 I want to welcome you all. Connecting to Collections is a program of the foundation of the American Institute for Conservation. And we provide free training and resources for small and mid-sized cultural institutions. If you need answers to problems with your collection, you can go to the Connecting to Collections Care online forum and ask them. And there are people there that will help you get answers. And we have the community website. We're on Facebook, and we're on Twitter. And you can look at the over 80 webinars that have been done since 2010 in our archives. And you can always contact me. This is my email address on the online community coordinator. And we also are starting a new email list. So if you have registered for a class in the past or have registered on our website, you should be getting this. It's not a discussion list. It's merely to make announcements. And that's just been started. And it'll be still having the kinks worked out. And so next week, we're going to have a webinar on mannequins. And the following week, we're going to have a, or the following month, May 3rd, about a month from now, we're going to have one on hazardous collections, hazardous materials in collections. So be sure to sign up for those. You can do that at the website. And today's webinar is about artifacts in archives collections. And our presenter is Rebecca Elder. She's going to take over now. OK. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me? Yes. Perfect. So as Susan said, my name is Rebecca Elder. I am a preservation consultant based in Austin, Texas, where it is sunny and about 75 right now. It's hard to be inside while talking with you all when I could be outside. But we're going to have a good time talking about artifacts found in collections. I am pretty well suited to do this because I started out as a book and paper conservator. I went through a conservation program. When I got out of school, I ended up doing a lot of preservation assessments. And I started out in libraries and archives. But slowly worked my way into museums. So I've got an idea of what's going on the specific challenges that you all have, as well as the specific challenges that go along with materials, with objects. So as we go along today, I am going to do my very best to follow along with any questions that you have. So if you have questions about what I'm talking about, please go ahead and type them. If you have questions about how to take care of specific things, I have allowed. I think I'm going to talk for about an hour, which means there's going to be probably half an hour left at the end for you all to ask all of your specific, how do I deal with situation XYZ questions? And hopefully, we'll be able to answer everything that you have. But if you're questioned about what I'm talking about at the moment, please go ahead and type them. And we'll just try to get the answers as we go along. So my goal for today is to have you leave here feeling empowered to make good decisions for all of the oddball artifacts that wind up in your archives, whether somebody 50 years ago took them in, and now they are yours, whether you like it or not, or whether they're an important part of your collection, either way, they probably aren't what you learned how to store along the way. So we're going to talk about the preservation environment. We're going to talk about storage materials, what kinds of boxes should you be using, what kinds of packing materials. And then we'll get straight into small objects, larger objects, framed objects, textiles, and hazardous materials I'm going to put in my two cents on that. We'll wind up with some tips for handling, because handling objects in three dimensions is very different than handling paper a lot of the time. And we'll have lots and lots and lots of times for questions. So if you've been coming to these webinars, you've probably heard this a lot. I'll just add my iteration of it. The most important thing you can do to care for your collections is maintain a cool, dry, stable environment. That has the most effect on everything. The good news is that most objects found in archival collections are able to be stored at the same conditions as the rest of your archives. So we're looking at temperature, ideally 68 to 70, if that's maintainable, relative humidity, 35 to 50%, and minimal fluctuations. And I'm not going to do any more on that, because there is a ton of material out there on the environment. Storage materials are another way. Poor quality storage materials are a good way to cause irreparable damage to your treasures. Acidic boxes and paper will catalyze deterioration in the objects you're storing. Things that aren't padded correctly will lead to breakage. So we want to make sure we're using the best quality materials we can get our hands on. So you want things that are durable and chemically stable. And you want to remember that just because something starts out acid-free doesn't mean it's going to remain acid-free forever. As things get older, they deteriorate, and the older I get, the more convinced I am of it, because I know what my knees do when I get up in the morning. So storage materials will eventually need to be replaced in many cases. But buying good quality materials will make sure that that takes as long as possible. So some terms that you should know. If something is marketed as