23 January 2009

Preserving Newspapers

I'm guilty of abuse toward my newspapers.  I had to run all over town the day after the election to get them, but I haven't taken any steps to preserve them.  Today, I made an effort to correct my laziness. 

Before getting started, I wanted to educate myself on preservation techniques.  It was actually a little frustrating to find this information.  Websites for the Library of Congress and International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions concentrate on preservation through microfilming.  Obviously, this isn't a viable option when looking at just a few newspapers. Otherwise, these groups give very little information on how to economically preserve a small number of newspapers.

I found two websites that did have pretty good information on how to preserve newspapers: the State Archives of Florida and HistoryBuff.com.  

After reading the advice on these sites, my preservation plans changed a bit.  I had been planning to store my newspapers folded, but I see that this is not recommended.  I decided to interspace my newspaper paged with acid free, archival safe tissue that I purchased at Archivers. I also placed an extra sheet of tissue behind the newspaper, just in case. I'm storing them, at least for now, in an archival safe art portfolio. This will allow me to store them partially sealed, but still able to breath.  They are protected from light and moisture.  They are stored extended, and not folded over, which would apparently concentrate the acid in the paper to those parts of the paper. Hopefully I've properly protected these newspapers.  

before
during
after

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