News

ISO Quality Standards

Six mills that make printing and writing paper recently achieved registration under the ISO 9000 series of quality standards. Georgia-Pacific's Port Hudson mill, Strathmore's Turners Falls mill, Potlatch's Northwest Division mills in Brainerd and Cloquet, and Repap Wisconsin's Kimberly mill all went with ISO 9002; Cross Pointe's Miami mill went with ISO 9001, which is more stringent.

Meantime, Joseph M. Juran told a standing-room-only audience at the American Society for Quality Control's 1994 annual meeting that the ISO 9000 series standards lack essential elements of a world class quality system. These missing elements, he said, are personal leadership by upper managers; training the hierarchy in managing for quality; quality goals in the business plan; revolutionary rate of quality improvement; and participation and empowerment of the workforce.

Juran said the most complete program for companies seeking world-class quality is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. (More information is on p. 6 in v.4 #6 of Quality Systems Update.)

ALA Urges Governments to use Permanent Paper

At its annual meeting in Miami, the American Library Association passed a "Resolution on Use of Permanent Paper by State and Local Governments," encouraging the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) to

• conduct a survey to identify those states where neither legislation nor an executive order mandates the use of permanent paper for producing state and local documents and publications of enduring value, as an essential first step in renewing efforts to stimulate such legislation.
• The NCLIS is an organization set up to advise the President on matters relating to libraries and information matters.
• The high cost of copying brittle documents was cited as one reason for this survey to be done, and the Abbey Publications survey of permanent papers published in North American Permanent Papers was mentioned to show that there was no need to choose between permanent and recycled papers.

ISO 9706 spurs Action in Australia & Hungary

Australia.Standards Australia committee MS/48 met from 1987 to 1992 to draw up an interim permanent paper standard that would either be replaced by the ISO standard when it appeared, or be used in Australia instead of the ISO standard, depending on which one they liked better when the time came. (It is a Standards Australia requirement that ISO standards be adopted unless reasonable cause can be shown for variation.)

The draft standard issued by the committee in 1992, called 4003(Int)-1992, Interim Australian Standard for Permanent Uncoated Paper and Paperboard, was due to expire in May 1994. After the ISO standard appeared, the committee decided to modify and use it instead. Notes will be added to cover fiber composition, the pH of aqueous extract and sizing. The latest word on this development (AICCM National Newsletter, #51, June 1994) was that the modified ISO document was still being typed up before being circulated for comment. (The AICCM is the Australian Institute for Conservation of Cultural Material, and its address is GPO Box 1638, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.)

Hungary. Gabriella Albrecht-Kunszeri, a chemist who is also head of preservation at the National Archives, wrote in July that they (together with the National Library) are carrying out a survey to see how many Hungarian papers conform to the ISO standard. They have found some ordinary printing and writing papers that proved to be permanent even after artificial aging.

Weird Papers

Recycling the hard way. Ricoh has a new machine that looks something like a photocopier, but works in reverse: it takes the photocopy and removes the toner so you can use the paper again. According to the January Popular Science, the page is first soaked with a chemical that can loosen the bond between the toner and the paper; a heated roller picks the toner off the page and then the page is dried. A faint impression of the toner image can be seen by holding the paper up to the light. The company hoped to have a commercial product on the market by next January or so.

Almost like a chameleon. James River has a new line of "Touch-It Color Change Products" that change color when exposed to heat, even heat from the hand. It comes in six colors, or rather combinations, including

green changing to yellow,

purple changing to pink, and

blue changing to white.

It is being promoted for direct mail and sales pieces, and can be used for laser printing, copying and offset printing.