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Summer has officially ended, but with the start of every fall quarter comes the return of a beloved institution – the “Solid Gold Sound” marching band! The band has a long and celebrated history here at UCLA, but did you know that a fascinating relic of this history is preserved in the University Archives?
The “Bruin Band Book” is a monumental scrapbook compiled from 1961-1970 and includes material from the marching band, their honorary fraternity Kappa Kappa Psi, various globetrotting adventures, and don’t forget the football games! A decade’s worth of history and material culture can be found in the roughly 3’ by 2’ pages of this wood-covered scrapbook, yet years of flipping pages in this massive volume have taken their toll. The book is incredibly heavy and due to its large size, many of the unique photographs, documents, and ephemera attached to the pages were damaged from use. It was selected by Library Special Collections University archivist Heather Briston for a rather unique conservation treatment to transform the unwieldy gathering of unbound pages into a collection of easily accessible and safely housed artifacts.
I am a rising second-year fellow in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation and I came to the UCLA Library Conservation Center for a six-week graduate school summer internship. The scrapbook was digitized at high resolution prior to disassembly to preserve a record of its original configuration prior to my arrival, and I began treatment by documenting the materials and condition of the scrapbook and determining housing strategies that would best suit the needs of the attached ephemera and of University Archive storage.
In the following weeks, I painstakingly removed multiple campaigns of tape and glue from the ephemera, which were freed from their acidic scrapbook pages and housed in archival folders. The wood cover board and original captions and other inscriptions were preserved for their artifactual value.
After this massive reformatting project, a crumbling book transformed into a series of organized materials, able to be safely and easily viewed by researchers, former band members, and others here at UCLA.
In addition to the marching band scrapbook, I had the pleasure of treating and rehousing the endearing Bruin mascot paws, recently rediscovered in the University Archives during the treatment of the mascot Bruin heads(opens in a new tab).
Likely dating to the 1980s, the faux fur of the paws is a bit matted and soiled after years of hard work at UCLA athletic events.
I constructed removable and inert internal mounts for the paws so they would be supported during handling, conservation treatment, and storage. Surface cleaning with a variable speed HEPA vacuum with microattachments lifted away dust and grime and returned some loft to the faux fur of these loveable little paws.
I constructed external mounts to gently cradle the paws for storage and library patron access so they would not have to be removed for viewing. The bruin paws will be reunited with the mascot heads to the delight of many here at Library Special Collections, and just in time for the start of a new academic year! Although I did not attend UCLA as an undergraduate, I now feel a deep connection to its campus and history and am thrilled to be able to help preserve such unique objects for future generations of UCLA alumni. Go Bruins!