Sometimes
what you should do to preserve collections runs head long into the reality of
little money, time and staff. (That goes for personal home collections as well.) Ideal or not compromises must be made in the processing of
collections. The first compromise, of course,
is the housing environment for the collections. Most small institutions and homes do not have adequate controls
of temperature and humidity. None
of the institutions where I have worked do. They try to keep a stable environment, but as I’ve mentioned
before that is difficult here in West Texas.
The
second area that often requires compromises is the use of archival housing
material, such as inert photographic sleeves. Ideally before a collection is processed an appraisal would
have been done and a processing plan written. Those two activities should consider the cost of archival
housing materials before any processing actually occurs. Unfortunately appraisals and budget plans don’t
always happen. So what
happens when you are half way through a project and you have limited resources?
You compromise. We had to do that
on this latest project of photographs.
The budget was limited both in term of staff time and housing
supplies. A brief description of
the condition of some of the photographs is in order here. Some had been used for displays so
there was old acidic glue on the back.
Some had adhesive or masking tape.
Some were sticky where there had been tape. The collection consists of negatives, slides, and prints both black and
white and color. A small
percentage was being sent for digitization while the rest was to be returned to
the institution.
Supplies
on hand included some inert sleeves and a ream of bond paper. The decision was made to use the
sleeves for as many of the damaged photographs as possible. That included any photograph that had
old glue, was sticky, or had evidence of acidic or chemical damage. Torn or fragile photographs were also
sleeved. Where possible all
negatives were sleeved in archival material. When the sleeves were all used the second line of defense
was to separate the photographs using bond paper. The hope was that this would deter the migration of acid
from the damaged photographs to ones that were in decent condition at least until proper sleeves could be purchased. The damaged ones were housed together
in the back of a file as far away from the others as possible and still
maintain order. Other facilities
might have other approaches, but this was what was determined to be the best
that we could do in this case.
For
me the most important lessons are the importance of appraisals and processing
plans and accepting that sometimes you have to do the best that you can given
the limitations of money, time, and staff. That goes for preserving a personal collection as well.
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