acid-free, it has a pH of 7.0 or higher. Brad wants to know how you know when you need to replace storage materials. There's a few things that I do for board, paper board in particular. A pH testing pen will let you know when things become acidic. Just periodically check them with a pH testing pen. The plastics that we recommend are much, much, much more stable and will be much less likely to be replaced. So if I saw visible signs of deterioration like discoloration, I would want to change my plastics. Oh, and thank you, Susan. Yes, Suzanne Morgan has put a link up where you can get a pH testing pen. They're amazing. I want to say they're under 15 bucks. And you can just make a little mark on your, on an ingot spiky spot on your box or on your tissue or on your file folder. If it's purple, it's alkaline. If it's yellow, if the mark is yellow, it's acidic. And when it becomes acidic, I would get rid of it. I would also replace when I'm starting to see where on the boxes. Like if I'm using a document box, that's an easy one to talk about when we're talking with archivists. If the lid to my document box starts to tear, that's another good time to replace. Julie, I'm gonna have Susan hang onto that question so we can talk about that at the end when we're talking about specific objects. And back to acid-free, 7.0 or higher pH. And just a high school chemistry refresher because it's been a little while. The pH scale goes from zero to 14. At zero, every molecule is acidic. At 14, every molecule is alkaline. At seven, you have an equal balance one for one of each. And it's a logarithmic scale. So something that has a pH of 10 is 10 times more alkaline than something with a pH of nine. Something with a pH of three is 10 times more alkaline than something with a pH of four. And usually when we're looking for things to store paper, we wanna be slightly alkaline somewhere in the seven and a half to eight and a half range if someone is telling you what the pH of the paper is. The next piece of terminology that you should know is lignin-free. And lignin is the component of wood that causes wood pulp paper to deteriorate quickly. If we didn't have lignin, trees wouldn't be able to stand up straight and tall. It gives the trees the structure. But without lignin, but lignin is responsible for creating acids causing paper to turn yellow. If something is marketed as lignin-free, it has a lignin content of 1% or less, which means that it will deteriorate much more slowly than something that's just acid-free. And then finally, alkaline-buffered. So if something is marketed as alkaline-buffered, it has a chemical reserve added to neutralize acids as they're created. It's great for storing a lot of things. It's not suitable for things like blueprints, color photographs, silk and wool are both problematic and artwork with dyes or pigments because the chemical in the alkaline-buffer will interact with your object and cause it to deteriorate more quickly. Plastics are another fantastic storage material. And there's three main types that we use in conservation. Polyester, which is also known as Mylar or Melanex, it's recycling symbol one. It's the same plastic that is in every soda bottle and water bottle in the world. So you know how bad that is in a landfill. It's that good in an archives. I always tell people that if you're using Mylar, it's probably not going to deteriorate in your lifetime. It will be somebody else's problem. Polypropylene, I'll usually think of polypropylene as kind of the clear, milky-clear boxes for holding audio-visual material. And polyethylene, which especially for artifacts, is used a lot in Ziploc bags. The plastic that you never, ever, ever want to use is polyvinyl chloride, which is abbreviated PVC, because it is chemically unstable under even good environmental conditions. And when it deteriorates, it releases hydrochloric acid, which is very damaging to many types of materials. And when you're buying supplies, if your manufacturer can't tell you what plastic you're getting, that would be a time to find another manufacturer. So for packing materials, you've got some great options. The things that we're thinking about using are going to be acid-free tissue, polyethylene plank, which is also a trade name, one trade name for it is esophome, polyethylene sheeting, which is a thin, flexible polyethylene product and a trade name on that is Velara. Things you want to avoid, newsprint. Newsprint, very acidic, will deteriorate quickly. Likewise, brown paper, styrofoam, off-gasses chemicals that will catalyze deterioration and packing peanuts, off-gas, plus leave behind a lot of dust and they're kind of a pain in the neck and a mess to use. So those are some options that you have. So now into what you're really here to hear about, how to take care, what kind of storage things we have for all these weird objects that we have. I'm going to be, in many cases, describing the ideals and the standards, the kind of the standards or the Cadillac solutions, but chances are there is going to end up being compromised between this and what you can afford to do. Elizabeth in Sioux Falls wants to know about bubble wrap. I tend to stay away from bubble wrap on it. I would use, oh, and Pamela also wants to know about bubble wrap. I would stay away from bubble wrap and instead use padding made out of acid-free tissue. Choroplast, yes, I