1. Lecture 2 Part 1: Paper Part 2: Reformatting

2. The Basics All materials are either:
Organic- composed of plant or animal materials
Inorganic- composed of rock or mineral composition

3. Organic Paper Leather Plastic (extracted from plant and animal
sources)
Textiles

4. Inorganic Stone Glass Ceramic Metal
Austrian alabaster book form box; molded metal " book spine" , floral strap hinges on front, metal "pages", wooden interior. 6 1/8"H. x 4 1/4"W. x 2 3/8"D. Crack in stone extends across upper right corner. From
Source:

5. Early Writing Surfaces
Clay tablets
Basalt slat
Papyrus
Leather
Paper types
Source:
A scrap of parchment or papyrus from the scrolls is from ‘The Book of War.’
Israel Antiquities Authority

6. Clay and Basalt: Clay Tablets: Granite: Basalt: Issues: Mesopatamia
Very stable but . . .
If left to elements, information can erode away.

7. Papyrus: Primarily Egypt
Thick paper-like material produced form the Papyrus plant.
Paper-like = cellulose in nature
Has the advantage of being relatively cheap and easy to produce.
Amatl or amate
Organic material used by Meso-Americans, especially Mayans.
Used until the 12 Century.

8. Papyrus (continued): Papyrus is made form the stem of the plant
The outer rind is first stripped off and the sticky fibrous inner pith is cut lengthwise into thin strips.
The strips are then placed side-by-side on a hard surface with their edges overlapping. Another layer of strips is laid on top at a right angle. Strips are soaked in water.
While still moist, the two layers are hammered together into a single sheet.

9. Preservation Concerns with Papyrus:
In a dry climate like Egypt, papyrus is stable, formed as it is of highly rot-resistant cellulose.
Storage in humid conditions can result in molds or bugs destroying the material.
Is fragile and susceptible to both moisture and excessive dryness.
Went out of use, especially as writing took off in moisture-rich climates.

10. Skin Materials: Includes leather and parchment
Type of animal and processing method determine the quality of the skin material
Leather is stable in a slightly acidic environment

11. Leather: Leather: Produced in Egypt since 4th dynasty
Writing on one side
Parchment:
Writing on both sides of leather
Thin almost opaque.
Became the staple writing material of the Middle Ages.
Made from sheep, goats, calves, deer, any mammal.

12. Leather: Types Commonly Used in Books:
Calf- A delicate, often decorated, leather used until the end of the 18th Century.
Goat-
Levant- Leather from goat, sheep and seal skins with a characteristic shrunken grain pattern produced during tanning.
Morocco- A vegetable-tanned goatskin
Suede- A leather finish produced by separating the fibers, giving the leather a nap by abrading with sandpaper or emery wheel.
Other: Pigskin, Sheepskin

13. Preservation Concerns with Leather
Red Rot- (as defined by National Archives UK) Red rot is a type of deterioration of the surface of tanned leather occurring when certain (usually vegetable) tannins degrade to a fine red powder.
Source:

14. Preservation Concerns with Leather
Leather is naturally acidic
Leather produced in the 17th Century may have residual sulphuric acid

15. Parchment: Parchment tends to be alkaline (as opposed to acidic)
Skin of sheep or calf
Not as expensive as vellum
How parchment is made:
Image: --Crop from letter by the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania 1649

16. Vellum: Finest parchment Skin of calves and kids
Skin of unborn animals
Expensive
Lime is used in the preparation of Vellum. Once the hair is removed and the skin scraped, the skin is stretched on a frame to dry. After it is dry, it is rubbed with French chalk to create the writing surface.
Source:

17. Preservation Concerns with Vellum:
Should typically be stored in a stable environment
Constant temperature and 30% RH
If stored in an environment with less than 11% humidity, it becomes fragile, brittle, and susceptible to mechanical stresses
If RH higher than 40%, the material becomes vulnerable to fungus or mold growth as well as gelation
A brief view of how vellum is made

18. Paper
“I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.”
Beryl Pfizer

19. Paper:
Invention of paper, as we know it today, is often credited to Ts’ai Lun, a Chinese court official
Dated 104 or 105 AD
The product Lun created was a precursor of the cotton and linen rag paper that dominated Europe and America before the Industrial Revolution
He used raw materials from a variety of sources

20. Precursors to Today’s book?
Prior to 5th century – rolls (papyrus)
Codex
13th century
Monastic scribes
15th Century – Block Books.
Papermaking first reached Europe in the 12th century.
Demand really took off with the invention of the printing press.
Movable type allowed for mass production.
Example: Gutenberg Bible (1455)

