[MassHistPres] The Question about Historic Documents

[Russ Feldman]

I want to very much support Mr. Potaski's point about the difficulties of proper document conservation.  It is extremely expensive to store such documents properly and if an historical society has an opportunity to create multiple platforms to maintain their records they should consider it seriously.
A useful tool to establish the environmental conditions required to safely store printed material is the Image Permanence Institute's Dew Point Calculator.  It's available for free at www.dpcalc.org<http://www.dpcalc.org> and works on both Mac and PC platforms.
It vividly shows what the preservation risk of aging, damage, mold and corrosion is for different levels of temperature and humidity through use of several "preservation metrics" developed by the IPI.  Anyone who wishes to understand how responsible their stewardship is can make good use of this tool.
Those who are entrusted to maintain historic materials absolutely need to encourage their use - and also preserve them for the future.


M. Russel Feldman, AIA, NCARB, Principal
TBA Architects, Inc.
43 Bradford Street Suite 300
Concord, MA 01742
Office   (781) 893-5828
Mobile (617) 429-5033

2015 Best Educational Buildings over 10,000 s.f., Modular Building Institute
A+ Accredited by the Better Business Bureau

From: Mike [mailto:mikepotaski at hotmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2016 12:32 PM
To: masshistpres at cs.umb.edu
Subject: [MassHistPres] The Question about Historic Documents

Dan Biebel of Medfield asked a question about allowing Digital Commonwealth to digitize and place on-line documents and books held by the Medfield Historical Society.

Many small local repositories seem content to hold onto their material with no effort at conservation (Northeast Document Conservation Center does that work but at a great cost). Following conservation to stabilize the paper and ink to halt deterioration, the material should be preserved in archival quality folders/boxes in climate controlled storage (another set of costs many small organizations cannot afford). The next step is adding the material to the National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections for documents and important ephemera and adding the books to appropriate library indices both are tedious and require a level of expertise (another potential set of expenses).

If Digital Commonwealth is offering a free service to Medfield, they would be well served to accept.

I have been working to convince the Trustees of the Uxbridge Library to offer the various 18th and early 19th Century manuscript material to the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester where it will get the TLC it needs and be available to scholars and other researchers.

Michael Potaski
Chairman, Uxbridge Hist. Dist Commission and member of the Historical Society


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