J.A. Jones Library Archive: Preservation

Archives contain a variety of artifacts centered on a particular topic, and many of the items within an archive are very old. When items like pictures, documents, or newspapers age, it gets increasingly difficult to not only use them, but to store them safely and preserve them for future researchers to utilize.

Factors such as temperature, humidity, and light affect the longevity of archival items, so archivists must be wary of the facility's environment when storing items. Using archive-safe preservation materials helps to protect artifacts from outside factors.

Acid-free folders are popularly used to store papers and other flat objects, and help to reduce yellowing and/or fading. Plastic sleeves are often used to protect and store photos, and cotton gloves are worn when handling photographs when they are not in a sleeve or other protective material. Unbuffered or buffered tissue paper (depending on the materials they are used on) help preserve items such as scrapbooks by protecting against yellowing, ink transfer, pages sticking together, and scratches. Acid-free boxes help to guard artifacts from light, which causes fading over time. Precautionary measures like these not only provide neat organization, they also allow very delicate artifacts to survive longer, and therefore to be of use to researchers and community members in times to come.

Items such as film reels, audio reels, vinyl records, and cassette tapes are often best preserved in digital format. Technology changes fast, and analog formats are prone to becoming obsolete within a decade (which would make the information within the item difficult or near impossible to access). Analog formatted items also degrade, which could destroy the content, and take up more physical space. Unless the item's format itself has meaning to researchers or it is very old, digitizing it helps to preserve it and allow more people to access it.