Good Intentions, Bad Consequences “Tape is Evil” is the familiar refrain of&nb
Good Intentions, BadConsequences “Tape is Evil” is thefamiliar refrain of staff at NARA. This seemingly easy and fastfix-it has horrible consequences for archival documents! Usually a repair doneearlier by a clerk handling personnel records is just a piece or two of tape holdingtogether a page which had been accidentally torn. At least the tape, thoughdamaging, holds the pieces together until found by an archivist and referredfor treatment. In St. Louis we recently found one unfortunate page that someonegot a little carried away with it—and taped layers to the front andback of a page, essentially laminating it inside the plastic carriersof the adhesive tape. Over the years the tapeand its adhesive have degraded, discoloring the paper and turning the pagetranslucent. The adhesive on the top-most layers of the tape also oozed out,and caused the page next to it to stick, and also turn translucent in thoseareas where the adhesive came in contact. While we do not have the resources tofully treat the first page, we have made a preservation photocopy of thedocument and placed the original page in a polyester sleeve so that it cannotcause damage to other pages in the record. The adjacent page wastreated with a crepe rubber cement pickup to remove as much adhesive as possible.Ashless powder was then used to remove residual stickiness. Despite theunfortunate repair of the damaging tape, we can retain all information from thedocument! -- source link
Tumblr Blog : preservearchives.tumblr.com
#preservation#conservation