believe choroplast is inert. So when designing any storage solution, things that I think about are going to be what kind of materials are safe for me to use with this object? I think about the orientation. Thank you, Brad, yet to don't source it from a printer, source it from a conservation supply house. Quilt batting, I wouldn't use just quilt batting. If I was going to use quilt batting, I would use it inside of something. I would use it to make snakes inside of some stocking net, but we'll talk about that in a minute. A little bit, I haven't missed any other questions. I think I'm up to date on it. Disintegrating choroplast, that's really interesting and I would love to talk about that later and try to figure out what's really going on with it because it should be pretty stable stuff. Okay, so when you're designing a storage solution, what materials are safe? Does your object need to be stored flat or in a specific orientation to keep things from falling off perhaps? Is my object fragile or deteriorating? And is it vulnerable to loss? Like if it's very small, that's something that could be very easy for it to just disappear accidentally because little things disappear. So small objects are pretty easy to store a lot of the time. The easiest, most elegant solution I have for a small object that you want to keep with a collection of archival papers is to use a spacer to create a storage area in a document box and that's what's going on here. We have a document box with a few folders in the front and a spacer which you can purchase from archival suppliers or you can make your own either way but you have this nice little cavity in the back of your box now that separates it from your object from the papers and that's a great solution for things like metals, cased photos, small books, random souvenirs and mementos. If you have something that needs some stability to it, you could use some epiphone plank to create an insert with a cavity to hold your object securely if it's fragile. So you could just use a knife to cut out the cavity, size it to the space in your box and there you go. It's elegant, it's simple, it doesn't take up a whole lot of space. If you have larger amounts of small objects, you can get flat boxes and either buy dividers or trays or make them yourself again. Those are excellent storage. And if you take pictures of each object in the box and adhere them to the lid, then you don't have to open the box to see what's inside, which is a really handy tip. It just cuts down on handling for the objects. If you have extremely large collections of small objects, maybe you have fossils or arrowheads or coins or buttons, those require a specialized solution. The one that I really like is to put each example into a small polyethylene bag and store them in specimen trays in boxes. And Samantha wants to know the best way to adhere a picture to the lid of the box with lots of tiny objects. I would go with PVA polyvinyl acetate glue. It's chemically stable, it's easy to use, it's inexpensive, just brush out the back of the paper, wrap it on your box and you're good to go. For larger objects, if at all possible, you want objects to be boxed. They protect your collection from light, dust, provide a micro environment that buffers against temperature and relative humidity shifts. So boxing is great. If boxes aren't really an option, if you have 5,000 hats and you're not gonna be able to buy 5,000 boxes at the moment, then supports on open shelving are a really good option. You can put more than one object in a box if you use packing material to protect it. And I would say not to let the box get too heavy because then it becomes awkward for carrying. So things that you can use for larger objects. This is a box that has a couple of artifacts packed in it and you see that they've used acid-free tissue to pad around the object so that they don't shift and they don't touch each other. So you can use acid-free tissue to make pads and snakes and in the resource list, Samantha wants to know about supports. I'm gonna show you one in just a moment. You can wrap things in Velara, which is kind of the closest analog that I have is sometimes when you buy electronics, there's a piece of a soft, gentle feeling plastic over your electronic screen. That's Velara or similar to Velara. And you can create custom housings, custom supports and I'm gonna show you one in a minute, but it's just something that holds things in place. In your resources, there is a instruction sheet on how to make pads and snakes out of acid-free tissue. And I'm gonna show you all this because, A, it's a support and it gives me a chance to talk to you about a really great resource that has a lot of information on supports. This is a custom support for a damaged basket. So it's a disc of some kind, it's probably a corrugated board and some white cotton tying tape tied through it. You put the disc underneath the basket, tie the strings around the top and you have some support for the bottom, some support for the edges. You don't have to handle it by the basket. The sound is cutting out. We're gonna take just a second and see if we can figure out what's going on on the tech side. And the hope who's doing our tech support is gonna be working with you all on that. So this support I found at a really fantastic resource called Stash C, which is on the resources