Out of the Attic:

Preserving Your Treasures

Briscoe Library
27 April 2011
Objectives

•To show the causes of deterioration of books, papers, and photos

and discuss basic preservation practices
•To discuss digitization as a form of preserving your items
•To provide hints on the curation and preservation of digital
collections
Biological and Microbial Causes of Deterioration

•Silverfish, cockroaches, beetles – eat gelatin emulsions and papers

in photos and books or documents
•Termites – eat wood fiber in paper
•Rodents – eat gelatin emulsions, glues and papers. Use shredded
paper as nesting materials.
•Mold and Fungi – paper and gelatin emulsions provide
nutrients. Can cause images and print to fade or be obliterated.
Insect found by rare books
Termite damaged books
Mold damage to records
Environmental Conditions

•Relative humidity - interacts with temperature to create

damage. Frequent fluctuation most damaging. In general,
–Too high (> 75⁰ F. and 60% RH) causes mold, mildew, accelerated
harmful chemical reactions from residual chemicals or acidic inks,
softening of gel emulsions in photographs or glossy book covers
causing sticking, warping due to thickened papers, bleeding of text.
–Too low (< 15% RH) causes drying resulting in cracking, peeling,
brittleness of papers and photos and rolling of photographs.
Mold in an attic, near pictures

Don't store books or photos

in attics or basements
Book warped by humidity, possible water damage
Disasters such as fires and flooding cause mold,
water damage, and total destruction
Book damaged by roof leak, then freeze dried to remove water.
Readable but stained. Mold prevented.
Light

•Ultraviolet light and light in the violet-blue-green area in both

unfiltered natural sunlight and florescent lighting are most active in
damaging materials by speeding up damaging chemical reactions,
especially to paper and film bases.
•Light also causes fading to color prints, inked captions, hand colored
photos, and other light sensitive media.
•Damage caused by light is cumulative and irreversible. Degree of
damage depends on intensity and length of exposure.
•Store valuable photos in boxes, not frames. Display in frames with
UV protective glass.
Damage to Declaration of Independence from
exposure to light. (No document is immune.)
1847 document with damage from light, heat and mishandling.
Yellowing & fading of text, brittleness, tears
Fading of print and yellow due to light damage
Light damaged vs. protected documents
Picture yellowed and faded from being on display

Note the gradual fading of the nurses

Yellowing of label after one year due to
unfiltered fluorescent light
Chemical Damage

Natural aging - Organic materials (paper, plastics, textiles, dyes and

inks, leather, fur, etc.) undergo a spontaneous long term slow
chemical reaction. This causes damage in books, records, photos,
scrapbooks, etc.
•The rate of the aging depends on the temperature and humidity
where the materials are stored.
• Higher temperatures and humidity speed up the chemical process.
•Cooler temperatures slow it down.
•Rusting and other chemical reactions in metals are also affected.
 Acidity in paper - 1914 document with brittleness and
browning due to acid content resulting from natural aging
 Newsprint is the worst as it is so highly acidic
naturally. Preserve by photocopying on acid free,
lignin free paper or interleave scrapbooks.
Rust damage from metal fasteners (foxing)
The rust on this old film reel
endangers the contents
Highly acidic iron gall ink
bleeds through and eats holes
in paper over time.
Book binding damaged by aging and heavy use,
resulting in broken stitching.

Box to give protection to book bindings

"Red rot" on leather binding
due to aging
Mirroring -
A chemical reaction
that causes
loss of pigment
Mechanical Damage

Mistreating books, records, and photos also causes

damage. Carelessness in shelving, boxing, or marking can result in
physical damage to spines and bookcaps of books or layers of
photos.
•Never pull old books from shelf by the top. Push in books on either
side and grasp middle of spine.
•Never use sticky tape, glue, rubber cement, staples, or clips to repair
or arrange books, photos, or records you intend to keep a long time.
•Never mark on photos with ink. Use #2 pencil or special blue
colored pencils. Mark only on margins on back or label sleeve, not
photo.
Broken bookcap
in 1842 book
 Warping can be caused by poor
horizontal and vertical shelving

Avoid warping: Don't shelve/lay taller/larger

books on shorter/smaller volumes.
Don’t lean book on shelves,
this can break spines or warp books.

Use book ends and don’t crowd.

Dog earing weakens paper fibers
Will this clip damage the photo?
Yes! (Ouch.)
Staple piercing photo and
negative in enclosure
Picture damage due to
poor frame and matting
 Don't use non-archival adhesives

The acid they contain eventually migrates

to the paper's fibers, causing stains and deterioration.
Use of sticky tape and label on
back of photgraph
-Physical damage from other photos
or objects.

