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.  

record the new too

I've been bugging my parents recently to see some of the "artifacts" from my childhood. My mom has my first baby tooth. My Dad has some of our baby shoes and our Christmas lists from kindergarden.

I want to record these items, much as if they belonged to a long ago ancestor. This is my history - and it's in danger!

The Christmas lists were written on adhesive paper, with little squares of sticker paper on it. The adhesive is gone and it's holding to its backing by habit. I'd like to see about what I can do to preserve it. For now, I've scanned the Christmas lists and posted them online.

I also found the photos from that Christmas. I was really shocked to find that we had the photos to match. We don't always have photos of special occasions - I think there's a large gap of Christmas morning shots after the third year. I'm really pleased to be able to have both, and they help to date each other. The photos are dated Apr '91, which means that it's Christmas 1990, when we were in kindergarden.

Archival Preservation

Thanks to a few websites, I have a bit of a better idea of some archival products to use on my documents. Brodart - Library Supplies and Furnishing has some 'how to's':

• Use cotton gloves to handle documents and then handle them as little as possible. (Although in the Archives class I took, the prof mentioned that cottons gloves are not always the best choice. Sometimes bare hands are better on paper documents, since the gloves can make, for example, book pages hard to handle.)
• Test documents with a pH pen to determine whether or not the document is acidic or alkaline, which will help determine what products to use. (In my Archives class they said that no documents are ever free of this scale, but are always one or the other).
• Keep documents out of the light when possible, and in dry areas.
• Put all documents in plastic sleeves (mylar) with no more than 10 documents per sleeve. Place archival paper or tissue between documents.
• Buffered tissue is for cotton, flax, lenin and jute, as well as color photos. This neutralizes acids.
• Non-Buffered tissue is for wool, silk and textiles, as well as b&w photos. This has a 'neutral' pH.
• De-acidify newspapers, which are very acidic.  There are sprays for this.

So, that's a start. Now I just need to see about reviewing my documents to see what I need specifically.

Preservation

I have some old documents in my possession that I want to preserve. I have two old marriage licenses/certificates from the 30s & 40s, death certificates as old as 20 years and a family Bible from the 1910s(?) that's literally falling apart at the seams.

I've looked at products that are available, but it's confusing on what to buy. Everything is being stored in archival safe boxes, but beyond that... Should I use acid-free tissue or paper? Buffered or non-buffered? Is it safe to use a de-acidification (is that a word?) product on these old documents?

So, it's off to do a little research...