Adhesives and enclosures for photographic negatives

    **** Moderator's comments: This query comes from a person who is
    not on the DistList and will not see any responses that are
    posted here.  Please respond directly to sender and if of
    general interest post it here as well

I run a research firm in NYC, and have about 100,000 photographic
prints and 75,000 negatives, 1936-present. In a trial re-archiving
of one collection of 45,000 negatives (1936-1971, nitrate and
acetate), a cataloguer noticed that several hundred negative
envelopes (out of a recent order of 500) had glue spread out from
the seams. No glue was visible from the exterior--the "spread" was
only on the interior, specifically, on the interior face which meets
the emulsion of the negative.

Examination of several thousand negatives from prior orders (from
multiple other suppliers) showed no such glue spread.

This group of 500 negatives was ordered from a prominent,
well-advertised conservation products supplier, from which we had
never ordered negatives before. I queried the Director of Marketing
and received what was, to me, a fairly cavalier response: "none of
my 50,000+ customers ... other than yourself, have expressed any
complaints regarding our workmanship."  He also stated that the glue
overspread passes the PAT test, and it was inevitable.

Have any DistList subscribers had similar experiences?  Or, perhaps,
is glue in direct contact with the negative emulsion no big deal?

Christopher Gray
Office for Metropolitan History
New York City

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 13:10
                   Distributed: Monday, July 26, 1999
                       Message Id: cdl-13-10-013
                                  ***