Library Preservation

Preservation Policy

The Harvey Library Preservation department oversees the establishment and maintenance of sound handling, transportation and storage practices.  All staff exercise care to prevent damage to library materials during handling and storage.

1. Harvey Library staff handle collection materials with clean, dry hands. 

1. Hand washing:  Hands must be washed regularly to prevent transfer of fatty acids from skin oils and/ or cosmetics onto library collections.  Hand sanitizer kills germs, but it does not reduce the risks associated with skin oils.

2. Gloves:  Nitrile surgical gloves or finger cots should be used to protect rare materials from skin oils.  Cotton gloves provide some protection from chemical hazards, but they may reduce manual dexterity (nylon gloves perform slightly better).  This is not a problem with surgical gloves, so surgical gloves are recommended over cloth gloves.

3. Isolation of Soiled Books: Books that are particularly soiled or red-rotted are isolated from clean books with paper or polyester wrappers.  Dusty or moldy books should be quarantined until they can be cleaned, as described above (I.6.A).

2. Books are shelved in a manner that reduces physical stress on the book structure.  Non-book items are shelved, boxed, or otherwise housed in using materials and techniques that prolong the use of the collection.

1. Position and Orientation of Books: Books are shelved in a vertical position.  Large volumes are shelved resting on their spines, not their fore edges.  The weight of the pages of an improperly-shelved book will damage the hinges inside the book, even when the cover appears intact.  Oversized volumes are stored flat where adequate shelving is provided.

Books are shelved with sufficient space to permit safe handling.  Tightly packed shelves encourage patrons to pull on the head of the spine to remove a book, resulting in permanent damage.  Overcrowded shelves leave inadequate space for reshelving, tempting staff and patrons to stack books horizontally atop the vertically shelved books.  Cover boards are warped and hinges are loosened by this additional weight.

Books are placed on book trucks or shelves of adequate size.  Protruding edges may be damaged by collisions with coats, book bags, vacuum cleaners, book trucks and other objects.  Flatbed or combination trucks (with a flat shelf below two divided shelves) are used to transport oversized volumes in a horizontal position.  Books are stacked no more than six inches or three books high in the oversized shelves.  Oversized books are identified and sent to Technical Services as needed for transfer to the oversized section.

2. Physical Support of Books: Bookends provide vertical support and prevent warped cover boards and loosened hinges.  Temporarily, a horizontal stack of two to five books (about six inches in total thickness) may be used in the place of a bookend on a truck. 

Rough-textured, latex-based, pressure-sensitive tapes are not used to prevent movement of books and documents on shelves.  The rough texture scrapes the books as they are shelved, causing premature wear.  Permanent damage to rare, leather-bound books in the Peabody collection has resulted from the use of this material.  This tape is also chemically unstable.

3. Removal of Books from Shelves: Staff and patrons remove a book from a shelf by pushing adjacent volumes back and grasping the book in the middle near the spine.  Pulling a book at the top of the spine will loosen the hinges or tear the spine.  Instructional films and posters are provided to increase awareness of proper handling as a means of preservation.

3. Mechanically and chemically stable materials are affixed to library books as needed. 

1. Use of Notes and Routing Slips: Notes are written with graphite pencil on clean, colorfast, acid-free paper are slipped in between pages or strapped around the front cover.  Routing slips may be laser-printed or photocopied.  Most felt-tipped pens, ball point pens, and ink jet printers use inks that can bleed onto adjacent pages, so they should be avoided.  In the recent past, books in the Peabody collection suffered avoidable stains, due to the improper use of non-colorfast brightly-colored paper routing slips.

2. Securing Loose or Detached Materials: Rubber bands, Post-it™ notes, and paper clips have caused permanent damage to books in the Harvey Library, so loose covers are temporarily secured with clean paper and/or cotton ribbon.  Polyester folders and acid-free, lignin-free boxes provide long-term housing for detached materials prior to repair.

3. Marking and Use of Labels: All labels and security tag materials are selected from among those with chemically stable or reversible substrates and adhesives.  Such attachments are applied where they will neither obscure text nor interfere with the opening of bindings.  Staff or student workers assigned to apply markings will be trained in appropriate techniques prior to applying labels, security tapes, or property stamps.  