list. It's a joint project of the AIC and Spinach, which is the Society for the Protection of, oh shoot, now I got flustered and I can't, it's a Society for the Protection of Natural History Objects. Yes, thank you, D, Spinach, SPNHC, Society for the Protection of Natural History Collections. And it is a really, really wonderful comprehensive site of reader, user submitted storage solutions. It's one of the absolutely best resources on storage out there. And if you have an ingenious storage solution, you can contribute yours as well and help out other people. So moving on to framed objects. Framed objects, there are a couple ways to deal with them. You can hang them on walls or support screens. And that's absolutely valid. You can also use storage bins like this one in the picture where you have a room for a couple of pictures in each slot. If you're using bins, it's a good idea to separate your paintings with acid-free cardboard or foam to prevent scratching of the frames. I think, wait, I think I missed a slide. I'm sorry, I did miss a slide. Framed objects, Lee, I'm gonna get to you in one second. I can overshot myself. So for framed objects, the first thing I can tell you is if you have inexpensive frames, like somebody bought in a dime store, I would just get rid of those. They have very little artifactual value, if any, and then you can store things like you would store photos or paper. If you have a painting or a piece of art that's fragile or damaged, it's best to store it flat, either in a box or a drawer, or the first preference is, if you don't have a box or a drawer large enough, then store it on a shelf. You want to store it flat so that if there's any media flaking, it stays in place and doesn't fall off. So now on to the bins. Yeah, my preference, Leanne, would not to be storing things, leaning that much. I would like them to stand up a little straighter, if possible. And you want to store them with as a free card or phone between, if options, store them frame to frame and hardware to hardware. Moving on to textiles. You've got a lot of possibilities there as well. You can store textiles flat in drawers, flat in boxes, rolled around the tube, rolled around tubes, or hung in wardrobe cabinets. One thing you want to think about a lot with textiles is what, if you can try to figure out what kind of fabric you're working with. If it is wool or silk or anything that comes from an animal. So alpaca, that you never, ever, ever want to use alkaline-buffered tissue with. That always wants to be unbuffered tissue because the chemicals in the paper pulp that buffer against the acid also cause proteins, which come from animals, to become brittle. If you have small textiles, you want to store them flat. Flat storage is ideal because it provides all over support. You have pressure coming up from the bottom along all parts of your textile that you're storing. If your textiles are sturdy, you can just store them between pieces of acid-free tissue. If you have fragile textiles, they may also require a support to prevent damage during handling. So you might need to, for example, cut a piece of acid-free board to the size of your object and store that with your object so that when people pick up the object when they open the box, they pick up the board, not your actual fragile textile. Things that really are good stored flat, velvets and fabrics with pile, because if you roll them or fold them, the pile will become distorted. Fragile or deteriorated surfaces or decorations. Again, if it's fragile, it needs all of that support. Anything brittle or stiff, anything heavily embroidered or beaded. You especially don't want to hang those because the weight of the embroidery and the beads can pull things out of shape and cause tearing. And Francis in St. Petersburg also reminds us that knitted and crocheted items stretch more quickly than woven textiles. That is so very true. I am a knitter, and I cannot tell you how true that is. So knits and crochets are also really nice to store flat if that's a possibility for you. However, there are some things that are just too big to store flat, so you have to roll them up. Quilts, rugs, large woven, and the easiest way to do that is to wrap them around an acid-free core. You want your core to be longer than your textile, so those edges are protected. There's some. They're not hanging off the edges of your tube. If you have very thin textiles, something with a two inch core is usually suitable. If you have thicker textiles, a three inch tube. At least let's answer that question at the end when we're talking about specific objects. When you are rolling things, you want to use tissue between the layers, and that'll provide just a little bit of a buffer between layers of the object. Then wrap them in muslin and tie them at the ends. After that, you can, if you are lucky and fancy, you can have a nice rack like this one from the National Park Service, but you can be cheap and just get brackets and dowels and hang things on the wall. It's better if you can hang them rather than put them on shelves, because if you put things on shelves, the pressure of the shelf from the bottom will cause those bottom layers to compact. Joshua wants to know if muslin will eventually deteriorate as well. Eventually, yes, but it will probably take a very long time. Muslin is just 100% cotton. Cotton