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About this recording
- Topic
- Conservation and Preservation Part 1 7th Archives Workshop
- Speaker
- Unidentified S
- Date
- 2002-09-01
Transcript
Source: Unidentified S – Conservation and Preservation Part 1 7th Archives Workshop – 2002-09-01.mp3 File: unidentified-s-conservation-and-preservation-part-1-7th-archives-workshop-2002-09-01.mp3 Duration: 00:47:19
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My name is William, and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date, September the 25th of 1982, and that occurred at exactly 11:18 p.m. in the evening. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. That's the time and the date of the ticket that put me in, that propelled me in Alcoholics Anonymous, because God decided that this little funny guy needed something to do, and I've been busy ever since. It's because of people like you is the reason why I'm still around here. I got actively involved in archives way back in 1982, '83, and very actively involved in it since.
My education is in the field of conservation and restoration. It runs all the way from National Archives to, of course, to the University of Arkansas, which I now have the privilege of teaching. And it's a lot of fun, and it's a lot of gratitude, and it's something that anybody can do as long as we realize we may only today know just enough information to be dangerous. And I don't say that in a humorous way.
I really do. I would like for everybody to feel perfectly at ease here today, because what we're going to do are very, very basic things. I'm going to start it out with an overhead transparency presentation, and then we'll get into some basics. And the basics are exactly that. They are what anybody can do with a minimal amount of tools. The only reason I brought these is so many questions were asked that this is just a small part of the instruments that we'll use in a conservation lab.
How many have had any training whatsoever in the field of conservation? Okay. Okay, now Bob, you got to leave. Let's see, you need to go over here. It's wonderful. I want to thank the committee that asked us to come here. I really do. The room's absolutely outstanding, and anytime we're asked to go anywhere and share ourselves, you know, my sponsor tells me, tell them only the truth and tell them experience, strength, and hope.
And this is where mine comes from. The slide presentation, overhead transparency presentation, we'll try to go through it fairly quick. It normally takes about an hour, but we're going to try to do it. If you'll notice the name on there, I did not develop it myself. He's a very, very close friend of mine. He's in the poorest of health right now. How long he will live, we do not know. He's had so many heart attacks and problems like that.
Sad to say, it's anybody's question. This is the little drunk that came in Alcoholics Anonymous because he went to a liquor store in Philadelphia, in a wheelchair, by the way. He was confined to a wheelchair. He got to the curb in a blazing, in a heavy, heavy winter snowstorm, got to the curb and dropped the bottle of whiskey and broke it. And, you know, he was one of the guys that wanted to get out of the wheelchair, crawl down there, and actually drink the whiskey out of the snow.
He's an amazing person, and he's the one that developed this slide presentation, so we'll go ahead and use it. Next. There are a few questions that are probably a good idea to look at: whether or not to keep the materials that we've got. Do they really, are they applicable to your individual area or to your intergroup area, or maybe they belong to Seattle, or maybe they should go out here. Be sure to differentiate them because a lot of the stuff that we get, I will hold on to long enough to find its rightful owner, and it will always go to a sanctioned archive. I do not send it to collectors.
I will send it to a sanctioned archive. The questions we ask: Does it relate to the purpose of our archives? Everybody should have a general purpose statement. It's a good way to begin. Does it relate to your service area? And also, is there any self-interest versus spirit of service involved? I found out, and the only reason that's in there, Ron and I talked about it, we had some individuals that wanted a shrine in an archives, and I recommended that maybe best not take that material right away.
Let's see how it goes later on down the line. Building a shrine for an archives is not a good idea. Go ahead. If not, you may have answered some of the most important questions. Do we really need all the materials that we get? What we collect in the state of Arkansas, mine is the Area Four. If it does not pertain to Area Four, I'll use that as an example. Let's just say that there's a whole bunch of material about the early Akron group.