With the exception of book plates, no labels are permanently attached to fragile materials and special collections.  Call number labels and barcodes are affixed to boxes, folders, and dustjackets to prevent any risk of a breaking edge, delamination, or other structural hazards associated with labels (even when “archival” adhesives and substrates are used).  Only stable materials that have been subjected to third party testing (such as the Photographic Activity Test or the Oddy test) are used to mark library items. 

To the extent possible, labels on Peabody items are applied to housing materials, rather than directly on the item, particularly when there is a risk of obscuring any text that is not repeated elsewhere on the item.  The title and author’s name typically appear in multiple locations, so it may be acceptable to partially obscure that text when it appears on the rear cover of a non-rare paperback, for example.  Book plates are the only labels applied to rare books.

Graphite pencil, pigment-based writing inks, and solvent-free fiber-tipped pens (e.g. Archival Gold CD/DVD markers) are acceptable marking instruments. In general, markings should be located where they will be difficult to remove, but where they will not interfere with the use of the item.  Peabody items are marked using the Library of Congress manuscript marking in and graphite pencil.  Rare books are marked on the verso of the title page.

4. Tightly-bound books are opened gently to prevent broken bindings and detached pages. 

1. Copying Bound Materials:  Bindings are often damaged when books are opened beyond 120°.  Patrons and staff are encouraged to use book edge copiers which copy one page at a time at a gentle angle. 

Fragile materials should be scanned on the edge of the Plustek Optibook Scanners in Peabody or Preservation or the face-up I2S CopibookRGB scanner in the 4^th Floor Digitization Suite.

2. Supporting Open Books: Special collection books are supported by wedges, pillows, or cradles during reading or exhibition. 

An open book on exhibit is attached to a fixed cradle or an adjustable Benchmark cradle slightly smaller than the dimensions of the cover.  Pages are supported by polyethylene or polyester strapping and lignin-free board or polyethylene foam spacers.  Homemade cradles may be used to provide customized options.

3. Care of Oversewn Books: “Library bindings” and bound periodicals of the mid-20^th century feature a very tight structure called oversewing that cannot be opened beyond 90° without tearing the inner margins of the pages.  Such structures are not recommended, but they may remain in place, if the margins are at least 5/8” wide and the paper is not brittle.  Disbinding such material is not necessary, unless the affected volumes are irreplaceable and in demand.

5. Machine-readable media are protected from hazards in the Harvey Library. 

1. Enclosures for Machine-readable Media: Chemically-stable protective enclosures are used during transport and storage.  Machine readable surfaces are protected from skin oils and abrasions at all times, because staff and patrons handle only the containers and non-readable margins of these items.

2. Storage Conditions: Machine readable media are protected from high temperatures and humidity during processing and in storage.

6. Items are individually housed as required to prevent damage or facilitate handling.

1. Types of Housings: This rehousing ranges from clamshell boxes to phase boxes to four-flap enclosures to polyester jackets. 

2. Criteria for Use of Dust Jackets:  Books with paper dust jackets are covered with polyester dust jackets.  The dust jackets are designed to prevent contact between the books and any adhesives.  For pre-made jacket covers, this requires modifying the design, rather than following the vendor’s package instructions.  Unusual formats require dust jackets custom constructed from plain, unlined polyester film.  Leather with red rot or a greasy dressing is isolated by covering with polypropylene or polyester.

3. Criteria for Use of Four-Flap Enclosures: Thin books or fragile pamphlets up to 0.5cm thick (about ¼ inch) require additional support to reduce the risk of damage upon removal and replacement on the shelf.

4. Criteria for Various box Types:

1. Valuable, fragile books too thick for a four-flap enclosure may be housed in other types of boxes.
2. Four-flap enclosures created from lignin-free E-fluted corrugated board can be utilized for most books under 2 inches thick.  Over 2 inches thick should then use B-fluted corrugated boards. Corrugated board boxes should be no smaller than 2 cm deep, 23 cm tall, and 17 cm wide. Phase boxes are not used as they lack structural strength to support for books of any size and will primarily just prevent dust and light from affecting the book.  High-value items may be housed in cloth-covered binder’s board clamshell boxes, yet lignin-free corrugated boxes (nicknamed “pizza boxes”) may suffice.

5. Peabody rare books: A polyester book jacket will be made to fit each book. The call number label and barcode label may be affixed to the outside of the dust jacket.