Histories of Heritage Imaging at the John Rylands Library (Part 1)

Photography of the collections has been a core part of the activities of the John Rylands Library for more than a hundred years, but the histories of this important scholarly practice have yet to be written.

The first photographic studio in the library was in place by 1912 and has developed over the years into the world-leading Imaging team of today. [1] From the outset, it is a story of pioneering technical experimentation, with a far-sighted acknowledgement of the importance of new media reproductions as a support for research.

While for many years the photography studio was seen primarily in terms of its function as a service provider, more recently archival records and historical optical media objects have begun to be recognized as research objects in their own right, and as hugely valuable resources not just for the history of the institution and the collections, but also for museum and library studies, and cultural and intellectual history in the widest sense.

A large part of this visual history has been stored in less than ideal conditions in the library basements. We have now begun a long-term project to clean, catalogue, digitise, rehouse, and make available online this previously uncatalogued resource. It comprises several thousand glass plate negatives, from quarter plate to 12x16 inch in size and similar early film negatives.

Boxes of glass negatives in the library basement (JRL240202043)

As part of the newly formed MA in Library and Archive Studies through the University of Manchester and the John Rylands Library, six students chose to take their placements on the collaborative Histories of Heritage project between the imaging, collection care and metadata teams.

In the first of the series of blog posts from the students, Iris Matthews and Sabeth Hagenkötter introduce us to the collection care element of the project and the work they have carried out on the Rylands historic glass plate negative collection.

The Collection Care Placement

By Iris Matthews and Sabeth Hagenkötter

There is so much integral work that goes on behind the scenes during big projects before the public can see the end result. The project in which we have been taking part is one of those.

We are two MA Library and Archive placement students who were chosen to work with the Collection Care team on the Imaging Archive and Digitisation Project. One of us comes from a conservation background, whilst the other comes from an art history background, and we were both very excited about being a part of this project.

Iris cleaning a glass plate [Image credit: Laura Snow]

Our contribution consisted of cleaning the glass plates before they were then sent off to the Cataloguing/Metadata and Imaging Teams for digitisation. The plates come in various sizes, although we started off with the smallest plates, the quarter plates, which are 4.25 inches by 3.25 inches. The plates have two sides: an emulsion side, which contains the photographic information, and the glass side, which is the support or vehicle for the photographic emulsion.

It is important to wear nitrile gloves when handling glass plate images. The emulsion is fragile, and many environmental factors can degrade it, including the oils naturally found on the skin. Additionally, these slides often have sharp edges or breaks, which can cut the skin.

It is crucial that the correct side of the plate, the glass side, is cleaned carefully. The emulsion can easily be damaged if it comes into contact with the cleaning solution or is mishandled.

The typical cleaning set up: cotton wool, ethanol solution, and the glass plate [Image credit: Iris Matthews]

To clean the glass side, we loaded a swab with cotton wool and used a diluted 10% ethanol in distilled water solution to gently clean the plate and remove any dirt or stains. The plate was left to dry whilst we inputted the information about the plate and its old envelope into a spreadsheet, then we gave the plate a new identifying number before the dry plate was placed emulsion side up into a new archival envelope. The completed spreadsheet and the newly cleaned and rehoused glass plates were then sent off to the next department.

Glass negative image of the St John Fragment (Greek P 457)

The plates came to us in the same order in which they were stored in the basement. That is to say, no order at all, as it is an uncatalogued collection. This means that they show many different items in the collection, such as John Lydgate’s The Siege of Troy (English MS 1, which can be viewed on Manchester Digital Collections here), the St John Fragment (Greek P 457, which can be seen here), and original images of the John Rylands Library, as seen below.

A glass plate showing The John Rylands Library interior [Image credit: Sabeth Hagenkötter]

Collection Care covers a wide range of practices and has a hand in most of the projects that go on at the Rylands. This includes making sure items are fit for exhibitions, helping reader services by making sure items are fit to be handled, or ensuring that the items in the collection are in the best suitable environment: one that is the right temperature and humidity, and free of pests.

We are lucky that the team has given us an insight into their work and current projects. We had the opportunity to make our own notebooks, which gave us many skills that are useful when it comes to repairing books in current library circulation, we worked through an incoming collection for the British Pop Archive to ensure that there are no moulds or pests entering the archive, and we helped to do condition checks on certain manuscripts in preparation for digitisation. We have also had the opportunity to undertake hands-on conservation practice, such as helping to consolidate red rot on leather bound books, or cleaning water-damaged ledgers.

Sabeth using Klucel-G to consolidate a book for red rot [Image credit: Iris Matthews]

The whole experience has been incredibly interesting and exciting, and we cannot wait to see the results when the collection is digitised and put online for everyone to see.

[1] The studio is described in the Bulletin in 1914 thus: ‘A photographic studio with a complete equipment of apparatus has been installed in the library, and placed in charge of a fully qualified assistant. By this means it has been possible to render valuable assistance to scholars both at home and abroad by furnishing them with photographed facsimiles of pages from any of our rarer printed books and manuscripts. Again and again, in the case of requests for transcripts and collations of passages from some important text, it has been found possible, at very small cost to the library, to provide rotograph photographs of the passages, which were at once more trustworthy and more acceptable than the best handmade transcript could possibly be. This new department is fraught with possibilities of world-wide benefit’, ‘Library Notes and News’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 2.1 (October 1914), p. 4.