[00:05:00]
I use that only as an example. It would not be necessary for me to spend the time, the personnel, the money, or the material on that because it's already a matter of record up in Akron, and if I need it, I know I can go to Gale and some of the other people up there, Bob, and I will get that material. So why spend a lot of time on things like that? The next question is probably the greatest question in the world that we can do as far as our archives and our material is concerned.
We need to make a decision to either keep one. A decision to keep one is also a decision to throw one away. We don't need five copies of some particular letter that came, say, from the delegate to your area. One copy is sufficient. So be real, real careful. Don't glut your archives by having all these extra copies. Go ahead, Dave. What do we do with them? If we decide to keep them, we can Xerox. We can go ahead and, first of all, we decide we make a copy.
We can do a Xerox of it. I don't know about your archives, but our archives has gotten rid of everything but acid-free bond, both legal and letter size. Or we can photograph it. I would note that the black and white is the most important as far as pictures are concerned. Color does tend to change quite a bit, and we just don't have the time to go over the color today. But I'll talk to you about it maybe later on over a cup of coffee.
The first, we can copy by digital. It is accessible; however, it does have a limited life. Now, CD-ROM is 10 years, hard drives and everything, average of 1.5 years. We don't know about the cameras that are coming out now. We really don't know. Where's Santa Claus? He's sitting back here. There you go. I do not remember your name, and I don't say that jokingly. I mean it very seriously. Okay, John is using his to great advantage, and of course he's using a computer system. We don't know how long those color copies are going to last. I am using them only as a test case because when we copy them, the first thing we will do is deacidify from the back side only.
And then we will also use only a very appropriate deacidification liquid, and we spray it on. We don't brush it on because that would be too much liquid. It would permeate the paper and would get into the color and damage the color. Backside only. Go. Inventory. Set up an index. Simple record. What do we have? What's its classification? And an ID number is really good because then all of a sudden we've got a track record for this material.
Having a track record for the material that we receive is probably the most important thing in the world because I guarantee you when you go along, somebody will question, Well, let's see, his uncle gave us a letter from Bill Wilson and we don't seem to find it. Where's it at? Well, if you have an inventory and identification number, you've got it by type, by chronology, and by accession, or inventory.
If we keep a document, the material, be specific and accurate. Hopefully the date and the author on that material, and what is its link to the collection. The date and author is so important. So many of the times we find, I'll say, activity document or flyers. There's no date on it. Our newspapers. We had a couple ladies that decided they were going to go down to the Arkansas State History Commission, and they got a whole bunch of newspaper articles, and unfortunately they cut off all the excess, which included the newspaper title, the date, and everything else.
So is it of value? Minimal at best. Minimal at best. So please keep on the head, keep the headlines, keep the dates, and all that information. The newspaper. Accession tools. We have a list, a card catalog, and electronic. The list is the simplest, and anybody can develop a list. Start with a numerical number and just go with it. Card catalog, it's described back here in one of these freebies in the back of the room. Electronic. How many are using computer systems in their archives right now?
Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Far more than we had last year. We have a very large stack room. I would say we're only about a third of the way into computerizeding that material. And the only reason we're only a third of the way, it isn't that we're behind, it's that our amount of the material is so voluminous that we could have several people full time every day doing that work, and we just don't have the time and can't
[00:10:02]
get caught up. We're making the time, though. Okay, electronics is a wonderful way to do it. Go ahead. And that's if we decide to keep the material. If we keep the material, it is confidentiality and anonymity respected. Please, please, please. These are really important. We will have more trouble with our archives if we do not respect these two. Controlled access, restrictions by classification or original copy.
By classification, is it one of these things? For instance, I had a stack of registration cards from Helena, Arkansas, one of the oldest groups, next to the old 120 and a half group, which is mentioned in the Saturday Evening Post article. And it gives your name, it gives your age, it gives your birth date, and honest to Pete, it even gives sexual preference in there. Oh yes. Now, and the only reason I'm doing that is because on those cards there is other names which were the founders of that particular group.
