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UVA Library Preservation Internship with Studio Art and Art History Majors

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Two powder-coated book presses in the foreground of a labspace with white walls and black countertops.

Preservation Services, within UVA Library’s Edgar Shannon Library, is providing an internship for a rising 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year Studio or Art History declared undergraduate major who is interested in the conservation/preservation of cultural heritage. The opportunity will be presented as a 6 or 8-week long internship offered between May 25-July 2026, with precise dates to be determined when the intern is selected. The intern will learn about the tools, techniques, and ethical considerations of library and archives conservation, and they will work primarily with Sue Donovan, the Conservator for Special Collections. The internship will be structured around treatment and housing of both circulating and special collections items.

The intern will be expected to participate in the following projects:

  • Database work: input information regarding historical conservation treatments into a spreadsheet.
  • Complete training on the lab’s XRF analytical device and conduct testing on books suspected to contain arsenic in the cloth.
  • Mend damaged paper bindings from the Ma Kiam Library of Chinese classic works.
  • Create custom housings for special collections as well as circulating books.
  • Work on Capstone project: Mend and stabilize an important ledger from the Wingfield papers that provides invaluable historical information about African Americans in the 1900s in Albemarle County.
  • Other projects as needed by the department.

At the end of the internship, the intern is expected to write a blog post about their capstone project, and they will create a 5-8 minute presentation for the UVA Department of Art on August 7.

Qualifications:

Preservation Services is looking for interns who can demonstrate:

  • Time management skills, reliability, courteousness, and teamwork
  • An interest in conservation and preservation
  • Ability to focus on tasks that require precise handskills and mental focus
  • Ability to communicate effectively about their interests and projects in both verbal and written forms
  • A strong work ethic and availability to work 240 hours at Shannon Library during the internship period

Application Process:

Please submit a CV, contact information for two references, a cover letter discussing how you meet the qualifications listed above and how the internship will help you meet your own goals, and a maximum of three images of recent projects (knitting, painting, drawing, 3-D objects, etc.) that showcase your handskills by April 3rd, 2026. The applicant will be awarded $3600, with half paid by May 31st and half by June 30th. Please submit all application material to Sue Donovan at suedonovan@virginia.edu. Applicants will be notified of decisions by April 24.

Photo-Process Phriday… Blueprints!

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The Conservation Lab is taking over the Photobook Phriday post this week to feature a Photographic process: blueprints!

Recently, the conservation lab has been working on blueprints from the Charles M. Robinson Collection. A blueprint is essentially a photographic process used to copy architectural drawings. A support (paper or piece of linen) is coated with a material that is sensitive to light. Then that support is put in contact with a photographic negative or object and exposed to light, which makes the lines of the negative or object water soluble. The now water-soluble lines are then washed off, leaving an image that is mostly blue with white lines where the negative had touched the surface. A fixing solution is usually also required, which prevents re-sensitizing of the surface.

Image of a blueprint showing the inside of a building. A hand at the top left of the image is holding back half of the blueprint to demonstrate it has been torn in half.
Example of a blueprint from the Charles M. Robinson collection that has been torn through the middle.

Charles M. Robinson was an architect in the Richmond, Virginia, area who was active between the early 1900s-1930s. UVA Library’s Special Collections acquired Robinson’s archives as well as successor architectural firms in 2019 because of the wealth of information regarding the design of public buildings and schools for Black and minority citizens in Virginia.

The blueprints in the lab are designs for the Acca Temple in Richmond, at the northwest corner of Main and Laurel streets. The design for the building was inspired by Mosque Temples and opened in 1926. Today, the location is known as the Altria Theater.

The Acca Temple blueprints were working blueprints, which means they were heavily used by the architects and construction workers on site. In this set of blueprints, there are 22 individual pages 36″ x 36″ square that are bound together with brass brads between a linen cover sheet that is 72″ x 36″. They are on two different kinds of supports: paper and coated linen, and both kinds are stained and torn, showing the evidence of their use. The archivists responsible for processing, or describing, this collection identified this set of blueprints as needing help from Preservation primarily because of the large tears through the middle of page 6 of the Acca Temple blueprints, as well as other pages.

CAV Collections Conservator Brittany Murray dry cleaned the blueprints with soot erasers and cosmetic sponge erasers. The designs were so dirty that without cleaning them, it would be nearly impossible to adhere torn pieces back together. Conservator for Special Collections Sue Donovan then reached out to photograph conservators to ensure we were applying the most up-to-date information about blueprint mending to the items in the lab. The Conservators first tried applying strips of thin Japanese paper, previously coated with an even layer of wheat starch paste and then reactivated with an ultrasonic mist of deionized water. These mends were unfortunately not strong enough to hold on the paper or the linen, however. So Sue used wheat starch paste to realign the edges of jagged tears and then applied strips of a thin Japanese paper called Tengucho to the verso of the blueprints with an even layer of wheat starch paste.

A blueprint is being mended, with a stack of board weight down with a black weight on top of a torn section of the blueprint.
The overlapping areas of the large tear through page 6 of this set of blueprints are reattached to each other with paste, weight down under a small stack of blotter and board and a heavy weight.

These mends were dried under small stacks of non-woven polyester strips, blotter, board, and weight. Blueprints are sensitive to alkalinity and light, so the blotters were tested to make sure the pH was suitable for blueprints prior to using them for the mending process. While the blueprints were in the lab, they were covered up to protect them from light when they were not actively being worked on.

Image of an off-white paper with a tear in the middle that has been mended over with a lighter, white transparent paper.
Close-up of the mends on the verso of this blueprint, showing the Japanese paper, which looks whiter than the surrounding paper, applied over the tear.
Close-up of a mended tear through the wording "Framing Plan Manager's Office Floor Slab" on a blueprint. the tear was mended on the verso of this same area in the previous photo.
The recto of the same mend, showing the tear through the media.

The blueprint has now been completely mended, and work will continue on the other blueprints in this collection, including blueprints made on coated linen.

Image of a blueprint with a large tear going through the middle of the page that has been mended.
The same blueprint from the first photograph, now mended.