Preservation of clippings

Linda Most wrote about the problem of whether to keep the original
clippings when performing preservation photocopying on a collection
of newspaper clippings.

I am responsible for maintaining our vertical file of newspaper
clippings. Not only do we clip current issues of our local newspaper
and student newspaper, we also have old (1911 - present) scrap books
from which we clip the pasted- or taped-on clippings.  As a general
rule, we toss originals. However, if there is a picture or other
information on the original that does not photocopy well, or if we
have a full page that we want to keep intact, we may do one of
several things:

    *   make a color photocopy and throw away the original
    *   preserve the original in a buffered envelope
    *   we rarely encapsulate the original, but would consider it
        for some items.

We have also elected to keep the oldest scrapbooks intact.  We have
not yet determined what we will do to preserve the scrap books,
although it is likely we will inter-leaf the pages with buffered
paper and store in buffered boxes.

Hope this is helpful, and I'm anxious to learn what other
institutions are doing.

Jenni Boone, Special Collections Associate
Special Collections and Archives
Southwest Missouri State University
Springfield, Missouri  USA
417-836-6336

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 12:49
                Distributed: Wednesday, December 2, 1998
                       Message Id: cdl-12-49-021
                                  ***