Wooden yardsticks

Some of our library collections are housed in our artifact storage
facility. Recently, our cataloger was using a wooden yardstick to
measure some posters. She was not touching the posters with the
yardstick, but just laying it next to them in order to determine their
size. The collections manager told her that measuring with wooden or
metal rulers is not allowed. The only sanctioned measuring device is a
cloth measuring tape.

This ruler prohibition seems pretty unfounded to us. Should we not use
rulers when measuring paper collections? Is there any documentation on
the preferable type of measuring tool for collections? Has anyone out
there had a similar experience and how did they resolve it?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Barbara Brauner
Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 7:16
                  Distributed: Thursday, July 29, 1993
                        Message Id: cdl-7-16-004
                                  ***