-Don’t mix photos of

different sizes in boxes.

-Protect photos with stable plastic

or acid free photo enclosures.
 Digitization

From Physical to Digital

Lossy vs Lossless Compression

Lossy Compression
Can be used on all digital media: audio, video, and still
images
Called lossy compression because as the data is
compressed it discards some of the data
Lossy Compression

Compressed
to the point that
it is almost
unrecognizable.
Lossless Compression

Allows exact originals to be reconstructed from the

compressed data.

The data is compressed in a way that none of the

information is thrown out.

Can decompress and all of the data will still be in place.

Important when you want to

keep the item for long-term
storage.
Photography

Lossy Formats JPG, HAM, ICER, JPG-2000, JBIG2, PGF, GIF

Lossless Formats TIFF, ILBM, JBIG-2, JPG-LS, JPG-2000, JPG-

XR, PGF, PNG
Types of Photographs
Slides i.e. Kodachrome Made famous by kodak film
company.

Glass Slides Special chemicals had to be placed

on these glass slides for photos to
be taken on. Usually for large format
images.

Negatives Roll of film. This style came in a

variety of sizes. The 35 mm being
the most common.

Photographs The printed copies of the film

negatives. The size of these are
based on the negatives.
Slides i.e. Kodachrome
Glass Slides
Negatives
Prints
Equipment

Flatbed Scanner:

Photographs
Slides
Negatives
Glass slides
Equipment

Desktop Film Scanner

Film
Negatives
Special Considerations

Condition of the Media:

Visibly worn, torn, or faded

Do the best you can do:

You are not a professional studio
Attempt to digitize to the largest ratio possible
Follow the minimal requirements

Minimal Requirements:
Color copies 48-bit depth
Black & White 16 bit-depth
Keep a TIFF
Video Digitization

This is the most expensive format to convert

Lossy H.261, H.263, H.264, MNG,

Motion JPG, MPEG-1,2,4,
OGG, Dirac, Sorenson video
codec, VC-1

Lossless AVI, CorePNG, Dirac, JPG-

2000, Huffyuv, Lagarith, MSU,
SheerVideo
VHS
Betamax
Film
DVD
Laser Disk
Equipment Required

All items that are digitized are going to require software to

be installed on the machine.

Freeware software: Windows Movie Maker (PC), and

QuickTime (Mac)

High-end software: Adobe Premiere Pro (Mac/PC), and

Final Cut Pro (Mac only)

Each media type is going to require different equipment to

be used.
VHS

Hardware required:
Composite cable, S-Video, USB, and Firewire
VHS to DVD Burner or VHS to PC
Film

Recognize the film size

It is the most expensive item to digitize, with machines
costing 1,000-10,000+
Best to find specialist that deal with this digitization

Questions to ask when getting your films digitized:

Do you use lossless methods?
Do you provide archival quality dvds?
Can I bring in my harddrive for direct storage?
Betamax

Machines that read Betamax are harder to find

Costly to purchase machines that digitize

Better to send these off for digitization

DVD

Probably have all the equipment you need at your home

CD/DVD burner, and PC with software installed

When digitizing attempt to digitize the item at the same rate

it was encoded in:
40 Mbit/s is the highest quality
8-15 HDTV
3.5 standard definition video
 Audio
Lossy AAC, MP3, ADPCM, ATRAC, Dolby AC3, MP2, OGG, WMA

Lossless FLAC, WAV, ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codac), apt-X,

ATRAC, MGP-4 ALS, HD-AAC, DST, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD,
LPCM, PCM, MLP, Monkey’s Audio, OptimFROG, RealAudio,
Shorten SHN, TTA, WavPack, WMA Lossless
Records

Turntable that allows FLAC or WAV conversion

Laser needle for less chance of damage
MP3
conversion for
daily use
Cassette

Tape player
Y Stereo adapter cable with an RCA style channel
connectors
Audio software: VLC Media Player, WinAmp, iTunes, etc.
CD

CD/DVD burner
Items can be burnt at higher rate than tapes because of
encoding
Software:VLC Media
Player, WinAmp, iTunes, etc
Items to Consider

Always digitize at the highes bit rate possible:

Cassettes:
128 kps for audiobooks
256 for music
Records:
320 kps for mp3
320 kps minimum for WAV and FLAC
CD:
most are encoded as an mp3 at 120-320 kps
Consider burning them onto your machine as WAV or
FLAC
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