[MassHistPres] Questionable advice concerning preserving town records

[Lee Wright]

While I realize we usually focus on structures, I assume some of us are involved with the preservation of the earliest records for our communities, so I thought this would be relevant.  It’s certainly concerning.

From Jeff Cooper ( jcooper at 14beacon.org <mailto:jcooper at 14beacon.org>), who heads the “New England Hidden Histories” project and has been working with records throughout New England for the last several years:

I recently heard about an issue concerning the preservation of ancient town records that I found shocking: Companies hired to preserve the records were instructing towns that the leather covers and bindings from their oldest (eighteenth-century) records had to be removed to properly conserve them.

That advice seems, on the surface, laughable, but apparently some towns have done this.  Have you encountered this in your town?  

There are cases in which ledgers need to be taken apart to preserve the pages. But this should almost always be a last resort. Moreover, if old records are digitized, as they ought to be, there's little reason for people to handle the originals--interested parties can just examine the digital copies. Therefore there's even less justification for tearing the old ledgers apart to put the pages in plastic/Mylar.



Lee Wright  |  Marlborough  |  History Camp Boston 2016 is March 26

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