21. Prior to 17th Century: Paper made primarily from cotton rags
Paper was free from impurities, strong, and long lasting
Made by hand, however, it was time consuming and expensive

22. 19th Century: More mechanization in the creation of paper
1860’s wood pulp paper
Stress from the machines produced less stable paper with a considerably shorter life than the previous products
First use of wood pulp dates to 1872:
logs are turned to pulp, bleached, pressed, and coated with acid
Acids lead to the destruction of the paper

23. Organic Nature of Paper:
The study of paper degradation is primarily a study based on the study of the deterioration of cellulose

24. Cellulose Molecule
Cellulose is made up of sugars
Source:

25. Paper (continued)

26. Paper Degradation (continued)
The modern standard is cellulose derived from wood
Requires aggressive processing to liberate cellulose
Suffers damage in the process and becomes less stable
Other factors which contribute:
Additives
Metals
Types of Ink

27. Paper (continued) Is it handmade vs. machine made paper?
When/what era in which the paper was made?
What kind paper is it and what was used to make it?
Groundwood
Chemical
Recycled
Permanent

28. Coated Paper: This is a multi-layer coated paper.
As you can see by this view taken under an electron microscope, a coated paper bearing these qualities can potentially have many preservation issues. For instance, coated papers tend to adhere to each other when they come in contact with water.
This is a multi-layer coated paper.
Image showing three distinct layers on coated paper. The bottom layer is the paper substrate, the middle layer (21.0µm) a spray coating, and the top layer a final gloss finish (9.39µm). The large holes in the center are indicative of a faulty deposition in the coating process.

29. Source: http://webworld.unesco.org/safeguarding/en/txt_grap.htm

30. Causes of Deterioration:
Cellulose is degraded by three primary mechanisms:
Hydrolysis
Oxidation
Elimination

31. Causes of Deterioration:
Hydrolysis
Caused by contact with acid
Most dominant reaction
Responsible for most degradation of paper
Hydrolysis literally means reaction with water. It is a chemical process in which a molecule is cleaved into two parts by the addition of a molecule of water.
Read more: Hydrolysis - Chemistry Encyclopedia - structure, reaction, water, proteins, examples, salt, molecule

32. Causes of Deterioration:
Oxidation
Becomes relevant when cellulose comes into contact with metals or pollutants such as iron gall ink or ozone
Oxidation and Hydrolysis work together to accelerate paper aging. They are the processes most responsible for paper becoming brittle and discolored.
If you really want to get into the nitty gritty of paper degredation, I suggest:
E. Franceschi, D. Palazzi and E. Pedemonte, Thermoanalytical Contribution To The
Study On Paper Degradation Characterisation of oxidised paper, Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry, Vol. 66 (2001).
Tests were done using Whatman paper which is noted for its exceptional quality and is grained, strong and rigid, without laid lines. It is used often in experiments where paper quality is tested.

33. Causes of Deterioration:
Elimination
Triggered by exposure to high pH
Generally not relevant in the care of collections
Becomes a factor when considering conservation treatments
Oxidation and Hydrolysis work together to accelerate paper aging. They are the processes most responsible for paper becoming brittle and discolored.

34. Metals: Inorganic materials Form salts with nonmetals Rust
Some metals, especially iron, copper, and platinum react with cellulose causing deterioration
Also cause staining

35. Adhesives: Substances used to cause one material to adhere to another
Can be naturally derived, such as wheat starch paste or synthetically derived, such as polyvinylalcohol.

36. Cloth: Can be made of natural or synthetic materials
Not responsible for many problems in general

37. Inks: Inks tend to bleed into paper May cause oxidization
Iron gall ink is made of iron particles
Black and white photographs generally have a metallic imaging compounds and paper supports.

39. Brittle Paper:
In the 1840s a manufacturing process was discovered that could produce paper more cheaply from a variety of sources including wood pulp. However, this process left an acidic content in the paper. This acid gradually breaks down the fibers from which the paper is made. And, with sufficient time, this paper will become so brittle that it will break when the pages are turned.

40. Brittle Paper (continued)
Degree of brittleness also depends upon geography and environmental conditions
Testing for brittleness:
Abbey pen
Double Fold
Development of standards for permanent paper
Example: In 1990, the federal government mandated the use of permanent paper for its official documents.
Degree of brittleness also depends upon geography and environmental conditions: For instance, books, manuscripts and other documents from a highly industrial area may be more brittle than the identical books, etc. in another region due to the pollution levels of the area and the absorption of pollutants in the air by the paper materials.