Now, you don't let that material go and everybody have access to it. It isn't that we are to be secretive, but we must respect some of this material. So we put time limit on those cards. And if there is a reason, let's just say that the two of you decided you heard this material existed in Helena. We have a written request. Okay, we're making a request for access, and we need to look at this material. Then we'll put it before the committee, the archivist, which I stepped down from. The archivist will make that decision with the committee, and there has to be a good reason to see.
So we have restricted. Then we have some where it's more secure. I forget the exact four categories that we have. Then we have stuff like all the correspondence that goes out. Then we have everything that the public has access to. So we do have the four main categories of access. We try to, as much as possible, use nothing but copies for people to handle. Now, there will be times when they like to see the original document.
We all know why, because we want to make sure. And let's face it, people are so agog about putting everything into a computer system. You can change things quickly into a computer system, so be very, very careful. Anyway, go. What's the value? What's the value to your archive? I'm going to address something, and hopefully y'all don't take it the wrong way. It seemed to me that there is an awful lot of discussion of the value of big books, and I really hate that term.
It's just personal. I'm sorry. Bill, and especially Dr. Bob, would not want for us to be so locked into the value of a book. So, did we try to collect them? No, we did not. That was the farthest thing from our mind. God's got a funny sense of humor. We collected the entire 16. Additions, our printings, we collected them all, and at such a minimal expense, and most of it was shipping, and they were all donations.
So, you know, if we go about it for the right reason, what's the most important thing that we have? Is it the historical letter where your uncle was writing to Bill W., and in that letter, Bill was passing information on, Well, this is what Dr. Bob and I did. Yes, that's the most important document you got, far more valuable than one of the books, far more valuable. So the written record is the most important thing that we can have, the written record.
Now, are the books nice to have? Yes. I have a great collection of all the material that we call it the Oxford Group material. It was the stuff that the groupers read a long time ago, and we all know that a lot of the groupers, including Bill and Dr. Bob and Anne and Lois and the early one, Bill Dotson, all of those actually read at T. Henry and Clarissa's house, and that was actually an Oxford Group meeting.
So is that material important? Sure it is. We even have an old ancient Bible that came, I think, from Akron, Bob. I found it in an old junk store up there, so it's now down there. Is it of value to AA as a whole? I don't know, but maybe it belongs, and I don't know what your area is, but maybe what I have is of value to your area. It's going to your area. Why do I want to just gather up all this material?
I don't want to do that. Number one, I don't have the space, and number two, it takes time to maintain that stuff. So as quickly as you can, does it have value to your area as a whole, to AA as a whole? Find the appropriate. AA as a whole, find the appropriate place in AA where that should go.
[00:15:03]
Physical condition, scale one to five. Scale one, do we have anything in real good condition? I don't know of anything in real good condition. We have to put things in real good condition. The last archive, a guy got up and he brought me—there you go—the Marty Mann book. This is an 1842 Temperance Manual that came from the last archive workshop, and it was not in good condition. I would give it about a 10 instead of a one to five.
It was really that bad. I've actually done the work on it. I put it back in shape, and we're going to go ahead and deacidify it today, and we'll quarter it. This is 1842. We'll let you look at it, but I'm going to have to respect the wishes of the owner, and you'll have to wear gloves. So these are just cheapy cotton gloves. Once I've done work on it, I no longer handle it with bare hands because hair oil or cosmetics or food or whatever.
Anyway, on a scale one to five, general category five is the stuff that's all taped up. Where's that book that we were going to work on? I think it's yours or the tapers. We just go ahead and—we just go ahead, and I don't need it—we just go ahead and have it available in categories such as this. The category number one, that's one that we really don't have to look at for quite some time. So why spend a lot of time at it?
Let's get it accessioned or inventoried and in the stack room, or in the display room, or in the safe as the appropriate case may be. Go ahead. Consider, what do we want to do? We're going to protect it for sure. Are we going to prevent further damage? In other words, this is when we pick up an item, like we picked up this Temperance Almanac of 1842. The first thing I noted, and this again, this is not mine, but I did do the work because he allowed me to make a copy of it for archives because we did not have that particular one.
