[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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