is very, very chemically stable. So for costumes, you want to use forfitted constructive clothing, think Western clothing, dresses, jackets, blouses. That kind of stuff in good condition can be stored in a wardrobe cabinet or on a rack. If you have things that are unconstructed or fragile, so unconstructed, I'm thinking like cactans and kimonos and things without a lot of structure, that is what you want to store flat. Other things for flat storage, heavy-beated textiles, because the weight will cause the textile to tear. Bias-cut dresses and bias-cut means that it's cut on a diagonal of the fabric, which gives it lovely, lovely drape. But it also makes it prone to distortion when you have it on a hanger, so that flat. And men's pants also store flat very well. If you're going to hang something, you're correct, William, use a padded hanger. You can buy padded hangers. There are tutorials out there for making padded hangers. But a padded hanger will help keep your arms and shoulders in shape, and it will distribute the weight over a wider portion of the fabric. So those are important. And then if you have a lot of money to spend, you can go all out and buy beautiful museum cabinets that are designed for storing textiles. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that probably that's not where your budget dollars are going. And if that's the case, you want to put each item in a closed dust cover. Dees says her museum gets old bedsheets from hospitals and hotels for free, and those are an excellent solution a lot of the time for fabric. Close dust cover to keep things out of the light and out of the dust. And then you want to hang with space in between each object. And that is so that, say, beating on one object can't damage the fragile surface on another. Let's give them a little. And Kathy says she's been experimenting with noodles on coat hangers for padding. I have heard several people experimenting with pool noodles. I do not know what plastic they are. It's my only caution about them. If you can find out, though, and if they are polyethylene or polypropylene, they might be really fantastic. If something can't be stored hanging costume-wise, you can store them in flat files or costume boxes, either one. I'm assuming in an archive it will probably be a costume box. And you want to aim for as few folds as possible, because when you fold things, you run the risk of having permanent impressions of the fold in your object. When you're storing things in boxes, pad the folds, pad the shoulders, pad the sleeves with rolls and pads of acid-free tissue to help them keep their shape. And ideally, you would put a piece of muslin in the bottom of the box, a muslin sling, so longer than the box. And that way, you can use the ends of that muslin sling to pick up the piece when you're ready to get it out of the box. And Susan, can you put Jeanne's question over in the parking lot for later on? Accessories are another. They're out there in scads and scads galore. You always want to think about the appropriate support. And there are lots of options out there, from purchased things that are fancy, to homemade things that are very simple. This one you can find directions on for the Minnesota Historical Society's website. It's a moccasin support. And you can see how simple it is. It's just some corrugated board, some cotton tying tape, fold it up. There go your moccasins. They're stuffed in the middle to help them retain their shape. And that's really, really quick and easy. So look around for any kind of accessory you come up against in your collection. Somebody has probably already designed a storage solution for it. All righty. I know that Caitlin says, would cotton tape damage the shoes? Let me go back to that picture. When I would be worried about the cotton tape damaging the shoes, is if it was tied too tightly. Because if you tie it too tightly, it'll squish the edges. And that can cause permanent distortion. But this one, if you look at it, it's just going gently around the edges and holding things in place. So that should not be damaging. And cotton tying tape is very chemically stable. It's some, yeah, I wouldn't have any problem with the chemical issues on that. As long as you're careful with not causing things to get squeezed, I think you're in good shape on that. But that's a really good question. So I know that in May, there is going to be a full-out webinar on hazardous collection materials. And I hope you will all attend that, because it's a really big topic for me. But in case you can't make that webinar, I want to talk a little bit about hazardous collections. Because if you're coming from a paper background, you don't think a lot about things being dangerous. Because paper is paper. So hazardous collection material, a nice definition, is any material that has the potential to cause injury, illness, or death, cause damage or loss, or inhibit operations. And we can break that down further into two categories, things that are inherent or things that are acquired. So inherent hazards are things that become hazardous at the time of manufacture and remain so over time. So that could be anything from the arsenic and taxidermy mounts to the poison tips on air heads or weapons, mercury in thermometers and 18th century mirrors, lead in bullets or stained glass or glazed ceramics or printers type, medical