Archive for the Preservation Category

Conservation Tip No 8: Removing chewing gum from paper documents

Posted on April 18, 2012 by

Can you give info on removing chewing gum on reverse side of an important document? There is a small quantity of gum still in place – fairly fresh, a circle of about 1/2 inch. Some stain has bled thru to front.

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Cool Tools – Calculators for Environmental Conditions

Posted on April 2, 2012 by

I found the environmental calculators made available by the Image Permanence Institute to be tremendously helpful so I thought I would share.

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Rolling back into history [Conserving a 13 metre petition from 1862]

Posted on November 28, 2011 by

The problem for anyone who wanted to read the document was that in order to open up the petition, the entire length needed to be unrolled first. Once unrolled, there was the issue of trying to safely open a 13 metre fold!

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Celebrating our Audiovisual Heritage

Posted on October 26, 2011 by

Thursday 27 October is a special day for many archivists, it’s UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. This year’s theme, ‘Save and savour your Audiovisual Hertiage – Now!’ will be celebrated by many audiovisual archives around the world…..

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Stitched up

Posted on April 8, 2011 by

We recently discovered a little gem in our collection – a probate document that had been torn into several pieces and then hand-stitched back together with great care and skill.

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Moving and Handling Archives – The Basics

Posted on April 4, 2011 by

These tips are from our in-house manual handling procedures and guidelines that were prepared by our Senior Conservator, Elizabeth Hadlow.

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A wet start to 2011

Posted on January 12, 2011 by

Over on our website we have begun a list of useful resources under the broad heading Dealing With Wet Records which covers topics such as handling wet records, salvaging water damaged materials, and (more generally) disasters and records.

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Conservation Tip No 7: Upright support for books in storage

Posted on December 6, 2010 by

The U-Splint book support (Splint) is a simple alternative being trialled at State Records to help minimize further damage and support the book structure without the need for costly treatment.

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Disaster Recovery – a SlideShare presentation

Posted on August 4, 2010 by

We decided to stay with the Conservation theme and highlight a SlideShare presentation on Disaster Recovery.

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Conservation Tip No. 6: Dealing with wet records

Posted on August 2, 2010 by

Before going into any detail about the salvage and handling of wet records the importance of relevant training cannot be stressed enough.

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Conservation Tip No 5: Removing mould from records and archives

Posted on May 10, 2010 by

Removing mould can be difficult, dirty and time consuming. Mould remediation should not be undertaken lightly – especially where large quantities of records are affected.

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MayDay 2010 – Saving our Heritage

Posted on May 1, 2010 by

Australia’s archives, galleries, libraries, museums and heritage places are gearing up for the national MayDay campaign in a bid to protect the nation’s heritage from avoidable disasters.

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Conservation Tip No. 4: A Method of Rehousing Glass Plate Negatives

Posted on February 25, 2010 by

Glass plate negatives are extremely fragile and need to be handled very carefully. The glass is old and brittle and plates may have been cracked or broken and will sustain further damage if not treated with care.

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Conservation Tip No. 3: Removing blood from paper documents

Posted on October 12, 2009 by

If you find yourself bleeding all over your precious documents or family heirlooms, do not despair, speedy action will probably result in little or no permanent damage occurring.

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