The Preservation of Archival Materials

BOBADE B.R.

DIRECTOR, MANUSCRIPT DEPT.

D.A.C.R.I., GOVT. OF INDIA, HYDRABAD

INTRODUCTION:-

At the outset, We focused primarily on the preservation of retrospective, paper-based collections. In the
course of our work it became clear that portions of the discussions would be applicable to collections of
photographs, moving images, and, to a lesser extent, video and sound recordings on magnetic tape.

The decision model is less appropriate to electronic records, since it was written primarily in terms of
the physical characteristics of paper and secondarily of film. Archival records on magnetic media, as well as
video and audio tape, certainly require special environmental controls and housings due to their physical
instability. However, the continual obsolescence of commercial tape formats and playback machinery is equally
an impediment to long-term preservation with these media. In addition, selection decisions for the preservation
of electronic records, including when, where, and how to maintain the preserved information, are best made
before the records are created. Indeed, because of the rapid proliferation of new technologies for the capture and
retrieval of information, the permanent retention of information residing in these inherently unstable formats
will require archival intervention in decisions regarding the very creation of those records. Nonetheless,
decisions concerning what is important to maintain are the same because they are based on appraisal criteria.

The Information Explosion

During the past quarter century, advances in information technology have made it possible to create
records in quantities that stagger the imagination. For example, in 1989 the National Coordinating Committee
for the Promotion of History reported that "the federal government now produces every four months a stack of
records equal to all those produced in the 124 years between George Washington and Woodrow Wilson." At the
same time scholarly research has expanded in both breadth and depth, resulting in the emergence of whole new
subfields and increased interdisciplinary research efforts. Because of the increased ease with which data can be
manipulated and analyzed, it is now possible to argue potential research value for virtually any collection or
even for a single document. As a result, archivists now face not only an exponential physical growth in the
volume of collections and a rapid proliferation of new media but also an explosion in the definition of what
constitutes meaningful information. This has made it increasingly difficult to select information of enduring
value for any particular topic and to decide preservation priorities for those records that are in archival custody.

The Concepts of Preservation, Life Expectancy, and Enduring Value

Difficulty in discussing preservation issues arises because the term itself has had several diverse
meanings in archival usage. This lack of a common and specific understanding of the meaning of preservation
for archives has impeded systematic planning. In a recent article, James O'Toole explored the changing and
varied meanings to archivists of both preservation and permanence. He noted that the idea of preserving records
has at present three different meanings: identifying and acquiring the original documents; providing
conservation treatment to deal with chemical and/or physical problems; and transferring the information to an
alternative medium.

A fourth meaning can be added: providing a level of environmental control, housing, care and
maintenance that will retard further chemical deterioration and protect materials from physical damage. This
meaning of preservation is what this report describes more fully as responsible custody.

And finally, preservation encompasses not only individual repository actions to assure the protection of
existing holdings, but cooperative efforts to identify and preserve documentation beyond repository control.

Indeed, systematic preservation management entails planning early in the life cycle of collections. In
many cases, archivists and preservation professionals can work actively with records creators to identify records
with archival value prior to the time when they will be transferred to an archives. Records creators can be
encouraged to keep such records on more stable media and to establish archivally sound storage, handling, and
maintenance procedures. These actions will forestall the need for later repairs, treatments or reformatting.

O'Toole also pointed out that the "technical distinction between extending the so-called usable lifetime
of documents (a more modest and realistic goal) and preserving them literally forever was often blurred." The
concept of usable lifetime or, preferably, life expectancy can be used to clarify different expectations about the
ultimate survival of different collections by describing the anticipated longevity of the various media on which
they are recorded. Life expectancy is determined both by the chemical and physical properties of the medium
and by how it has been housed and handled.

