Polyvinyl acetate

Beck Leslie <leslie.beck<-a t->metrokc< . >gov>

>In the course of researching options for restoring historically
>significant volumes of recordings, I have been contacted by a
>company which specializes in archival restoration.  This company
>uses internally plasticized co-polymer polyvinyl acetate (PVA) as a
>spine adhesive, and states it "allows permanent flexibility".  Is
>this an acceptable adhesive to use on archival records?

I have at least two questions about the adhesive being discussed. It
was my impression that the original query was about a polyvinyl
acetate dispersion, but some of the more recent responses have not
been so clear. No matter how long dispersions dry, in my experience
their properties never come close to the properties of resins which
dry from solution.

I know that many people are used to calling white glues PVA
adhesives, but conservators need to be more careful.  It seems clear
that most of the properties of dispersions are not to due to the
primary resin but to various additives.  The other problem is in the
PVA designation itself.  For chemists, PVA is polyvinyl alcohol.
Since many dispersions contain a mixture of PVAlcohol and PVAcetate,
this is additionally confusing.

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 11:44
                 Distributed: Friday, November 14, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-11-44-005
                                  ***