Anyway, the work that we are going to do is going to prevent further deterioration, and that's the most important thing that we can do. Are we able to maybe put it in a phthalate folder or an acid-free folder temporarily? Sure. As far as the conservation, let's just say that I noted on that one that there was a lot of acid in it, so we went ahead and deacidified it pretty quick. We knew the value of it. We wanted to deacidify it, and what the deacidification would do would be to kill any further acid action, and that's what we're after.
As far as arresting, that's exactly what the deacidification does. It does not reverse the damage that's already been done to this little booklet. It does not reverse it. It's in there. It's permanent. But we can arrest the acid action by deacidifying it. Reversing. How can we reverse something? I had the privilege of doing Bill Wilson's first edition, first printing book, but in particular the cover. And the reason I even mention that cover is Bill Wilson was a tape user. He really was.
He was a tape user, and there was five, six different types of tapes on that dust jacket, and it was so damaged. And when I got it, I'll tell you, I cried like a baby. I really did. Paul called me up and said that he and Gail were coming to Little Rock, and we'd like to bring something, and we need some work done on it. Paul had already asked me about it, and I said, Yeah, bring it. And I stood my ground and I just kind of cried like a baby.
Anyway, when we did the work, I realized that the thing had been so damaged to buy removal of tape, and we're going to do a little tape removal here today. Paul and I had to make a decision. I said, Paul, the best thing in the world we can do is not put this dust jacket back on the book. Let's just go ahead and we'll get conservation clear glass. We will mat it and we will frame it. So it sets reposed up at Stepping Stones right now, never to be put back on a book, but it is not lost.
And so that's the gift of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the gift. And thank God that we're all a part of it. Paul allowed me to make a laser color copy. I made two, and it's sitting framed and it's in our archives. And again, that's the beautiful part of Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:20:00]
You know, I can have a copy and it seems like it's just as good as the original. People ooh and ah and touch and feel, and they look at it, and they can't damage it a bit. Okay. Keep it simple, no matter what we do. This little temperance manual, for instance, all I'm going to do, the repair work is done, the staples are out, the tissue repair is done. We're going to go ahead and cord that. It's multi-page, so when we pull the staples out, we've got to put it back in one piece. So we're going to do that today. That's the simplest way that we can stabilize this book. But we're not going to do staples back into it.
We'll cord it, and this is acid-free linen, which is sitting there on the table about in the middle. We'll actually sew it back together again. It's very simple. It's just three little holes, and that's the way that I do it. We can have it sewn back together again in a matter of minutes. Then we go ahead and make a little Mylar jacket for it, so that's absolutely protected. Reasonable efforts. Granted, any document like this, think of all the grapevines that we have.
Think of all the little bulletins that we have. Think of all the little pamphlets that we have. My stack has all of our pamphlets in the open position. All of the paper clips have been removed. Keeping them in the open position, most of them are being deacidified. Right now, as I speak, they're being deacidified. And in the open position, it's a lot more stable. If I take and fold something like this that's fairly thick, you can see where we could possibly damage it again.
So keeping it in the open position is probably the most reasonable effort that we can do to that. Best use of time and money. How many have a budget for their archives? How many have a budget that's, say, in excess of, let's pick a figure, $300? $500? $1,000? $10,000? We have to look at dollar. We really truly have to look at dollar value. If I spend all this time on one particular thing, is this the most important item for my archives, or is Bob's letter to Bill, or to Dr.
Bob, and the response letters? That's more important. So I would probably spend more time and more effort to maybe encapsulate those, and we'll even talk about encapsulation today. So. Spend the money wisely. Let's face it, money is starting to get a little bit scarce. Preventing and retarding is a combination, and what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about preventing. Now, how do we protect something as far as temperature, humidity, and fire? Well, 70 degrees, 50 humidity is the optimum.
Do I have 70 and 50 at the Will Street Center? I seriously don't, because have you ever seen an alcoholic that'll go to a room and will not walk over there and adjust the air? I mean, that's automatic. You get a cup of coffee and walk over and adjust the air temperature. You know, that's automatic. I do it, and it's just one of those things. Unfortunately, that part of the heat and air also runs my stack room, so I have to be real careful and very watchful.