Only when records are held in responsible custody--that limits the extent of physical damage and slows
the rate of deterioration--will life expectancy reach full term. To extend life expectancy beyond a medium's
natural limit, conservation treatment, such as chemical and structural stabilization to contain or reverse the
effects of chemical deterioration and/or mechanical damage, must be applied. Another option is to preserve the
information contained in the documentation by transferring it to another medium, such as microform.
Recognition of the limitations imposed by life expectancy is a constant factor in archival management. If
preservation is understood to comprise a series of actions to prolong the life expectancy of archival materials, as
outlined above, it is necessary to rethink the concept of enduring value. The premise that all materials
accessioned by a repository are of enduring value is fundamental to archival practice. There is, however, an
inherent contradiction between the concept of enduring value as a description of intellectual content and the
concept of life expectancy, which recognizes the limitations imposed by the physical medium.

Given the technical complexity and cost of conservation and the financial and organizational barriers to
reformatting, only a fraction of the holdings of any given archive can be expected to receive either kind of
treatment. Therefore, while repositories will continue to impose the standard of enduring value upon their
acquisitions, such judgments need to be tempered by a recognition of the realities imposed by the life
expectancies of various physical formats. This report is intended to help define and clarify these distinctions.

Archival Storage and Preservation

General care and handling
The term "archival quality" is a term used to designate materials or products that are permanent, durable,
and/or chemically stable and, therefore, can be safely used for long-term preservation purposes.
When selecting archival supplies for collection storage, buy only from reputable suppliers of archival
products. Many commercially available folders, sleeves, and envelopes are acidic. Plastics may be
contaminated or have harmful coatings or plasticizers, and adhesives are often acidic and can stain
permanently.
Handle archival materials as little as possible.
 Always wash your hands before handling valued material. Wash them frequently during extended use of
collections.
The use of cotton gloves will protect archival material from oily fingerprint transfer.
Do not eat or drink in storage, exhibition, or work areas. Liquids are easily spilled and will also stain
archival materials. These stains are often difficult, if not impossible, to remove.
Do not use metal paper clips or rubber bands to secure objects together. Individual folders or sleeves offer
a better way to organize and combine multi-sheet records.
One touch with a pH testing pen will indicate if an item is alkaline or acidic. This will help to determine
the next course of action.
The effects of light damage are cumulative! Turn off direct sources of light, such as table lamps, when
items are left unattended. Use UV light filters on lights and windows. Always protect valuable items from
exposure to sunlight, moisture, dust and dirt.
Book Care and Book Repair
Place books upright on the shelves using bookends when the shelf is not full.
Use a book cradle or padded supports when viewing fragile volumes.
Books should not be exposed to sunlight. The damaging effect of UV rays can be minimized with the
application of Brodart Book Jacket Covers.

General archival storage

Archival storage boxes are constructed from P.A.T. Certified materials to ensure the integrity of long-term
storage. This archival material is crafted into solid, secure boxes that resist dust, dirt, and light infiltration.
Rigid, metal-reinforced corners create a secure seam and resist crushing even when stacked. This
combination yields a container that will protect its contents for generations to come.
To read documents, lay them on a flat surface and minimize handling.
All documents should be housed in a protective sleeve made of polyester (Mylar).
When retrieving a single item from a folder, first remove the file folder from the box, then remove the
item.
When placing papers in file folders, there should be no more than ten sheets per folder; the more valuable
the documents, the fewer the sheets.
Interleave documents using acid-free Bond Paper or glassine sheets.
Newspaper clippings are very acidic. They should be treated with deacidification spray and stored in their
own folders to limit acid migration.
Store materials in a relatively cool, dry, dark location.
Interleave large items with buffered paper for support.
When choosing an acid-free tissue to use, consider the type of artifact you are storing. Cotton, flax, linen, and
jute should be stored using a buffered tissue to neutralize acids. Wool, silk, and textiles are best stored using
unbuffered tissue which has a neutral pH.

