentions to sit up straight, a lot of us end up slouching. When you lean in to look at a computer screen, the muscles at the back of your neck get fatigued, and your head moves forward. Your shoulders rotate to compensate for your head, and your pelvis has to rotate to compensate for your shoulders. When you have good posture, your spine is supporting about twelve pounds of pressure. If you move your head two inches forward, the cervical spine has to support 32 pounds; three inches forward, and the spine has to support an equivalent of 42 pounds.

If possible, get a comfortable chair that has as many adjustments as possible so that you can customize it to your body. Lumbar support is good but not necessary—a stool can work just as well. Your feet should be flat on the ground or on a footrest with the toes pointing slightly upward. Some footrests are adjustable in tilt and height, and moving your feet while you work is actually very healthy, because it helps pump the blood back up from your legs into your torso. Make sure the front of your seat isn’t pressing into the back of your knees; otherwise it could interfere with blood circulation in your legs.

To get the most out of your work day, vary your posture: sit up straight, sit semi-reclined, and stand up. Being able to switch between positions wears on you less and lets you have longer stretches of productivity. Your body does need to take regular breaks, though, where you stretch or go for a walk. Everybody’s different, so telling everyone to take a break every twenty minutes isn’t realistic. Test out different work cycles of x minutes on, y minutes off to see what works for you. You can set up regular reminders on your computer to take breaks.

If you’re reading not on screen but on paper, find a way to bring the page up to you rather than taking your head down to the page. Angled workstations, whether built-in or add-on, are actually quite affordable, said Pellanda, and they can reduce aggravation. (An ergonomic specialist once suggested a two-inch binder as a low-cost way of propping up proofs and reducing neck strain.)

When you work, your arm should be lower than your desk. The inherent flaw of laptops, Pellanda pointed out, is that if your monitor is at the right height, your keyboard is not—and vice versa. To solve this problem, he advises getting either an external monitor or an external keyboard. “And keyboards are cheaper,” he said. Pellanda sees a lot of shoulder injuries from people using a move-around mouse; a trackball may help prevent some of those injuries.

Standing posture

Standing desks are becoming more popular and, again, it’s important to arrange the workstation so that it suits your body. There are setups that allow you to adjust the position of your monitor and keyboard so that you can sit as well as stand. Pellanda showed us options for stools that support you while you stand but also allow you to lean into them. Some also feature a padded region for the knees so that you can kneel slightly. Being able to move comfortably from standing to leaning to kneeling can lengthen the amount of time you can spend at your workstation without getting too tired.

When standing, make sure that you have supportive footwear. High heels can create all sorts of havoc with your posture because they prevent your weight from being evenly distributed. They can lead to shortening of your calf muscles and other problems, including bunions and plantar fasciitis.

We are used to thinking of our back muscles holding us up when we stand, but the strength of our core muscles plays an important role in our posture. Pellanda suggests swimming as an excellent way to exercise and strengthen your core because it makes you use your muscles symmetrically.

***

Ergonomic desks, chairs, and add-ons might seem to cost a lot of money, but Pellanda suggests that it’s an investment back into your health triangle. What’s the impact on your body of hours of slouching? Developing better posture allows your body to rest and could give you a better quality of life, so that you can actually enjoy it, when you’re done working.