Collections and inherent vice

Peter Verheyen <pdverhey<-at->syr<.>edu> writes

>Here at Syracuse one of our collecting strengths is in dime novels
>and related publications with *very* extensive holdings
>...
>My question to this group, especially those with large holdings of
>these kinds of materials is *what* are you doing to preserve and
>make accessible these materials? What kinds of workflows do you have
>in place? What kinds of treatments do you apply? Why continue to
>collect? The last question is facetious, but...

The Library of Congress also has significant holdings of pulp
fiction and we also filmed them in times past while retaining the
covers.  Currently I am part of a project to create facsimile copies
of a number of titles (about 600 issues) again retaining the
original covers.  While we hope that the digitization process of
these very brittle materials will not damage them greatly we are
also very aware of how brittle the paper is for the textblock, and
expect to replace the brittle original black and white textblock
with a facsimile in most cases.  If the original is in good shape
after the facsimile process we may choose to deacidify them with the
idea of keeping a minimal number of originals and making a useable
copy through the facsimile available for researchers.  Digital
copies are not possible at this time because of copyright.

Jeanne Drewes
Chief, Binding and Collections Care Division
Program Manager, Mass Deacidification
Preservation Directorate
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave S.E.
Washington DC 20540-4520
202-707-5330
Fax: 202-707-3434


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 26:7
                   Distributed: Monday, July 9, 2012
                        Message Id: cdl-26-7-016
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