Mat cutting and repetitive stress

Karen Potje <kpotje<-a t->cca< . >qc< . >ca>

>...our
>conservation/preservation technicians have to cut great numbers of
>mats, many of them oversize or with multiple windows, for weeks at a
>time.  There is little time for the technicians to vary their work
>during these intense periods of mat cutting.
>
>I am concerned that the repetitive motion, physical discomfort and
>stress involved in this work may lead to injury or disability.

The National Gallery of Victoria (in Melbourne Australia) embarked
on an ambitious program to re mount its entire collections of over
35,000 prints, drawing and photographs about 5 years ago.  We have
at least two years to go.  We initially hired and trained two full
time mount cutters, one each for the photographic and the
prints/drawings collections.

About a year later, we had one severe case of what is called in
Australia "repetitive strain injury" (R.S.I.) during a period of
time when RSI was very much in the news as more and more people
spent their working days in front of computers. We investigated the
situation and since have had other workers who have been
successfully working for several years cutting high quality mats at
pace without physical problems.

I offer the following advice based on our experiences:

Use a Dexter hand held mount cutter with a separate straight edge-
the cut is made by pushing, not pulling, the cutter.  I offer an
experiment- put your extended index finger as far away from you as
you can on the surface of a desk or table, press down, and feel the
tension in your neck.  Do this for a year and I would expect you to
be a wreck.  Our RSI sufferer used a bar mounted pull cut commercial
mat cutter.  It was very expensive and is in my opinion highly
dangerous for production cutting.

Accept and make it clear to mount cutting personnel that if they
have physical problems, they will be temporarily rotated to other
duties- and not endanger their job.  Our RSI sufferer was in fear of
telling anyone they had a problem.  By the time they did, their
injury was advanced, and they were in both physical and emotional
pain.

Establish a policy that mount cutting personnel can only cut mounts
three days in a row or a maximum of four days per week in two day
blocks with one day off or on other duties in the middle.  No one
should cut mounts five days a week full time.

Give mount cutters their own personal working space and tools.  We
have had various consultants come in to advise us on how to set up
the work stations for mount cutting, and while some of their advice
was useful, some was contradictory.   Some people like their table
at a different height and people's bodies and physical preferences
vary.

I was advised by a framer who employs many mount cutters to hire
only "big, burly blokes" to avoid RSI.  In fact I've found no
correlation to ability to cut mounts over long periods of time with
bigness, burliness or, indeed, blokeness.

Thomas Dixon
Chief Conservator
National Gallery of Victoria

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 10:78
                  Distributed: Thursday, March 6, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-10-78-002
                                  ***