Preservation Week 2023: Tips from the Hesburgh Libraries Preservation Team
Preservation Week is an annual national observance sponsored by the American Library Association’s Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures division. Preservation Week inspires action to preserve personal, family, and community collections in addition to library, museum, and archive collections. It also raises awareness of the role libraries and other cultural institutions play in providing ongoing preservation education and information.
In honor of Preservation Week 2023, the Hesburgh Libraries Analog Preservation and Conservation experts offer some helpful tips and resources to preserve personal and shared collections.
Book Handling and Storage
With proper care, handling, and storage, you can extend the life of your books and preserve them for years of enjoyment.
Storing Your Books
When deciding where to store your books, avoid attics, basements, and other places where heat and humidity fluctuate wildly, such as near radiators or air vents. These locations can speed up the degradation of acidic paper, encourage mold growth, harbor unseen insects and pests, and encourage adhesives to fail. Similarly, avoid bathrooms or kitchens where books would be exposed to high humidity and potentially water or food splashes. If you wouldn’t be comfortable living in a certain space, neither will your books.
On the other hand, while we often enjoy opening blinds and basking in the glow of the sun, book covers are easily damaged by regular exposure to sunlight and artificial light. Consider placing your books on shelves in hallways, bedrooms, and other areas where light exposure is minimal, and temperature and humidity are controlled.
Store books on shelves off the ground in case of a leak. Avoid shelving books on their fore-edge with their spines up, as this encourages texts to sag and pull away from their covers. Average-sized books are best shelved upright alongside similarly sized volumes. Fill shelves or use bookends to ensure books are supported and upright rather than leaning, as leaning books are subject to distortion and damage. If a book is too large to be shelved vertically, place it on its side with similarly sized books.
When needing to store books in boxes for prolonged periods of time, choose alkaline archival storage boxes as the acid from a common cardboard box creates an acidic microenvironment that promotes acid degradation. Pack books using the shelving advice above—whether vertically as on a shelf, flat on their covers, or spine down, avoiding stacking flat books atop vertically oriented books.
Handling Books
When removing books from shelves, gently grip the spine at the middle of the book—pushing neighboring books slightly backward as necessary—instead of tugging at the top of the spine, also known as the “headcap,” as it is especially vulnerable to damage.
Transport books safely by limiting the amount you carry by hand. Support them close to your body to avoid dropping the books, which can result in significant damage.
Handle books with clean dry hands and minimize eating or drinking while handling books. When reading, it is best to cradle books with the hand or support with other props, as many books are not designed to be opened flat to 180° and can suffer stress and damage if forced open to a wide angle.
Avoid “dog-earing" (i.e., folding the corners of pages to mark your spot), highlighting, or writing in books that you wish to preserve. Instead, use bookmarks to temporarily hold your place. Avoid sticky notes, paper clips, and rubber bands as they tend to cause damage: paper clips can rust and leave an indentation on the page, sticky notes can leave a residue, and rubber bands can tear pages.
Framing and Display
Today’s frame shops offer an overwhelming array of materials and options for framing artwork. A knowledgeable framer will explain the benefits and limitations of each material and guide you in making choices to achieve a beautiful and protected finished product. But how do you know who, or what, to trust? Here are a few tips to help you be an informed consumer and how to safely display your piece to preserve it for years to come.
Benefits of Frames and Quality Mat
A frame protects artwork in a few ways. It creates a secure package to house the work, protect it during handling, and shield it from direct contact with dust, dirt, or oily fingers. Frames are available in many materials and finishes to suit the artwork and coordinate with the surrounding area. Artwork may also benefit from a quality mat, which can aesthetically enhance the piece and functionally isolate the artwork from direct contact with the glass or glazing. Since the mat is in direct contact with your work, it is important to select a good quality material such as cotton rag that is free of lignin. Lignin is an organic compound that is unstable and breaks down into acids, causing rapid yellowing and embrittlement in paper, which will transfer to your artwork. Be careful with terms such as “acid-free” and “archival” as they can also be misleading. For instance, acid-free materials can become acidic over time if they contain impurities such as lignin.
Hinging Methods
Artwork may be attached to a mat with a variety of hinging methods. Look for materials that can be easily removed and will not damage the work over time. A water-soluble adhesive like wheat starch paste is commonly used with lightweight kozo paper to hinge paper-based works directly to a mat. Pressure-sensitive adhesives like tape, even “archival” acrylic-based tapes, are not appropriate for direct contact with artwork since they are difficult or impossible to remove without causing damage. Most pressure-sensitive tapes do not age well and can stain your material as they decay and yellow over time. Other methods of securing works such as photo corners that do not require a permanent attachment are great where possible, as they are non-invasive and permit easy removal from the frame. Ask a professional to direct you to the safest products for your application.