There's a house person in the building, and he watches it fairly often, so I don't have to worry too much about it. Fire. We do have fire alarms all throughout the building. Do we have spray units in there? No. If you put spray units, and you might want to consider that very see if they will do it, put spray units in your archives, but be sure that it's strictly a spray and not a single surge of water coming out.
God don't do that, but use a spray. The dangers are extremes and fluctuation. When we first started out, that old building was the old Rubel Funeral Home. It was used to handle dead people, and they tried to keep things real, real cold, so we said we need to turn the temperature down. Then it got, or up, and it got so dadgum hot. We're up there and we're in 100-degree temperature trying to work on archival material and keep it halfway preserved, and we found that that was difficult.
Try to strike a happy medium. Instead of 70 degrees, the optimum, yeah, 75, 76. As far as humidity, 50, and we'll get up around 55, maybe 57, and that seems to hold us okay. Because periodically I'll walk into the stack room, and I will go ahead and check with a hygrothermograph.
[00:25:00]
We'll set one in there for a while and see what's going to happen with that stack room, whether or not the temperature and humidity has fluctuated that much. In most cases, it hasn't. A separate repository. How many have repositories now versus keeping it, say, in some suitcases under a bed or in the storage room? Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. Our archives began in three old Granddad whiskey boxes, and that was kept underneath Anna Kerner, and I don't mind talking about her because I feel like she's standing here right now. She's the one who pushed me into this work, so she's going to have to stand back there and suffer while I talk.
Anna kept that stuff religiously underneath the bed, and she did right up until the time she became ill and died. We were very fortunate to find enough people like her and a few of her friends and a few of the delegates that got together and said, We don't need that in boxes anymore. What can we do with it? However, if we have a repository, that last question, how are we going to secure the access? Well, it's real simple.
We separated our repository from our stack room. We have an access policy. Not everybody's going to get into the stack room unless you make a written request, and if there's a reason, we'll put somebody in there with you. We can pull whatever you need. So anyway, we separated our display room from our stack room, which is separated from our conservation lab, and that solved all our problems. Now, not everybody will have an archive of that nature, but strive for it.
It's a goal, just like anything else. Okay. Preventing and retiring. If we're going to retire, acid-free folders are these, and you'll find them in the Freebie catalogs back there. I would make mention of something right now. We use nothing but legal-size folders. If I've got a two-by stack, or if I've got a two-by box, and I've got records in there, why would I want one little one, one long one, one little, three or four long ones, three or four little ones? It's a mess. So we use nothing but legal-size folders, and we don't overstuff.
Probably four or five letters, and that's about it. Albums. Everybody brings in scrapbooks. Oh, we love to have scrapbooks, and they usually pull a tape. In fact, there's a great one up at Stepping Stones. I'd love to get my hands on that one to do the work. Anyway, albums can be changed over to what they call memorabilia albums, and they are referred to that in those catalogs back there. There's a light impression catalog back there where all of these boxes, folders, and albums are referred to.
Now this is getting far on down the line. If we can just remember to get letters away from other stuff, put them in acid-free folders, that's a heck of a beginning, folks. And if we've got four or five letters that we want to keep in one folder, one of them looks good, then we'll go ahead and figure a way that we can separate it with buffered bond or buffered tissue. So we can put an acid item in there.
I try not to, but if we really want to keep it together, we can, and to keep the acid from transferring from letter to letter to letter. It's right there, acid-free tissue interleaves, or Mylar sheets. Dry cleaning. Dry cleaning is the simplest thing in the world, and we're going to cover that today. It is a compound. It's a document cleaning pad where we can basically take anything and surface clean that document or surface clean that pamphlet.
