Archives deteriorating

Records describe what has been done and the outcome of the activity. It is important that records are kept safely and that unrecorded changes are not made. Therefore, records have to be controlled in much the same way as documents. It is important that records are clearly identified, accessible and retained for as long as the customer requires. This can be up to 30 years but could be much shorter. The archiving of records can be in any format. However, it is important that they do not deteriorate and that there is a mechanism for reading them if they are in electronic format. 

Space saving by archiving images not specimens. No degradation of images unlike specimens, which may deteriorate over time in archive. 

There shall be archives for orderly storage and expedient retrieval of all raw data, documentation... Conditions of storage shall minimize deterioration of the documents... in accordance with the requirements for the time period of their retention. 

T he problem of deteriorating books in library and archival collections has been described by many authors the severity and the urgency of the problem have long been apparent, but more detailed information is available in articles by Lowe (J) and Williams (2). Several useful deacidification processes are available which can be applied to sheets of paper or to single book pages, but the labor-intensive nature of such page-at-a-time procedures limits their use to relatively small numbers of the more valuable books. 

The Records Conservation Section, staffed with 20 persons, of the Administration and the Technical Services Branch currently provide conservation and restoration services for paper materials to the Public Archives and National Library of Canada. Studies, both within and without the Public Archives, indicate the present collection is deteriorating more rapidly than the Records Conservation Section can restore it. Moreover, the collections are growing at increased rates, and the stability of materials to be acquired is projected as no better than materials already in the collection. 

Thus, on examination, the Public Archives found itself meeting its acquisition and service missions but failing to maintain its general collection in useable condition. The Public Archives of Canada investigated alternate approaches for extending the useful life of its collections because the techniques practiced by the Records Conservation Section gave no promise of bringing the rate of records deterioration under control. 

Paper conservation, as known today, is new to Spain. Until a few years ago, custodians of the nations records on paper and parchment could only despair at the deterioration taking place. The restorers—craftsmen, in reality—scarcely were trained to tackle the broad problem. The pleas and warnings of those who wanted something done went unheeded. Here and there individual authorities sought professional help from abroad, but results proved minimal. In 1969, a dramatic change took place. Conservation was raised from the empirical to the scientific level. The breakthrough a law that provided for a centralized agency to restore the nations archival and library materials, determine the causes of deterioration, and train personnel to carry out these tasks. 

The techniques used by the Central Library were relatively sophisticated for the time local librarians were given short indoctrination courses in those techniques and learned how to make simple repairs on books. However, in the majority of Spain s libraries, bookbinders, if they were available, doubled as restorers in archives, people did paste-and-paper repairs in addition to regular duties. No one, not even at the Central Library, was available to confront the broader problems of deterioration facing the custodians of the nation s records on paper and parchment. 

The periodic review of the data contained within the electronic archive often tends to be overlooked. Organizations must ensure that they monitor the records for signs of deterioration over the record retention period, including the media used for storage, if this is being done electronically. 

Ampuls Ampuls are small, flask-shaped, hermetically sealed glass containers containing a sterile medicinal liquid intended for hypodermic injection, either subcutaneously, intramuscularly, or intravenously. Also, ampul is the class name adopted by the National Formulary V N.F.) (1926) for the solutions in these containers. The ampul was invented in 1886 by the French pharmacist Stanislas Limousin (1831-1887) in response to a need by physicians to conserve their stocks of injectable solutions, which were difficult to transport and deteriorated rapidly due to the development of mold. In his classical essay, Ampoules hypoder-miques nouveau mode de preparation des solutions h)q)erdermiques, published in Archives of Pharmacy (1886), Limousin outlined the essential directions for their manufacture ... 

The final report and any amendments, all raw data, documentation, protocols and any amendments, and specimens (with the exception of specimens subject to degradation) generated as a result of a nonclinical laboratory study shall be retained in an archive. The archive facility needs to be set up for orderly storage and expedient retrieval. Conditions of storage shall minimize deterioration of the documents or specimens. The archives do not necessarily have to be an in-house facility the laboratory may contract with commercial archives to store materials in a GLP fashion. 

It stands to reason, that all the records, data, specimens, samples and documents which are produced and compiled in the context of GLP studies, and of GLP test facilities, including documents and records of the Quality Assurance have to be stored somewhere for possible future examination. In order to allow for a later reconstruction of studies from this documentation, this storage cannot consist of simply creating a pile of all study-related and test facility-related material in a dusty attic or a dank cellar. The first consideration in archiving is that all this material should be stored under the proper conditions suitable to protect the contents of the archive from untimely deterioration . This technical aspect of the archive facilities proper has already been dealt with in section 5.4 (see page 180) and need not be taken up again... 

Although the GLP Principles allow the disposal of specimens and samples, when their condition precludes further meaningful evaluation, the individual responsible for the archives has to pay attention also to the opposite clause of the Principles, namely the requirement that the storage conditions should preclude untimely deterioration. If for example, the jars containing preserved tissues cannot be sufficiently sealed, so that the preservative slowly evaporates, it lies in the responsibility of the archivist to periodically check these jars and to refill them with the respective preservative, if the need arises. Consequently, it would be considered a violation of the GLP Principles, if such specimens were just left to dry out, and the deteriorated specimens were then to be destroyed. 

Archive facilities should be provided for the secure storage and retrieval of study plans, raw data, final reports, samples of test items and specimens. Archive design and archive conditions should protect contents from untimely deterioration. 

In this section, we will concentrate on heat ageing which is intended to reproduce the effects of ageing in the dark and in the absence of air pollutants. Chemical reactions in general, and those which cause deterioration of paper in particular, slow down when the temperature is decreased and accelerate when the temperature is increased. In response to this fact, some libraries and archives have built stores that can maintain a low temperature to prolong the life of their collections. There is an equation that was defined by Arrhenius, which can be used to predict the effects of temperature on the rate of chemical reactions/ageing, here it is ... 

Another option for inhibiting deterioration is to store plastics at temperatures below ambient. At present, low temperature storage is only routinely applied to photographic archives and not to three-dimensional plastics objects, so we have limited practical experience of its effects in real time. Pilot studies on the effect of low temperature on the physical properties of selected plastics indicate that storage of plastics in a domestic freezer is an alternative to the present inhibitive conservation options for long term-storage (Shashoua, 2005). 

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