F. Dusting
- Maintaining a clean storage environment is an ongoing responsibility that
will do much to preserve archival records. Shelves, archives boxes, and the
exteriors of bound volumes should be dusted as needed to prevent dirt from being
transferred to records during handling.
- Great care must be exercised when dusting archival records that are
brittle, fragile, or damaged. Bound volumes with loose covers, missing spine
pieces, or delaminated covering material must be handled with special care as
well.
- Before reboxing or refoldering archival records, the exteriors of storage
boxes or envelopes should be dusted with a soft cloth to avoid transferring dirt
to documents during handling.
- Records that have not been protected by a closed container (such as those
in wooden Woodruff boxes and some steel roller drawers or records resting on
open shelves) should be lightly dusted with a soft brush before being placed in
new, clean folders and boxes.
- Dust cloths should never be used to surface-clean or wipe textual records
or photographs. Such action will work the dirt into the paper fibers, abrade the
surfaces of photographs, and possibly result in permanent damage. Dust cloths
should be used only for wiping shelves and the exteriors of boxes or similar
enclosures and bound volumes.
- Documents that are dusty and dirty may be lightly dusted with a clean,
soft brush of the same type recommended for dusting photographs.
(See Supply List) Dusting should begin at the
center of a document and extend out across its edges. Only documents that are in
good condition should be dusted. Documents that are brittle or torn should not
be subjected even to light surface dusting, since this action could cause or
aggravate existing damage. Dusting only removes loose surface dirt and debris
that have not become embedded in the paper; records with embedded dirt or stains
that are obscuring textual information should be brought to the attention of a
conservator.
- Photographs should be lightly dusted with a soft brush before they are
inserted in polyester sleeves. (See section K
Photographs, paragraph 2.)
- The exteriors of bound volumes should be dusted with a soft, dry cloth or
brush to remove surface dirt that could be transferred to the pages during
handling. The edges of volumes also should be dusted with a soft brush, making
sure that the pages are held tightly together so that dirt will not sift into
the interiors of volumes.
- Shelves should be cleaned before refiling storage boxes and bound volumes.
It is meaningless to dust or replace boxes and clean bound volumes, only to
reshelve them in a dirty environment. When cleaning shelves, work from the tops
of shelves or compartments down to the bottom, to avoid transferring dirt from
dirty to clean surfaces. To expedite dusting, it may be helpful to attach to
book trucks small bags containing a supply of clean dust cloths. When shelves
are extremely dirty, a damp cloth or sponge may be used effectively. Shelves
must be completely dry before records are reshelved.
- Work areas should be kept clean. Dust cloths must be discarded when they
become dirty, and brushes must be washed with soap and water and air-dried on a
regular basis to avoid transferring dirt from one surface to another.
(See
Supply List.)
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