Library materials, conservation

Wachter, Paper Strengthening Mass Conservation of Unbound and Bound Newspapers. Paper presented at the Preservation of Library Materials Conference, Vienna, April 7-10, 1986. 

Conservation Research Use of Dielectric and Microwave Energy to Thaw and Dry Frozen Library Materials... 

All flooded paper materials—books, periodicals, documents, rare books, files, and records—were frozen as quickly as possible to prevent biological growth. A restoration effort to save the library s contents and a parallel on-site applied conservation research program were established. The goal of this research program was to develop, whenever possible, new techniques and to improve traditional methods for restoring flood-damaged library materials (1). 

A ny discussion of a national preservation program for library materials must review the documents, concepts, and events that mold our present thinking. Such a program is nebulous in the broad sense, but specific in its component parts. This is attributable partly to the relatively short time the idea of a national preservation program has been a subject of serious discussion and partly to the varied constituencies involved and interested in the preservation of such materials. Librarians, scientists, and conservators relate to such a program in different ways and tend to consider most important those facets of the program most germane to their interests and skills. 

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. 

Canha, G.D.M. (1967). Conservation of Library Materials. Metuchen, Scarecrow Press, NY. 

While the principal value of the book is for the professional chemist or student of chemistry, it should also be of value to many people not especially educated as chemists. Workers in the natural sciences—physicists, mineralogists, biologists, pharmacists, engineers, patent attorneys, and librarians—are often called upon to solve problems dealing with the properties of chemical products or materials of construction. Eor such needs this compilation supplies helpful information and will serve not only as an economical substitute for the costly accumulation of a large library of monographs on specialized subjects, but also as a means of conserving the time required to search for... 

G.B. Kelly, Nonagueous Deacidification Treatment en Masse for the Small Workshop. Paper presented at the International Conference on the Conservation of Library and Archive Materials and the Graphic Arts, Cambridge, 1980. 

However, much can be done to minimize damage caused on the shelves or by library users if the material is stored in acid-free folders. They are easily fabricated and many types suitable for archive use are available commercially. It is essential that clearly acid papers be stored separately from nonacid ones in order to prevent migration of the acid. Some conservators place a sheet of buffered paper in the folder to absorb free acid from the print. 

Alkalaj, Stella, "The Chemical Laboratory for Hygiene, Conservation and Restoration of Damaged Written Materials in the National Library of Cyril and Methodius, Sofia, Restaurator (1969) 1 (2) 87-91. 

Conservation Research Fumigation and Sterilization of Flood-Contaminated Library, Office, Photographic, and Archival Materials... 

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. 

At the Library of Congress current estimates indicate that for materials presently identified as rare, with permanent research value, complete conservation will require about twelve thousand five hundred man years of work. Other parts of the collections are in equally serious condition (1). However, archival conservation in a library setting diminishes the role of restoration of individual artifacts in favor of carefully selected actions more immediately directed toward the greatest possible prolongation of useful life—hence our philosophy and practice of phased preservation. In practice, useful life may be projected as a thousand years or more for some items, or as little as fifty years for others. Thus, in the broadest sense, conservation comprises methods of buying time, of putting off that inevitable day when organic materials are reduced to dust. 

NEDCC is located in Abbot Hall on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. It is the only regional center in the country specifically oriented to conservation of library and archival materials as opposed to museum collections. Having begun life in the basement of the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, we are pleased that we now have windows on all four sides. We have a large, spacious paper conservation laboratory, and specialized equipment such as our Israeli-made leaf caster. This is used to fill losses in book pages or documents and to reinforce crumbled edges. 

NEDCC always has viewed itself as a prototype, and has hoped that other centers would spring up to serve other regions of the country. Although the concept of regional conservation has been recognized widely by the conservation profession, and by cultural organizations, as the most promising solution to the nation s massive conservation problem, only a few centers have been established successfully. Of these, only NEDCC specializes in treatment of library and archival materials. 

Study, on a scientific basis, what causes the destruction of graphic materials, and what constitutes proper conservation measures to establish standards for the construction and installation of archives and libraries. 

Keep the General Directorate of Archives and Libraries informed of the problems that arise in the conservation and security of bibliographic and documental material. 

Acidity has long been recognized as a major factor contributing to the deterioration of cellulose-containing materials. In an effort to combat the harmful influence of acidity, researchers have developed a variety of deacidification techniques capable of decreasing the acid content of most paper-containing objects that are found in museums and libraries. These techniques often are used by conservators in the care of books and works of art on paper (I). Nevertheless, the nature of the chemical processes that cause papers to yellow and to lose strength remains somewhat obscure, and the role of acidity in these processes also is not well understood. 

Burgess, H. D. The Color Reversion of Paper After Bleaching , Preprints The Conservation of Library and Archive Materials and the Graphic Arts Cambridge, 1980 Conference, 171, (1980). 

Conservation equations include physical quantities, such as density, viscosity, thermal conductivity, or specific heat. These quantities do not depend on conservation equations but are unique to a specific fluid or material that needs to be used to represent a real-world physical system. Therefore, a CFD engineer has to choose appropriate physical properties from experimental data, literature, databases, or built-in libraries embedded in CFD and multiphysics software tools. Only properly assigned physical properties will adequately describe conservation equations. 

---