[Novalug] Imaging old cookbook pages
Beartooth
beartooth@Beartooth.Info
Tue Dec 9 16:04:50 EST 2014
On Tue, 9 Dec 2014, John Franklin wrote:
> Beartooth has considerable experience with that.
99 44/100% *vicarious* experience, and half a generation
back, but of some use perhaps to people in the DC area. The
Library of Congress (at Capitol South on MetroRail, where I worked
for fifteen years, 1983 - 1998) has one whole huge department to
deal with that, and I used to volunteer to give tours (for which
I got tour guide training). You could go visit and ask for advice
there. (No help likely, inasmuch as their own backlog is crushing
in more senses than one, but they certainly know what there is to
know -- up to date.)
The ones turning brown are undergoing embrittlement. What
that means is that the paper contains traces of H2SO4, left from
the manufacturing process; and H2SO4 has such an intense
attraction for water that it will break the cellulose fibers to
get it. In time, it will reduce all the paper to dust, even if
it's never touched.
The ones that are just getting worn out may be reparable,
though replacement would probably be better. There is such a
thing as "preservation microfilming," which LC and some others
apply to their great treasures; but I can't imagine trying to
cook from a microfilm, even if you had your own reader.
Your first best hope is that some of these books may have
proved so popular for so long that they're still being printed,
or have been recently.
(I don't say edited; imnsho the newest edition of The Joy
of Cooking, for instance, is hardly worth owning -- especially if
you still treasure an older one. But that's the horrible example;
you just have to get any new edition in your hands, and look it
over. Or you may know other German cooks whose opinions you
trust.)
There are importers in New York (Mary Rosenberg) and
Boston (Schoenhof's). Or you might prefer either Blackwell's in
Oxford or the Akateeminen Kirjakauppa in Helsinki (which, last I
knew, was the biggest book dealer in Europe).
abebooks.com is a co-op of many second-hand book dealers;
it might be a huge help in this case.
Some sort of photo-reproduction from your own copies may
or may not be feasible, according to how badly embrittled they
are. (LC had ones in my time whose pages shattered at a touch
like crystal goblets (or light bulbs) dropped on rocks.) But doing
it would be long and tedious, unless you happened to find it fun;
and if you found anyone willing to do it for hire, he would want
a king's ransom, and be crazy (or duplicitous) to guarantee his
work. If you can find a really old old-timer at LC, ask about the
copying of the original card catalog.
What would I do? If (and only if) all else failed, I'd go
through them (brittlest first!), typing out only the real
favorites -- and when next in Germany, buy two or three of the
best cookbooks on the market, looking especially for promising
recipes I hadn't gotten in all my labor.
--
Beartooth Staffwright, Curmudgeonly Codger
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog
(supposing you care), but you can tell who has a mind.
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