Letterpress Printing with the Rob Roy Kelly Collection

Posted on September 11, 2026 by Sarah S Norris

This semester, students in my Planning and Understanding Exhibits class will highlight the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection. And what better way to learn about wood type than by using it? Today, Assistant Professor of Practice Carley Law led us on a tour of the collection and the print shop!

iSchool students Anahisa Rodriguez, Jack Menzies, Lili Peel, Alo Saenz, and Tessa Mitterhoff select wood type for printing.

Rob Roy Kelly was a scholar of design who assembled this collection of American wood type specimens during the 1950s and ’60s. Part of the letterpress printing tradition, wood type is particularly known for printing in large sizes, like for posters and handbills. Today, UT is lucky to be the home of the internationally-renowned Kelly collection, which is co-stewarded by the Harry Ransom Center and the UT Department of Design.

While archives and museums often preserve their collections in idealized conditions, the Kelly collection is very much still in use. Students frequently use this historical collection as part of their coursework. This makes for very different standards of preservation and care. Evidence of use in these artifacts that might read as damage in a museum conservation setting may be more likely to read as change or even character in a collection that’s still being used for printmaking.

A piece of wood type has been repaired for use.

A huge thanks to Carley Law and Gabi Williams for helping us use their Vandercook proof press! The students and I are so excited to build an exhibit narrative around this very special collection.

Students printed decorative elements on Vinnie, the Vandercook press.

UT-ACC Civic Deliberation Simulation

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

On November 8, School of Information and Austin Community College students undertook a discussion that can stand as a model for challenging times. Over four hours of structured dialogue, students considered the devastating flood in the Texas Hill Country in the summer of 2025. Students worked in small groups to discuss disaster warning systems, risk data mapping protocols, and transparency in community decision-making. After extensive preparation in Dr. Brian McInnis’ course, Civic Engagement and Technology, students collaborated in seeking proactive solutions to better prepare communities to anticipate and respond to life-threatening flood events.

Professor Sarah Norris (that’s me!) looks on while students evaluate news coverage of the Summer 2025 Texas Hill Country floods.

I was so excited to sit in on this exercise to represent perspectives in cultural heritage disaster preparedness. Joining me were three students from my Disaster Planning and Response course, Sydney Leibfritz, Kylie Burnham, and Hannah Smith, who helped us consider how human safety and cultural heritage preservation can go hand in hand. Juliana Martinez also represented our class by compiling resources on community assistance organizations. It was inspiring to see our students engage in such broad-ranging, interdisciplinary discussion. Their deliberative practice offers an example of how constructive human engagement can move our communities toward brighter futures.

Big thanks to Dr. Brian McInnis for connecting our respective fields of study in this inspiring exercise. I look forward to future engagement in the growing domain of disaster preparedness.

Cultural Heritage Risk Dashboard

Posted on November 17, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

As environmental disasters become more prevalent, they pose increasing risk to cultural heritage collections. And because disaster response is so time- and resource-intensive, cultural heritage caretakers are seeking new ways to stay ahead of the curve.

This semester, my students test-drove the Cultural Heritage Risk Dashboard, a tool under development that centers risk to heritage collections within regional risks of flood and fire. In their work, students took on various emergency-response roles, like being representatives from the State Historical Commission, a regional response team, and a specific collecting institution. Students then explored a version of the dashboard keyed to Travis County, and evaluated how they might make use of it in a disaster. They highlighted benefits and challenges, and provided the development team with institutions not yet represented in the tool.

It’s so exciting to have iSchool students involved in early testing of this new mapping tool. Many thanks to Dr. Adam Rabinowitz and Connor Ogilvie for making the dashboard available to my class!

UT SAA/ALA Resurgent

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

This semester has witnessed a resurgence of library and archives community here at the iSchool through our unified student chapter of the Society of American Archivists and the American Library Association!

Student groups like SAA/ALA are an essential component of graduate training programs. Through these groups, students can practice leadership, establish connections with our local professional community, gain awareness of national issues in the field, and build camaraderie with their colleagues as they move into their careers. Student group involvement also distinguishes candidate resumes in competitive job application pools.