Archival photo storage

Storing your collection in appropriate Photo Storage Boxes, envelopes, sleeves, and albums. will protect
against light, dust, handling, air pollutants, and rapid fluctuations in temperature and humidity.
 The Photo Activity Test was developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to evaluate
materials that come in contact with photographic emulsions. Materials that pass the test help ensure safe
long-term storage of negatives, slides, and microfiche.
All negatives and prints require protection from finger oils, acids, dust, dirt, pollution, and abrasion. Use of
cotton gloves when handling your negatives and prints will protect against damage.
Buffered vs. Unbuffered: The ANSI standard for color photo storage is unbuffered envelopes. The ANSI
standard for black and white photo storage is buffered envelopes.
Photo storage should be made of strong, durable and chemically stable material. Any material that comes
in contact with photographs should pass the PAT test. Do not store photographs in commercially available
"magnetic" photo albums. Choose acid-free materials and pages.
Extend the life of your photo album by using archival material. The ideal photo album would be
constructed with 100% archival materials including a protective cover, a hinge that allows the book to
comfortably expand, and size that is easy to shelve or store.
If you choose to use plastic page protectors, purchase them from a recognized archival products company.
Many "PVC-free" plastics that are available through discount stores are not archival.
Attach your photographs, postcards, and other items with archival photo corners or choose an acid-free
adhesive. This will prevent discoloration of tape and materials.
Store slides in a cool, dark, low humidity environment to avoid fungus growth. Avoid long exposure to any
light source including daylight, fluorescent lamps, illuminated viewers and light boxes.

Basic Principles

The following principles were developed to provide a focus for action and identify the basis upon which
a national consensus for preservation strategy can be structured. The principles assert the interdependence of
preservation and all other aspects of archival management. Preservation cannot be considered in isolation and
cannot be removed from custodial responsibility without risk. At issue is both the viability of the current record
and the quality of documentation for American society.

A Responsible Archival Management Program

Preservation is an integral component of overall archival management and must be blended into an
archive's mission, policies, and programs. A responsible archival management program is founded on a realistic
and clearly stated concept of institutional mission and bases its decisions on a well-defined acquisition policy.
Such a program accepts responsibility for active management of the preservation of its collections, including
using clearly defined criteria to set priorities among its collections.

The Fundamental Importance of Environment, Housing and Ongoing Maintenance

Appropriate environmental and housing conditions and a program of ongoing maintenance, i.e.,
responsible custody, are the most important and critical measures that can be taken to prolong the life of
archival collections. The life expectancy of archival material is directly affected by the conditions under which
it is produced, stored, used and maintained. The most cost-effective long-term application of an institution's
resources is to invest in environmental controls, appropriate equipment and supplies, and ongoing programs to
monitor and refresh or reformat information on unstable media in order to ensure its continuing availability. The
concept of responsible custody implies that, when repositories cannot provide these basic conditions, they
consider other options, such as transfer to a repository that will provide responsible custody for information of
long-term value.
The Universe of Documentation

Selection for preservation encompasses a series of decisions starting with the choice of materials to be
taken into archival custody. The materials currently housed in repositories are but a small portion of the
available documentation. Archivists have come to recognize that modern society is unevenly and poorly
documented. Cooperative analysis and planning are required to assure that adequate and appropriate
documentation is identified, selected and placed under appropriate care, either in the hands of the records
creators or at an archival repository. Nor can the physical preservation or reformatting of archival records be left
to chance. Careful planning and selection are therefore also needed so that the limited resources available for
active preservation measures are expended to insure that a broad representation of the universe of
documentation remains viable into the future.

The Integration of Information and Responsibility

Modern society is documented in published and unpublished records, visual, aural and artifactual
sources. Researchers use these forms of evidence in an integrated fashion, but curators often collect, describe
and provide access to each format separately. Decisions about collections--appraisal, description, preservation--
require a knowledge of the relationship of one form of evidence to another. Thus, the appraisal of archival
records is based on knowledge of the related documentation in all formats. All curators--librarians, archivists
and museum staff-- must work together to coordinate the full range of decisions about collections so that
information is preserved as an integrated whole rather than in isolated bits and pieces.