I had a whole bunch of the young people that love to stay active, so we turned over the pamphlets, and we had a big long room about this size in here, and they surface cleaned every last one of our pamphlets. And I mean, they did a great job. So dry cleaning is very, and it's very inexpensive. That's what these little document cleaning pads are for, and we'll go over the procedure in a little bit. Go ahead. Hypocritical oath.
Archivists are famous for hypocritic—I'm sorry, did I say hypocritical? Oh, well, you know, God said that I'm allowed to make a few mistakes. I introduced myself as Robert C. Williams or Bob Williams as well. God thought he'd chase around this little funny guy when I left Little Rock on the way down here, and I got to the airport. You know how alcoholics… Down here, and I got to the airport. You know how alcoholics do obsessive compulsive, and I got there over two, two hours and 15, 20 minutes early.
[00:30:03]
I went to the counter, Delta counter. One of the guys that I sponsor took me there. I thought that would be an opportunity for growth for him, and that worked out real good. And he walked me up to where we had to go through the check place, and he said, I'll see you. I'll be glad to carry it in after you can't go. And he said, Why not? Anyway, I got in. I got all the way down to the gate, and I'm sitting down there, and I'm reading my little book that I read, Dr.
Bob and the Good Old Timers. I'm rereading that book, and I kept looking at the little red light up there above the gate agent's head, and it clearly said, Atlanta, takeoff time, something, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And mind you, we're at like 5:10 in the morning, and I'm waiting for it to change. And then you came in, and you came in, and maybe three, four, five other people came in, and they sat around me, and they kept talking about Atlanta.
And you ever get that funny feeling back here that something's the matter? I dug in my bag, pulled my ticket out, and Robert C. Wilburn, B-U-R-N. I don't know where he ended up. Wilburn was going. That was me. I had his ticket. The agent said, and I really appreciate it, and this is how, and I would like to tie it into archives, this is how we can grow in archives. That agent, while I stood there, called, say, Bob, and he said, Now stay in the line. We're going to do a little mini…
Telephone conference, and Bob called. He called Dave, and then he called Jerry, and these were various people around that terminal that immediately found the cart that was on the way to an aircraft, and another guy went barreling out there to get the luggage. It was brought up to that gate person. He reticketed it, and it just made my aircraft in time. That's how our archival activities can interface with each other.
Believe it or not, it can. You know, I could go all the way up to Idaho, and I'm sure that there's something that I could receive from them as far as my growth is concerned. So please look at every archive. I don't care if it's huge or small or if it's out of a suitcase. There'll be something in that suitcase that you don't know about. Or maybe you can help that guy come out of a suitcase and get into a couple of big boxes. So let's work with each other.
It works real well. I don't know why I got on that. First, we don't do any harm. In other words, get the right ticket and go to the right destination. We don't want to do that. In other words, am I damaging that item? Is it better for me to just leave that item in a folder and let it go at that? There's one in here now. Second, do nothing irreversible. What is irreversible? How many people have laminated? Come on, be honest.
There are some laminations. How many people were sorry that they did lamination? Be honest. Lamination's a real no-no. Now, I have found out over many, many, many years, and there is a lamination process that we can do that is reversible. And I told Dave I was going to bring this up because, please, if you don't know what to do with it, don't laminate. After this is over with, we will talk about this lamination process.
Why would I want to do that? We had some letters from Bill W., Dr. Silkworth, and Bill Dotson, and they were just so eaten alive by silverfish. If I had tried to do the repair on those letters with tissue repair, it would have been nothing but tissue. You couldn't have seen any of the writing. So I had to make that decision: what do we do? Because once you throw it in the old-style lamination, it's ruined.
Within about, I would say, four or five years, you can throw that letter away. So don't do it. If you want to do yourself a favor, just put it in an acid-free folder, period, and then call me and we'll talk about it. The new lamination process, is it a heat treatment? Yes, it is. It's put on by heat. It's put on by extremely low heat, but it's totally reversible by alcohol. So there is a process if we have one.
I don't mean John. No, no, no. Not the Cardi Rummer Scott, no. You're sharp. And let's look at that last one. Don't do anything or do only what you're trained and able to do. Now again, when I leave here, you will have address and phone number.
