[SFFLibraries-L] Best Practice question

[Andy Sawyer]

--On 04 January 2006 08:42 -0600 Hal Hall <HHALL at lib-gw.tamu.edu> wrote:

>>
>      I am interested in what the prevailing "best practice" for pulp
> magazine perservation is at the beginning of 2006.
>
>      Our pulps are always in need of the best possible protection.
> What have the various libraries established as the optimum storage and
> protection option for pulp magazines?
>

A tricky one because there's such a gap between "best practice" and what 
actually happens. Over the years of this collection's existence, we were 
lucky enough to get funding for mass purchase of archivally-sound boxes for 
the pulps, but then people discovered digitisation and central funding for 
such  projects dried up. Ideally each magazine (I believe) should be stored 
in mylar or archivally-sound paper folders in such a way as to minimize the 
slow disintegration of the paper, in turn in acid-free storage boxes. But 
this is expensive and funding for this (here) depends on my own and the SF 
Foundation's capacity to wheedle money out of interested people -- in 
short, never enough!

Some years before I took over, a small number of magazines were treated to 
preserve the paper and rebuild the magazines, deacidifying and laminating 
the paper, but I understand that this was extremely expensive and although 
I costed some examples about ten years ago I was never able to raise the 
money to progress -- and then, of course, digitisation became "the way to 
go". My own priorities are first, to try and make sure that the physical 
objects are stored in secure acid-free boxes and then to work down to the 
individual item. I'd be interested in hearing what other people do.
--------------------------------
Andy Sawyer
Science Fiction Librarian
Special Collections and Archives
University of Liverpool Library
PO Box 123, Liverpool L69 3DA, UK.

Course Director, MA in Science Fiction Studies.
http://www.liv.ac.uk/english/pdf/ScienceFictionStudies_MA.pdf

Reviews Editor: Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction
http://www.sf-foundation.org/publications/foundation.html

The Science Fiction Hub: http://www.sfhub.ac.uk/

The Science Fiction Foundation: http://www.sf-foundation.org/

"... there is no higher life form than a librarian."
THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD: Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen,
and Ian Stewart, p. 10.