41. Hopeless Cases and Indentification:
Books that require an unreasonable amount of work to repair
Knowing you options:
Replacement
Reformatting
You need to determine when you have a lost cause. If a book is falling apart, the pages are brittle and pieces are missing, then you might have a lost cause.

42. Replacement:
Activities that result in the receipt of a duplicate of the irreparable volume through routine acquisition and gift processing
This can include in-print vendors, antiquarian, e-bay, microform publisher
Acquire a new copy if possible. When working in some collections, it might be as easy as contacting your traditional book vendor. For special collections and archives, a copy may not be readily available. Cost may be a determining factor when considering replacement.

43. Reformatting:
Activities that involve special efforts to have the text transferred to another medium in order to preserve the text
Transfer to paper, microfilm and digital images
If the item is not a candidate for replacement, then reformatting needs to be considered.

44. Brittle Books Programs:
Programs are based on a couple of questions:
Based upon the library’s collecting policy.
Must the book be considered in its original format as a rare book or artifact?
Traditional programs using microfilm have gone out of fashion in favor of digitization programs.

45. Research Questions What treatment decisions should be made?
Who should make the decisions?
Should preservation staff play a role in the decision.
All answers dependent upon type of organization.
Base our decisions on a Search Results sheet.

46. What about Copyright?
Law allows for preservation of copyrighted works, “solely for the purposed of preservation and security.”
Section 108
Include a notice or disclaimer indicating copy
Reformatting is NOT to be used as acquisition
Archives – Donor restrictions
Copyright is one of those issues that will periodically raise its hand in this class. When discussing reformatting, we do need to consider copyright.

47. Overview of Microfilm

48. Why Microfilm? Was used as an important part brittle books programs
Predicted long life of up to 500 years
Huge infrastructure developed for the creation and viewing of microfilm
In 1989, Congress authorized NEH to implement a 20 year initiative to preserve intellectual content via microfilming. This ended in 2009

49. Why microfilm? (continued)
No matter how you feel about microformats it is important to understand the procedures and development of microfilming and preservation facsimiles:
Because:
As in the case of facsimiles, many patrons still prefer to have a copy in their hands.
Libraries & archives must deal with microfilm and any continuing projects in their collection.

50. Microfilm: Adhere to RLG standards Creation of three generations
Preservation copy or archival copy
Duplicate
Use or service copy
Duplicate is what you would make your service copies from .

51. Microfilm (continued):
Silver Halide – silver gelatin microfilm with a polyester base
Stable metal
Image on silver film is metallic silver
Tested lifespan 500 years
Scratches easily
Archival copy

52. Microfilm (continued)
Diazo Film:
Intended for service copies
Polyester base
Life expectancy of up to 50 years because of possible fading
Chemical duplication using Ammonia
Blue Black image is produced

53. Microfilm (continued)
Vesicular Film
Also intended for service copies
Polyester base
Life expectancy 10 – 20 years
Not vulnerable to fungal growth
Duplication by heat and emulsion to emulsion contact
White image on blue background

54. Microfilming Process:
Decisions:
Outsourced or in-house?
Contracts and RFP’s
Vendor Question Examples:
What are the costs?
Do you allow for visits to the facility?
Preservation guidelines?
Type of film?

55. Preparation of Material for Microfilming:
Bibliographic searching
Database searching – record keeping
Collation
Reel programming

56. Microfilm Typically get 600 – 900 frames in a reel
With books, tend to get 2 pages per frame
With oversized documents, 1 page per frame

57. Evaluation and Quality Control
Methylene blue tests to check amount of residual thiosulfates on film
3rd party
Technical – cannot allow for scratches unless it is on leader - 6 splices are allowed
Quality Index- at what level do you see the “e” and its relation to the linepair
Bibliographic – Targets are in order
Strongly recommend reviewing the RLG standards for micrographics projects.

58. Filming Process: Reduction ratio desired: Microfiche – 16 mm, 24:1
Desired is 12:1 or 14:1
Microfiche – 16 mm, 24:1
Density – degree of blackness
Image presentation:
Cine or comic mode

59. Digitization The more popular reformatting choice
Many projects that used to be done on microfilm have evolved to become digitization projects
More grants are now issued for digital projects

60. Reformatting: Digitization vs. Microformat
Still need to collate the items
Still need to adhere to current best practices and standards
Still need to consider access to the surrogate
Still need bibliographic control
If the items aren’t unique, investigate if someone else has already done the work