This semester, students have elected a new slate of officers, reinvigorated social media, taken guided tours of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image and UT Collections Preservation and Research Center, and established new communications platforms to discuss course availability. Student advocacy for library and archives education has spurred renewed iSchool attention to future hiring and course planning. That’s a lot to achieve in one semester!

Many UT student organizations have struggled and even dissolved post-COVID with membership and University financial policy issues. Co-adviser Andrea Baer and I are so proud to see our iSchool SAA/ALA buck the trend. This vibrant student community bodes well for library and archives training as we look to next steps for the iSchool.

A Season for Preservation Storage

Posted on November 15, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

Students in my Preservation Science and Practice course are finding that their final paper is unusually timely this year. Their assignment is to write a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a preservation storage facility. An RFP describes the details of a project for an audience of prospective vendors or contractors. Here, the students describe their imagined ideal preservation storage space for architecture and engineering firms that might wish to bid on the work. Students get to show off everything they’ve learned throughout the semester while they practice a skill they’ll need in the field: introducing preservation concepts to a non-specialist audience.

Collections Preservation and Research Facility

High-bay storage at UT’s Collections Preservation and Research Complex is accessed with a cherry-picker when books are requested on campus.

Meanwhile, students don’t need to look far to find two new preservation storage facilities nearby! UT Libraries has recently completed construction of the Collections Preservation and Research Complex, a cold, high-density storage addition to the previous Library Storage Facilities. Here, high-bay storage maximizes capacity, while cool and dry conditions maintain preservation standards for various campus materials.

Architectural rendering of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission’s Archival and Records Storage Facility

And at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, ground has been broken for a new State Archival and Records Storage Facility north of Austin. This facility promises at least 25 years of collections growth capacity, with preservation storage conditions, a conservation lab, and digitization services.

Congratulations to our local institutions for their planning and investment in the future of their collections. At the iSchool, we’re preparing our students to manage projects like these as they enter their careers.

Life, Labor, and Legacy: The Austin State Hospital

Posted on November 13, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

Three cheers to students in my Planning and Understanding Exhibits course for successfully launching their class exhibit, Life, Labor, and Legacy: The Austin State Hospital. Students in this course create a museum-quality exhibit from beginning to end, including building narrative from artifacts, writing interpretive text, creating interactive museum education elements, conducting audience development and promotion, and creating an online exhibit. It’s an impressive effort that many institutions manage over months or years; these students do it in a semester!

Students toured the Austin State Hospital’s historic original building, which served as inspiration for their exhibit logo.

This fall, we’re so pleased to collaborate with the Austin State Hospital (ASH) to show a collection of artifacts that highlight their history. Established in 1856, ASH followed the Kirkbride model of patient support, creating a wide-ranging and self-sustaining community with its own dairy farm, ice factory, sewing and tailor shop, artesian wells, and gardens. Students worked to incorporate both institutional and patient perspectives into the exhibit, conducting research at the Austin History Center, Briscoe Center for American History, Texas Archival Resources Online, and others.

This DeLee-Hillis Obstetric Stethoscope was used to monitor pregnant residents at ASH.

Big thanks to D.D. Clark and John Villareal at the Austin State Hospital for facilitating our work with these historical artifacts, and to Sonja and Andre Burns for sharing insight into modern-day patient experiences and advocacy. The exhibit is on view on the first floor of the UTA building through 11/20, and online at https://lifelaborlegacy.utcreates.org/

Learn more on our Instagram.

Listen to music of the Austin State Hospital on Spotify.

Risk Assessment at the Flower Hill Center

Posted on November 13, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

Students in my Disaster Planning and Response class paid a visit to the Flower Hill Center this semester to conduct a risk assessment. Tucked away on wooded grounds on W 6^th St., Flower Hill is the longtime home of the Smoot family in Austin, TX. The home was built in the 1870s, and family lived there through 2013. Today, Flower Hill is a museum and historical center hidden in plain sight in central Austin!

The Flower Hill Center

My students focused their work on the home’s library, home of the fore-runner institution to the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. A risk assessment is a preservation report that identifies and prioritizes threats to the longevity of a collection or site, and then recommends preventive actions to manage those threats. A variety of risk assessment models are used in the field; our class focuses on the ABC Method published by the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM).