equipment, old medicines. There's a museum in Austin that has a delightful display of old patent medicine bottles that still have things inside them, which scares me quite a bit. You also want to be careful about the physical characteristics. Some things are sharp. And the list goes on. This is not exhausted by any means. I'm sure we could sit around and talk about this for an hour and come up with 100 more. Acquired hazards become added over time. So that's things like pesticides, preservatives, deterioration of your object, things like nitrate film becomes more dangerous as time goes on. Environmental contaminants like mold or frass, which is insect droppings or bird droppings, all of those are problems that happen later. Your number one concern when you're thinking about hazardous materials is your own health. We can get more stuff. We can get more stuff. And we can get more stuff. But we cannot get another you. So you want to think about taking care of yourself. To do that, you want to know how the body absorbs toxins. It can either do it through your skin. Healthy, undamaged skin is often an effective barrier. But some substances will dissolve or destroy your skin's protective layer. And then you can get punctures and scrapes and cuts, which increase the rate of absorption. And once a substance is absorbed through the skin, it can cause systemic damage. So if you're touching objects and you feel burning pain, redness, irritation, that's your cue to stop. Gene, let's talk about that later. And Genie, probably not, they're probably on mylar. But without seeing them, it's hard for me to tell. Inhalation, hazardous substances are often airborne. The big one I think about, because I work with it a lot, is mold. You inhale it. It gets into your lungs. That goes into your bloodstream and gets distributed to your whole body. So be aware of things like coughing, burning sensations, having this in the chest, difficulty breathing. At this point of the moldy room, I can tell within five minutes that there's mold in there, because my voice starts to get froggy. Oh, there's mold. I better put on my respirator. And then you may unknowingly absorb small quantities of a toxic substance into your gastrointestinal system from food or drink or contaminated hands. If you touch something contaminated and then touch your face, which is a really common thing to do, if we were standing face to face, I would be looking around the room and there would be at least a third of you with your hands on your face. I promise you. You get the toxic substance on your face. It's easy for it to get into your eyes, nose, or mouth. Sharon wants to know, is there any way to get rid of mold? Do you just get rid of the item? Let me talk about that in a minute, because I'm going to, Brad said, if hands were on the top of the sea, I told you. Sharon wants to know about mold. Let's talk about that in a minute, because I am going to be talking about how to handle contaminated items. We can identify hazards in a couple of ways by how we know the material, by the history, that we know. We can do chemical testing, either spot testing or, I'm sorry, by either spot testing or using some fairly sophisticated equipment. Testing should be done by a trained conservator. And I think it's worth pointing out that Mac, which is the Midwest Art Conservation Center, their object conservator will do really inexpensive arsenic testing for us. You just use a swab to take a sample from your object, put it in a baggie, mail it up to her, and she will do the testing and let you know if you have something in your collection that has arsenic. And yes, the AIC Spinach Book Health and Safety for Museum Professionals is so good and so useful. Things that might make you think you have pesticides going on in your collection. Your material is in really good condition, much better so than you would expect to find it. That's often a tip off that something has happened. It didn't just stay beautiful, somebody was probably helping it along. Something might be marked or labeled with a poison tag. You might see a fine white dust, crystals, and better safe than sorry, suspect anything you can't easily identify. And Paola says you should also keep an eye out for things that may have been in contact with asbestos or contained asbestos. Absolutely, that's another one that is out there. Now that everyone is terrified, let's talk about managing the risk for a second. So in your dream world, in my dream world, if you had something that was moldy or if you had something that was contaminated, you would remove the object and replace it or substitute it with another. But you can also isolate the object and use safe work practices. If you need help, there are few resources for you in your local environmental safety agency. If you're on a college campus, there's probably an office on campus that deals with the science labs and their safety that can give you some help. OSHA also has a small business consultation service that will help you figure out how to be safe in your collections. But remove and replace. So you can dispose of the contaminated object. Way to dispose of the contaminated object. Make sure you're disposing of it safely. The easy one to tell is if you have deteriorating nitrate film, the last thing you want to do with that is throw it in the dumpster behind your archives. You want to