| Question Home |
Position:Home>History> How do I keep 5, 130 yr old news papers in good condtion?Question: How do I keep 5, 130 yr old news papers in good condtion!? My uncle gave me 5 Harper's Weekly issues from the 1870's but the plastic envelope they came in has been opened!. I don't want them to get ruined by anything!. Sooo!.!.!.!.!.what's a way to keep them in good condition!? & What are some things that could damage the papers that I need to know about!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: It's the sulphur content in wood pulp paper that makes it yellow and become brittle and disintegrate!. Really valuable books and papers can be de-acidified, but it costs around $200 per book and in most cases is not worth it!. Buy 100 or so sheets of rag content paper (25% rag), the sort sometimes used for theses!. It may cost $25-30!. You want paper made out of cotton and not wood pulp!. Put the sheets of paper between the issues of the newspaper!. If there are valuable pages in any of the issues (plates my Matthew Brady, etc!.), put rag paper next to them!. Make sure the issues lie flat!. Don't fold them!. If you keep them in plastic envelopes make sure the plastic is archival quality!. If you don't know, assume it is not!. Put the rag paper between the plastic and the front sheets in that case!. Store the papers in a room without much temperature variation and with low humidity!. Keep away from sunlight!. You can buy glass or mylar that screens out ultra violet rays, but nice as they are the _Harper's Weekly_ probably aren't rare or valuable enough to go through too much anguish over!. If they have been annotated by Mark Twain or Herman Melville, that's another story, of course; but keeping the issues between rag content paper, in an envelope, flat, out of sunlight and in a place of low humidity should do you for 100 or so years!. You'll rot before they will!.Www@QuestionHome@Com Lots of things could damage them, including air, heat, cold, condensation, sunlight, etc!. They should be kept in something sealed with as much air removed as possible!. It they are still in fairly good condition you might want to make Xerox copies to read and keep the originals sealed away in somewhere safe!.Www@QuestionHome@Com The advice by roger lathbury is excellent -- you may also put them in one of those vacuum sealed storage bags you see advertised on TV - the critical thing is absence of air and moisture - did you see National Treasure!? Note how the Declaration of Independence is protected - Check out the sites on the Dead Sea Scrolls for information on preservation of old documentsWww@QuestionHome@Com You need to take them to a bookbinder, or at least a library in the rare books section and have them advise you!. You need acid-free paper and they need to be away from light and moisture!. Do it quickly--the paper deteriorates very fast!Www@QuestionHome@Com |