Storing Your Collections: A Crucial First Step
This article originally appeared in Exchange,
a newsletter published by the Wisconsin Historical
Society. (Volume 24, Number 5, Sept/Oct 1982)
It is the sixth in a
series of articles titled Conservation Corner.
The series features information about maintaining
an adequate environment for the storage and exhibition
of historical collections, employing proper collection
care techniques, and recording and cataloging historical
collections.
It was written by Joanne Hohler, retired
conservation archivist at the Wisconsin Historical
Society.
It is easy to understand why professional
conservators, restorers, and binders of precious
books and manuscripts express uneasiness about
the current tendency among curators, archivists,
and librarians to participate in book and paper
conservation. In preservation, a little knowledge
may well be a dangerous thing — and there
is much that even the experts do not know about
the enemies of papers, books, and photographs.
But there is one area where the part-time
or nonprofessional custodians can safely make
a valuable contribution to the preservation
of their collections. They can do so by paying
close attention to the mundane matter of storage.
Few curators have the resources to control
all the factors affecting their collections.
The perfect environment or conditions of storage
can be achieved by very few institutions, even
with prodigious effort and boundless resources.
But virtually every curator has control over
the containers that embrace their collections
— the folders, envelopes, jackets, interleaves,
boxes and cartons that are cheaper, and fundamentally
more important, than the most sophisticated
air-conditioning system. Indeed, the finest
air conditioning and most diligent housekeeping
cannot indefinitely offset the contamination
caused by untreated and unbuffered wood-pulp
file folders and boxes.
The price of poor-quality storage containers
is the inevitable disintegration of the collection,
for the damage they cause is continuous and
implacable. The thoughtful curator will avoid
many small disasters simply by anticipating
the effects of acids generated by decomposing
lignins in wooden boxes and untreated wood-pulp
papers, and the migration of these acids to
contiguous papers; the formation of rust in
steel or tin containers; and the ravages of
moisture trapped in plastic sleeves containing
documents or photos. The solution to many problems
of preservation is embarrassingly simple compared
to the technical complexities of paper chemistry,
atmospheric pollution, and the dressing of
animal skins.
Most collections contain several different
kinds of materials, each of which has its unique
requirements for storage: paper documents;
single parchment leaves; books bound in leather,
cloth, paper and vellum; maps; photographs;
and museum artifacts. But a number of basic
storage axioms are applicable to any research
collection. For example, baked-enamel shelving
is preferable to wooden shelves for several
reasons: the lignins in wood decompose and
form acids which migrate into the collection;
paints and varnishes used to seal the wood
can become tacky under certain conditions and
are vulnerable to chemicals used to prevent
or to treat insect and mold infestations; and
paint resins and peroxide are in themselves
harmful, especially to photographic artifacts.
High-quality, acid-free, and (of course) sturdy containers are recommended for the storage of every kind of paper
and artifact. It
is a simple matter to measure the acidity of
storage boxes by testing the pH of the containers
with an archivist's pen or pH indicator strips.
A pH of 7 is neutral. A pH higher than 7 and
up to 14 verifies as alkaline condition; a pH
lower than 7 and down to 1 is evidence of acidity.
(The pH scale is logarithmic and, therefore,
there are considerably greater jumps in the acid
concentration indicated as the numbers descend
from 6 to 5, 5 to 4, and so on, than one might
suspect.) Any reading lower than pH 6 suggests
the container is endangering its contents. The
archivist's pen, pH indicator strips, and a phloroglucinol
solution kit to test for free lignin can be purchased
from TALAS (130 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011; 212-219-0770).
This is not to say that boxes which fail the
pH test must immediately be thrown out. Indeed,
most boxes in use today are suspect, and boxes
sold as permanent/durable are not all equally
permanent and durable. It is well, nonetheless,
for curators to know the condition of boxes
and folders in which they store collections,
for reasons similar to those that motivate
them to monitor the humidity and temperature
of the stack areas: to warn them when there
is need for remedial action. If there is, and
paper must be stored in boxes of questionable
quality, it should first be placed in acid-free,
alkaline-buffered file folders. The value of
buffered acid-free containers for 20th-century
manuscript collections has been questioned;
however, it is now generally accepted that
because of the tendency for acid in adjacent
papers to migrate from a paper with a higher
acid concentration to one with a lower concentration
of acid, the pH (acid concentration) of the
box and its contents will tend to stabilize
evenly throughout. The pH will be higher and
therefore contain less acid than the most acidic
of the papers, but lower and thus less alkaline
than the most alkaline of the papers in the
box. The overall condition of the paper in
that box will therefore have improved significantly
because of the alkaline condition of the box.
Acid-free storage boxes come in an infinite
variety of sizes and shapes to suit every conceivable
purpose. There are boxes designed to hold manuscripts,
pamphlets, magazines, books, photographic prints,
negatives and glass plates, microfilm, microfiche,
maps, broadsides and other oversized materials,
photograph disks, tapes and more. To compare
specifications and prices, send for catalogs
from several suppliers such as: The Hollinger
Corporation (P.O. Box 6185, 3810 South
Four Mile Run Drive, Arlington, Virginia 22206);
Hollinger International (1111 North Royal Street,
Alexandria, Virginia 22314; 212-586-5666);
Pohlig Brs., Inc., (Century Division, P.O.
Box 8069, 2419 East Franklin street, Richmond,
Virginia 23223; 804-275-9000); Gaylord
Brothers, (P.O. Box 4901, Syracuse, New
York 13221; 800-272-3414); and TALAS. Custom-made
boxes, although very expensive, are also available
from the above distributors. Likewise, any
bookbinder can make boxes or wrap-arounds to
order.
In the face of the realities of funding, optimum conditions of environment and storage may evade curators, but they will have taken a giant first step when they provide proper storage containers. In our next column we will look at the next important step: placement of individual papers and items in folders and envelopes. (See "Storing Your Collections: Following Through.")
The use of alkaline-buffered paper in immediate contact with photographic artifacts is still under study. It would be best to use neutral pH boxes for the storage of photographic materials. Negatives are especially susceptible to the hazards of improper storage, to the gasses given off by low-grade paper envelopes and boxes, and to the adhesives used to construct the box or envelope. The storage of photographic materials is therefore a very sensitive area, and it is prudent to consult the most recent literature or the advice of an acknowledged expert before venturing too far afield. Go back.
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