Glazing and Light Exposure
Another important component of a frame is glazing. Glazing protects the work from exposure to the surrounding environment and also impacts how the artwork will be seen. Glazing may be glass or acrylic, but either material may be enhanced with coatings to reduce the most detrimental and commonly overlooked risk to artwork: light. Sunlight entering through windows and interior lights can fade pigments, dyes, and some inks. Watercolors are particularly prone to light fading and benefit from UV-filtered glazing.
Anti-glare glazing is another option that can help reduce glare that interferes with viewing the artwork. However, these coatings can create a slight blurring effect that may be unsatisfactory for some viewers. Acrylic glazing can be advantageous since it weighs less than glass and is safer if broken, and for this reason, it is often preferred for larger works. On the other hand, acrylic can build up a static charge and should not be used with dry or loose media such as charcoal or pastel that may be attracted to its surface.
Carefully considering where to display your framed artwork is equally important. It’s best to hang artwork where it will not be exposed to significant sun exposure, as visible light promotes chemical decay and fading. Damage is related to both the intensity and duration of light exposure, and ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which is emitted by the sun and some artificial light sources, is especially damaging. While UV-filtered glazing can significantly reduce fading and chemical deterioration, it is not a fool-proof form of protection. It’s best to hang artwork where it will not be exposed to regular direct sunlight or other intense light forms.
All forms of light are damaging, and light also creates heat which accelerates chemical processes. Even modest temperature increases escalate the rate of decay, particularly in organic materials such as paper, textiles, and leather.
Climate Control
Fluctuating temperature and humidity in areas with poor climate control (e.g., attics and basements) can cause expansion and contraction which over time may appear as cracks, cupped or flaking paint, or distortions in the surface of the object. Materials such as parchment are especially sensitive to high and low humidity conditions and can suffer cockling, cracking, and shrinking in response to swelling and contracting with changes in moisture. While not always immediately obvious, such damage can be significant and permanent. Give careful consideration before hanging treasured family heirlooms where temperature and humidity are unregulated. A reproduction or inexpensive print may be a more appropriate choice for riskier locations such as bathrooms, above or below an air vent, near stoves, or in areas subject to direct sunlight.
Well-Meaning Interventions
Here are some frequently encountered DIY repairs that, while well-meaning, are misguided interventions that exacerbate damage—and some alternative approaches that better promote ongoing usability.
Scotch Tape
While scotch tape is great for wrapping presents and many other tasks, when used on book pages and documents it typically causes problems. The adhesives in clear, pressure-sensitive tape tend to degrade and discolor over time, resulting in significant damage to the paper. A dramatic example of degraded tape damage is this 1862 letter from Confederate soldier M.A. Harvey to his wife, “My Dear Eva.” While this letter would have been relatively straightforward to mend with Japanese paper and paste, the tape caused permanent damage, and days of work were required to reduce the disfiguring stains and chemically and physically stabilize the letter.
Mending Detached Boards and Loose Book Spines
When the boards of a beloved volume become detached, simply applying duct tape to reattach them might seem like a swell solution. Though duct tape can temporarily reattach book covers, it will eventually cause significant damage and shorten the book’s lifespan. Similarly, where the spine of a book has become loose or detached, it might seem that adhering a loose spine covering directly to its text block would be a simple fix. However, the spines of most modern books are not actually glued to the spine of the text by design. Adhering the spine covering directly to the spine alters the book’s mechanical structure and impedes its functioning, resulting in stress points that create further damage as the book is used.
To retain loose book covers or spines, consider tying the book with cotton twill tape. Even better, alkaline book boxes from a preservation supplies vendor offer protection from further damage or loss while helping to moderate acidic degradation processes.
Leather Dressing and Decay
Applying leather dressings such as leather conditioner, neatsfoot oil, or shoe polish to leather books hampers their preservation. While one may enjoy the appearance of polished leather spines in a bookcase, leather dressings may darken leather and further dry out the skin as well as cause stickiness and/or cause significant discoloration to the leather, known as leather bloom.
If a leather-bound book is exhibiting signs of leather decay such as “red rot”—crumbling leather that creates a dusty mess that can transfer to the book pages during use—consider ordering an archival alkaline box for the book.
The repairing of books that one wishes to remain functional over time is best left to trained conservators or technicians. For further preservation resources, preservation supply vendors, and information on locating a conservator, see the Hesburgh Libraries Preserving Private Collections guide.