Housing Solutions for Preservation Week
One of our key responsibilities in preservation is to house (or re-house) books, documents, and objects appropriately. Many items degrade at an accelerated rate if exposed to environmental factors like light, moisture, temperature and humidity fluctuations, or mechanical damage. One of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to protect library collections from this type of damage is through proper housing. A good enclosure will reduce damage from these sources, and is a major part of any collection’s long-term preservation strategy.
Good enclosures will generally have a few qualities in common. They fit the item snugly, to prevent jostling and to reduce the danger of drops and falls. Effective enclosures are opaque, to prevent light from reaching the object, and are as chemically neutral as possible, so that the enclosure itself doesn’t cause any long term environmental problems. An enclosure should act as a buffer against humidity and temperature changes, and can often protect the item from liquid water, dust, and pollutants. Finally, an enclosure provides a place to put information, like a sticky label or a barcode, that would otherwise damage the item. Keeping in mind all of these guidelines, it’s important to understand that they are only guidelines, and some enclosures, especially those that perform different functions, will have different qualities.
This is all fine to think about, but let’s look at some specific examples of enclosures we use at the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation & Conservation Department. We tailor our housing to the needs of the item, but most of our enclosures fall into a few general categories. It’s important to note that ‘enclosures’ and ‘housing’ are different from storage - for my purposes, housing is an item’s specific container while storage includes the kind of environment the item is kept in.
Loose-leaf documents, oversize posters and pamphlets, as well as other thin bound items that may need a little extra support, are simply housed in folders. This simple step can do a lot of work to protect an item. The folder should compress the item, keeping it flat, and that same compression should keep fragments from moving around in the folder as it’s moved. The folder keeps out light, and when it’s opened, provides a surface to handle the document on that isn’t the table.
It’s important to remember to use acid-free folders that are the right size for the object, and to store like-sized folders together in an appropriate box (sold separately!), so that folders don’t slump or bend. Folders can be stored upright, for smaller items like letters, or flat, for anything larger or for delicate items.
Four-flap wrappers are particularly useful for relatively small bound volumes that require a little extra protection or support. These wrappers can be custom made from 10 or 20 point board for each book and have lots of names, like ‘Tuxedo Box’ and the descriptive ‘One-Piece Enclosure with Four Flaps’.
We typically cut our four-flap wrappers from a single piece of board, which eliminates seams and the need for adhesive. There are lots of variations, so find one that works for you. Wrappers should fit snugly without being too tight, so the book remains stable if it is moved or handled. Like folders, they protect items from light and provide some protection from scraping. This kind of enclosure, and many of the other enclosures described here, also offers what we un-scientifically believe is a certain psychological protection. The theory is that users, or at least some users, see that an item is in an enclosure and, assuming it has value, treat it more delicately. The evidence for this is, as far as we know, apocryphal, but we are an optimistic profession.
Corrugated boxes are often useful for larger fragile books, or heavier volumes that need support for either the boards or textblock while sitting on the shelf. These can either be made by hand in that lab, or can be purchased commercially. Like with wrappers, there are a lot of variations, so if you are making them by hand, find a version that meets your needs. We make some corrugated box by hand for one-off special collections material. The corrugated board provides good impact protection, and the design usually encloses the book entirely.
For the bulk of our collections, we use a commercial vendor to produce boxes because we can enjoy economies of scale. We measure the books in-house using a digital measuring tray, and then send those measurements to the vendor. The vendor will cut board to correspond to each book’s measurements, and then send the boxes to us flat. We construct and label the boxes on-site to ensure a good fit.
No matter the variation, these boxes provide a more robust level of protection. Well made corrugated boxes, in addition to the benefits of a four-flap wrapper, will insulate the item from environmental fluctuations.
Some items, either because of their size or because of their value to the institution (however your institution measures value, which is another whole other subject), merit a very sturdy enclosure. Generally, for bound items, that means a drop spine box, sometimes also called a clamshell box. These are made of binders board and covered in cloth. These can be pretty time consuming and expensive to make, so while we sometimes make them on-site, we often outsource this work. Generally, that involves sending measurements to a vendor, and then they make the box and send it to us. There are lots of variations on the drop spine box, each with different qualities, so talk to your vendor about how they make theirs.
This is a rugged and, frankly, rather attractive option for housing, and we like to take a little time with the labels to make them look nice (aesthetics in conservation is yet another whole other subject). More than the previous options, the drop-spine box seems to signal ‘value’ to whoever handles it, and a good one will fit tightly enough that you should hear a suction sound when it opens. It protects from light, provides insulation against temperature and humidity fluctuations, and can event protect an item from water. Remember to use neutral materials - the fabric you cover your box in could have water sensitive dye or colorant! If the box gets wet, it could then stain the book inside an unpleasant purple (or whatever) color, which defeats the purpose of the box.
Oversized items generally get the same treatment, just bigger; bigger folders for maps, bigger boxes for atlases. There are a lot of other options, but they all take up lots of space. Once you have the housing solved, the question becomes where to put the housing. Large boxes, of any kind, should be stored to that they can be accessed. Some large items can stand upright (that drop-spine box should be providing some rigidity, after all), but really big items need to lie flat. Don’t stack your super-sized boxes too high - after two or three, it becomes increasingly difficult, and potentially dangerous, to get them off of the shelf. Map cases and other flat files are invaluable for storing large, flat items - oversized flat folders should never be stored upright.
What to do if you have a large flat item, but no shelf in the building could hold it in a folder? Rolled tubing is a pretty good answer. It has its own challenges, but it should stick to the guidelines at the head of this entry. Roll oversize items around a tube only if the item is flexible and strong enough. Some items will crack or split if they are rolled. If possible, only roll one item around a tube, as they items could rub against each other while they are being rolled or unrolled. If you have to layer items on the tube, consider how they should be ordered, and interleave them with paper. In the process of unrolling, it can be tricky to keep things in the right order, especially if there is no obvious front or back at the leading edge of an item.
Once the item is on the tube, cover it with some paper to protect it from light, and then tie it up with some cloth tape to keep it secure. Then, put your tube-with-an-item-around-it on a support so the object is suspended. There are lots of ways to roll items and support the tubes, depending on your needs and your storage options. Some vendors sell integrated tube-in-box systems, like this one from Talas, which can be very neat solutions that spare you a lot of in-house fabrication time.
Three-dimensional objects, art or ephemera, need a different approach to housing. Because objects are typically more dimensional, possibly very heavy and/or large, and may have complex constructions, housing is usually unique to the object. There are some general takeaways though. Objects need more support, so the enclosure itself should not fit snugly to the object. Instead, there should be room inside for support materials such as Ethafoam, Volara, or polyester batting. The design of the enclosure should allow the object to be safely and easily moved into and out of the enclosure – which can be quite tricky depending on the object. Housing for three-dimensional objects are also not always opaque, as is the case with works on paper. Unpainted stone, metals, glass, and ceramics, for example, are not as sensitive to light. In some cases, housing that allows the object to be visible can aid in their preservation by allowing researchers and collection care specialists to study and monitor the condition of the object without having to open the enclosure.
Hopefully this is will serve as a useful introduction, and give you a good idea of the considerations involved in appropriately housing your collection materials. Happy Preservation Week!
Alexander Bero, Caroline Evans
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