Michele Stewart and Natalie George give students a tour inside the Flower Hill Center.

Working in groups, students identified and proposed action for risks in temperature, relative humidity, water incursion, and dissociation. Through this exercise, they learned about preservation challenges for books, photographs, ceramics, wooden objects, and metals. Big thanks to Michele Stewart and Natalie George for hosting our students to work onsite at Flower Hill and to gain hands-on experience!

New Treatments from the Alexander Architectural Archives

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

This spring, we were so pleased to collaborate with UT’s Alexander Architectural Archives to provide conservation treatment!

I worked on a watercolor rendering of the Student’s Union building at the Imperial College of Science & Technology from 1910. This building was designed by Sir Aston Webb, a British architect known for his work on the Buckingham Palace and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The watercolor was adhered to acidic backing board, which was cracking and creating losses in the painted area. After dry cleaning the image surface, I mechanically removed the image from the backing board and mended existing tears. The resulting work is stabilized for storage and patron access.

Sir Aston Webb Watercolor — Student Union Building at the Imperial College of Science and Technology. Sir Aston Webb, Architect, 1910

Backing removal — Mechanically removing the acidic backing board

Students in my Introduction to Paper Conservation class worked on a set of architectural drawings by Charles Stevens Dilbeck, a 20th-century architect who worked primarily in the Dallas area. The students’ drawings were graphite on tracing paper, rolled for storage. Students removed grime and fingerprints, humidified and flattened the drawings, and conducted simple mends with heat-set tissue. This treatment reduces surface acidity and improves storage and handling.

Charles Stevens Dilbeck drawing — Students worked on architectural drawings by Charles Stevens Dilbeck. The drawing pictured here is captured with transmitted light, demonstrating the tracing paper’s translucency. (Image by David Contreras.)

Thank you to the Alexander Architectural Archives for being such student-friendly collaborators!

SXSW Panel: Second Cities: Culture Beyond the Capital

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Sarah S Norris

I’m so pleased to join the upcoming panel discussion Second Cities: Culture Beyond the Capital at SXSW 2025, happening March 10 at 2:30 PM. I’ll be joining Mat Bancroft from the University of Manchester; Kirsty Fairclough from the School of Digital Arts; and Steve Ray from the Texas Music Office to talk pop music archives and exhibition, scholarship and support. This conversation highlights the British Pop Archive within the University of Manchester Library’s Special Collections. Programming also features wide-ranging discussions, installations, and interactive events focused on education, technology, and culture in in the UK. The event takes place at UK House, and it’s open to SXSW badge holders. Hope to see you there!

All That Glitters: The Practice and Preservation of Hand Tooling

Posted on December 19, 2024 by Sarah S Norris

Hearty congratulations to the students in my Planning and Understanding Exhibits class for spotlighting bookbinding craft and practice in their successful exhibit All That Glitters: The Practice and Preservation of Hand Tooling. This exhibit introduced visitors to the practice of hand tooling, a form of decorating a book’s cover, as a physical signifier of the value of information. Through a collection of tools and books, the exhibit explored the process and labor of becoming a craftsperson and the importance of preserving both artifacts and practice.

A box of gold tooling supplies featured in the exhibit belonged to conservation educator Paul Banks.

The digital exhibit is live, and the physical exhibit culminated in a closing reception in collaboration with the Austin Book Arts Center. We were so pleased to host tooling and stamping demonstrations by Mark Evans of Adolphus Bindery and Mary Baughman. A few brave visitors even got to try their hand at this historical craft.

Mark Evans demonstrates gold tooling at the exhibit reception.

As featured in the Daily Texan, this exhibit was entirely planned and executed by iSchool students. From writing text and designing text panels; to crafting a narrative from physical materials; to digitizing exhibit materials, creating an exhibit website, promoting the exhibit online, and organizing the reception, students became their own exhibit committee and counted on each other to build a professional-level exhibit. What a heartening way to bring our book and information communities together. Three cheers to the class!

Sarah Norris

Library and Archives Conservation

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