Recommendations

We recognize that preservation does not depend only on activity at the repository level. Real change is
dependent on action on a number of fronts. These recommendations are therefore addressed to a variety of
audiences, all of whom play an important role in the documentation of American society. Each group bears part
of the responsibility to ensure the preservation of some portion of the universe of documentation. The goal of
identifying and preserving all significant documentation can be achieved only through the cooperative efforts of
archivists, other custodians of our cultural heritage, and the administrators and others who make decisions and
allocate resources to carry out those tasks. We have endeavored to delineate roles, define responsibilities and
suggest some actions that will move us toward our goal.

Recommendations to Resource Allocators

Traditionally, institutional resource allocators and both government and private funding agencies have
distinguished between published and unpublished materials in selecting preservation initiatives in libraries and
archives for support. Rather than serving the broadest needs of the universe of the nation's documentation, this
approach reinforces the continued fragmentation of information and the segmentation of custodial
responsibility. The task forces therefore urge a realignment of funding categories so that they reflect more
appropriately the needs of the total universe of documentation.

The intent of these recommendations is not to request increased funding to reduce the burden on
individual repositories or administrators; rather, their purpose is to suggest a better use of scarce resources
through a more balanced allocation of existing funds. Funding would therefore reflect the value of all
information and result in more consistent policies and stronger and clearer requirements on repositories when
they make a budget case, request an appropriation, or apply for grant funds.

To make a significant impact on the archival preservation problem nationwide, the task forces recommend that:

1. Funding and administrative priorities recognize the basic principles outlined in this document.
2. The work of federal funding agencies be coordinated more closely with one another.
 3. Funds be made available for planning activities that address issues of identification and selection of
significant information from the universe of documentation.
4. All submissions of requests for support of preservation activity be required to include repository
acquisition policies, to stress the importance of responsible collecting.
5. Funds be made available for the improvement of environmental and housing systems in repositories, to
promote responsible custody.

Recommendations to Professions

In order to combat the format-based approach traditionally used by libraries and archives, the task forces
encourage members of the relevant professions, working both as individuals and through appropriate
professional associations and organizations, to consider information in a broad and integrated context and to
cooperate in the identification and preservation of our cultural heritage. To those ends, We recommend that:

1. The implications of this document be reviewed, assessed and considered for each relevant profession in
order to further the goals it articulates. For example, the Society of American Archivists (SAA), or the
professional archival community, could develop guidelines for the creation of acceptable repository
acquisition policies.
2. Prerequisites be developed for consortial projects that apply the basic principles outlined in this
document. For example, national bibliographic databases could request a statement of acquisition policy
from archival repositories whose holdings are included in the database.
3. Institutions be urged to develop cooperative strategies to preserve the complete documentary record.
4. The American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries be encouraged to
disseminate this document and draw their members' attention to the importance of its basic principles to
the management and operations of libraries, particularly those that incorporate archives and special
collections.

Recommendations for Projects and Future Actions

1. Documentation Projects to be Developed: It is recommended that projects be developed to identify

and analyze segments of the documentation of modern society and plan for their appropriate
preservation. Concepts such as documentation strategy--a plan to assure the adequate documentation of
an ongoing issue, activity, function, or subject--may guide these efforts.[5] However, it will be
important to incorporate consideration of physical preservation as well as of preservation of information
content into planning and decision-making. One of the challenges will be to find agencies, organizations
and individuals who can carry out these projects. Efforts to assess how preservation can be incorporated
might start with existing documentation projects. For example, the continuing work of the Center for
History of Physics on the documentation of modern physics or the documentation project conducted by
the SAA Congressional Roundtable on the U.S. Congress might serve as initial case studies. New
projects might be developed for areas such as dance and higher education where existing research and
documentation efforts can provide a foundation for broader studies.
2. Information to be Gathered and Shared: To facilitate an inter-institutional approach to archives
preservation, it is recommended that data from individual repositories about preservation be aggregated
and shared at the national level. Data are already being gathered by various organizations for a number
of different purposes.