[00:35:03]
I get multitudes of calls all the time, and I love to receive them because this is how we share our experience, strength, and hope. I actually do a lot of this work. As long as it's a sanctioned archive, I'll do it, and we'll get it back there. The wrap-up of this presentation today—where's Indiana? They're here somewhere. Okay, the wrap-up of this presentation today will be the obtaining of a first edition, first printing Big Book.
There, an 81-year-old, I think it was a librarian, crawled into a Dempsey dumpster. He was a librarian by trade, and he had retired, and he was throwing his garbage in a dumpster. He looks in there, and he looks in there, and there's a book. He didn't know what it was, so he crawled in that dumpster, and he pulled the book out, and he said, Oh, that's that A and A book. And he looked inside. He looked inside the cover, and in that cover was a name and a phone number, and he knew it to be Chicago.
That book ended up going right back to Chicago Intergroup where it's reposed today. Anyway, don't do anything unless we're really trained and able to do. Not many people can do that level of conservation. But what you can do is make a telephone call, and let's go ahead and link together and share our experience, strength, and hope. Well, I can't do it, but I know that he can. Well, let me give you his phone number.
And please, that's what this whole thing is about. Go ahead. Deacidification. There's a lot of ways to do it. This is not for sniffing drugs. I mean, that's what it looks like, but believe me, that's not. There's a lot of different ways that we can go ahead and deacidify. Sitting on the far end, some of you won't be able to see it, are just merely some spray cans. There's two deacidifications down there.
One is white tow, and the other is Bookkeepers. The easiest to use, because it's an aqueous, is the Bookkeepers. We can actually pour liquid white tow in here, pump it up, and we can spray, oh Lord, many, many, many pamphlets or quite a few pages of a book if that's what it's going to take. We can also pour the liquid whiteout in a beaker container and use what they call a hake brush, and we can deacidify it.
So you see, there's a lot of ways that we can do it. The aqueous is a water bath versus a mist. The mist is sometimes when we spray an item, we have to be real, real careful not to get too much. If I had deacidified, or if I deacidify this item the wrong way, I can conceivably stain because of the liquid, that old paper. So we've got to be very, very careful. And of course, we already talked about the spray, the chemical solutions, which is the whiteout and the Bookkeeper.
There you go. Just take that. Did you make those copies yet? Okay. There are some easy-to-do, easy-to-handle freebies that you can make yourself. One is a magnesium bicarbonate. How many have taken Tums for the tummy because you've had an upset stomach? That's what this is. Our guest, Charles, is going to make copies of all of these freebies. Some of you may not have an archive this large, but I'm going to share two other items with you.
There is the use of a magnesium carbonate powder, and again, you will have these available back. Planetary. This is the way that you can clean up those multitudes, I think you mentioned, of all those newspaper articles. Why use whiteout or Bookkeepers? That's expensive. This you make yourself. This you make yourself. You use magnesium carbonate and water, and then you just go ahead and do your thing. The last one, there's one where we can use calcium hydroxide and calcium bicarbonate.
This was developed way back in 1940. This is one we need to be very, very critical of. I hold it up only for a reason because it's the only one with two different containers. This, I guarantee you, will slick the ink off of any letter that you have not tested. So please, please, please don't take scrapbooks and start bathing them in the calcium oxide, hydroxide, because you're adding water in it.
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Don't do that unless you selectively test about every 10, 15 pages. You put a little drop of distilled water on it, and I take and actually roll a Q-tip, or I'll actually take and lay a piece of blotter paper over it, and I'll hold it down there. And if there's anything that comes off at all, I will not use this bath method for deacidification. Can you do huge items? Yeah, we can. We did a stack of newspapers probably yay thick, and they were single-paged.
The articles were out of it, and they had the dates, and they had the title of the newspaper and everything. But we did a whole stack, and I don't think it cost us maybe 20 cents, 25 cents, thereabouts. So these will be available to you. I'm sorry, we apologize for not having them now, but they will be available to you, and I will again be glad to share, because of time constraint, I'll be glad to share with you how to use these after this is over with.
