We're on a Roll...

Avid blog followers may remember this post from back in August of 2008... Those oversized maps and documents that we unrolled for the first time so many months ago are finally receiving conservation treatment!

The rolled documents arrived to HSP housed in long plastic bags, tied at both ends with cotton tape.

Each document is removed from the bag, slowly unrolled and weights are used to hold the document open.

Most of the maps are covered with a layer of dust, soot, and dirt that is removed with vulcanized rubber erasers and Nilfisk vaccuum.

The documents are rolled around 4" diameter acid-free, lignen-free archival tubes with a layer of Microchamber paper and an outer layer of Tyvek. The tube is cut to size for each document using a hacksaw and then sanded smooth.

Cotton tape is used to secure the Tyvek around the rolled document. The newly-housed documents will be labeled and stored on shelves.

Conserving the Chew Family Papers

A large portion of the yet untouched Chew Family Papers are maps, which have been collecting dust in rolls for years and years. Although bagged and labeled, the rolled documents need to be individually evaluated for conservation purposes. Cathleen and I spent hours last week carefully unrolling and looking at a variety of documents: printed maps, hand-drawn maps, blueprints, advertisments... All are oversized (i.e. too large for the preferred storage location of flat files), as seen in the following photographic documentation:




Look forward to posts on the conservation of these large maps, which will prove to be interesting, I'm sure!