Additional projects could:

identify what preservation-related information can be collected, compiled and shared at the national
level;
assess the data already collected and the existing information-gathering processes and mechanisms for
their applicability to this set of needs;
 assess the costs associated with the various processes for collecting information on preservation of
various media;
develop a new data-gathering instrument or revise an existing one;
ensure that ongoing responsibility for gathering, aggregating and disseminating the results is lodged in
an appropriate organization.
refine the preservation field of cataloging formats so that preservation information can be recorded
online for all types of media at the time collections are cataloged and so that consistent vocabulary is
used.

Background: Archival Selection

It has been difficult to do national planning or even to evaluate the relative merit of individual projects
to preserve archival materials because there are no objective measures by which to judge the strength of a
collection or its priority for preservation. In July 1991, the Commission engaged consultant Margaret Child to
manage a project that would develop a collaborative strategy for preservation of and access to archival,
manuscript and photographic collections. Two task forces--one to examine appraisal theory and practice and
one to examine documentation strategy--were formed.

The groups were charged to examine existing guidelines, theory and practice in order to determine their
applicability to the selection of important collections for preservation. The first was asked to explore ways to
encourage repositories to introduce preservation considerations into the appraisal process as well as to use
appraisal criteria and procedures to make preservation decisions. The second was charged to consider whether
some of the methodologies and activities of the documentation strategy concept could also be used to provide a
useful framework for posing preservation questions and making selection decisions.

Each task force met three times. The discussions gradually expanded focus from selection per se to a
comprehensive consideration of the full range of archival concepts and functions because all were seen as being
related to preservation. The second part of the third meeting was a joint session to discuss the interrelationships
between the reports produced by each task force. Despite some inevitable disjuncture’s, there was enough
congruence to allow them to be merged into a single document.

An application was made to and an award received from the Research Fellowship Program for Study of
Modern Archives at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, in order to allow systematic and
intensive review of the work of the task forces by an advisory committee composed of leaders of the archival
profession with an interest in preservation issues. The four and a half day seminar in July 1992 was attended by
fifteen task force and advisory committee members. The discussions were extremely wide-ranging and resulted
in major revisions of the report. Sections of the decision model survey developed by the appraisal task force
were also revised or replaced. The final text is therefore the product of an extended evolutionary process and
represents the combined views of a broad spectrum of opinion.

The Task Force on Appraisal was chaired by Robert Sink of the New York Public Library and
composed of: Frank Boles, Central Michigan University; Paul Conway, Yale University Library; Edie Hedlin,
Consultant; Sarah Wagner, National Archives and Records Administration; and Christine Ward, New York
State Archives. The Task Force on Documentation Strategy was chaired by Timothy Ericson of the University
of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and composed of: Bruce Bruemmer, University of Minnesota; Richard Cox,
University of Pittsburgh; and Karen Garlick, Smithsonian Institution. The Advisory Committee included: Larry
Hackman, New York State Archives; Anne Kenney, Cornell University; James O'Toole, University of
Massachusetts, Boston; and Helen Samuels, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Also in attendance at the
Bentley meeting were: Nancy Elkington, Preservation Program Officer at the Research Libraries Group; and
Evelyn Frangakis, Manager of the Society of American Archivists Preservation Management Training Program.
Notes
1. See Background, last page.

2. Page Putnam Miller, Developing a Premier National Institution: A Report from the User Community to the
National Archives, Washington, D.C., National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History, 1989.

3. James O'Toole, "On the Idea of Permanence," The American Archivist 52, no. 1 (Winter 1989): 11-25.

4. op. cit.

5. Documentation strategy is ordinarily designed, promoted and in part implemented by an ongoing mechanism
involving archival documentation creators, records administrators, archivists, users, other experts, and
beneficiaries and other interested parties.