Okay? Determine appropriate treatment. Arresting, we already talked about. As far as the arresting of the acid action in a piece of paper and the deacidification, but let's talk about the encapsulation. Encapsulation is exactly that. It's the entombment of a document between two sheets of Mylar. And we're going to cover this, actually do some encapsulation here. Let's just say not lamination. Please don't use any lamination. Tape removable, the type of tape.
There are three different kinds of tape. Well, there's 20,000 kinds of tape, but the ones I'm mainly concerned with are masking tape, duct tape, cellophane tape, and there are a couple of others that can be removed with alcohol and it can be removed with water. You've got one on here. This is a freebie, and it'll tell you exactly how to use it. The condition of the tape. A lot of the tapes, the old tapes, especially the cellophane tapes, will turn yellow.
Once that stains a document, once that stains a letter, it's there. It's permanent. There is a chemical called, I think it's diethylformamide, which if you're lucky and the stain is not too bad, which should, by dipping a Q-tip in it and rolling it back and forth, should possibly lift a lot of the stain. If it's right across the letter or the print, don't use it because it could conceivably dull the print material and you may not be able to read the document.
Be sure that you're using the proper method. Go ahead. Determine appropriate treatment. As far as arresting, this is where we're going to talk about staple removal in here. Once we get the staples out, are we going to do tissue repair like this little 1840-ish pamphlet? Is there going to be a different type of tape which are archivally acceptable? The filmoplast is archivally acceptable. Or are we going to go ahead and do Japanese tissue, and we'll even go through that process on the next session?
Go ahead. On reversing, the only thing that we can do, going back to the acid action in the document, we can't undo the acidity of that paper. What we can do is arrest the acid action on that paper. We cannot reverse it. That's all we can do. It's kind of like TV. We can arrest TV, but it's always going to be there. Restoration. Let's just say that we've got the document, we've got the thing deacidified.
How much more do we want to do with that? In other words, do we want to really spend a lot of time on it, or do we want to just drop it in an acid-free folder? That's probably the most appropriate thing that we can do. Go ahead. Displays. Are they permanent or are they portable? Displays are something that is a particular heartbeat of every one of you who have an archival activity. I could never tell you or even suggest what to do, because all of the archival activities that I have seen are really fabulous.
Each and every one of you have got a great way of displaying that material. There are some important things to do. As far as portable displays, we don't take anything original out on display. Alcohol. Original out on display. Alcoholics, just because they come in at a program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and even though they get six months to a year of sobriety, or in my
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case up in Chicago—no, in Akron, I think. Anyway, an individual liked my copy of Richard Peabody's Common Sense of Drinking, and it disappeared. It wasn't original. God saw fit that that guy must have had a good sponsor and did an Eighth and a Ninth Step because all of a sudden the book showed up in the mail. So please don't put original things out there. Not only could they get stolen, but they could be damaged heavily.
So copies are wonderful. I find that a lot of the material, like in AA Comes of Age, Pass It On, Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers, all of these, and we coordinated with General Service Office of New York, and they said that we could buy that book, we could doctor it up, we could cut out the little pictures, and you would be surprised how drunks like to look at a picture with just a little bit of a caption.
They don't want to sit there and read the preface of Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimer. Well, some do. I would. Bob would. I would imagine there are some of us who would do that, but not everybody does. So let's keep it real simple. Audiovisual. Audiovisual is an absolute wonderful way. You'll see when we wrap up this thing, that's a quick way of showing in visual pictures what we'll do today, the biggest majority of it.
We're not going to work on books today a little bit, but you'll get a pretty good idea what to do. Written history texts, they're absolutely fantastic because I guarantee you, and we put copies out. We do not put originals out. We put the original texts out there, and I guarantee you they will disappear off the tables no matter. You can be looking right at the table, and that thing's going to disappear somehow.
So don't do it. Make copies. And again, any copies we make are all on acid-free.