make sure you're following the rules on that. You might also consider remediating the contaminant. That might be having a conservator treat something for mold. When you come across something you want that's potentially contaminated, process it quickly so that there's less risk for everything. The longer it hangs out, the more time you have for it to interact with other objects or with other humans. Oh, and we already covered that one, excellent. You can also isolate contaminated materials either in well-sealed bags or containers. Label things so that people know not to just go ripping open that Ziploc bag and sticking their hands in. Or if you have the budget, you can put things in drawers and put a piece of acrylic over the top to isolate. And finally, oh, we're doing perfectly on time. I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about handling objects. The first rule of handling is only handle things when necessary. The less you handle things, the less likely it is there will be damage from handling. So if you don't have to handle it, leave it alone. And the corollary to that is treat every object as if it were the most valuable piece in your collection. For objects, I usually use nitrile gloves for handling. Definitely if you're handling metal objects went to wear gloves because the oils on your finger can end up doing damage. But I use gloves most of the time for objects. And I prefer nitrile because they're disposable, they don't have the maintenance of cotton. And for anything that's slippery like ceramics, China, you don't want to wear cotton gloves because it makes it too easy for them to slip out of your hands. Likewise, don't wear any dangling jewelry. So no charm bracelets, no long necklaces, no ID badges on lanyards, no loose sleeves, no pens in your pockets, anything that could come loose or could hit the object and cause some damage. Use both hands when you're carrying objects and handle the object at its strongest point and think about where it might be most vulnerable to breakage. So you would see that teacup and think that the handle is the logical place or the pitcher and think the handle is the logical place to carry it by. But actually that is the most vulnerable point to breakage and you are better off carrying it by the base. If an area has been repaired, it's most likely weaker than the rest of the object. So avoid those areas. And avoid any, if it's a, oh, say it's an art piece that has spikes and protrusions coming off of it, those are something else to avoid because they break off easily. If you have an object that is in two pieces like a teapot with a lid, you're better off to handle it in two pieces. So don't put the lid on the teapot and move the whole set, move the teapot, then move the lid. When you're moving things, again, do you have to move the object? If you don't have to move the object, leave it in place. If you're moving something, know where you're going, know exactly where you're going to put the object before you pick it up, make sure that your space is ready for the object. If you pick something up, move it to the space, find there's something in your space, you have to move the object back to where it came from. It's complicated. You want to use trays, carts, and other equipment to move objects. It's safer than holding them in your hands. And if your object is large or heavy or awkward, use two people to move it. Mary Alice wants to know a vendor for oversized carts. I do not have one off the top of my head, Mary Alice. If you email me and remind me, because I won't forget, and I'm putting my email address in the chat right now, I will do a little research, and I'm assuming, Susan, if I get it, oh, there's some help for you, but Susan, if I get a resource, you can update the resources, but yes, I will work on finding you an answer to that question, and we will get the updated resource list to include it. Okay, so boy, I said I was going to talk about an hour. It is now 1.58, and I wanted to open up the floor to questions that you have about your collections. We have been storing what's come up, yet we've been storing what's come up, so we're gonna take that first, and then we have a hard time scrolling through them, so perhaps Susan, you can help me with, and scroll down in that, because I don't have control of that pain. And so I'm gonna start with the first one that I can see, which is Elise in Lakeland. We store leather in acid-free tissue for batting and in an acid-free box with a protein. I would use non-buffered tissue, and I think you are good. Sharon in Eagle Point, Oregon, wants to know about animal hides and fur, and those are things that I would box and use acid-free tissue with, but not buffer, just acid-free. Make sure that the stoles, if they're just stoles that are long, you can store them flat. If they have some shape to them, you may need to pad them to give them some support. Jean in Prince Rupert wants to know about identification tags. I label with number two pencil, and attaching them to items, it depends on the object. You want it to be non-permanent. And there's a lot of material about labeling out there that you can find. My head, remember the name of the book, but there is one that includes a lot of information on labeling. And I will look that up when I can get to my bookshelf and put it on the resource list as well. So, yeah, if you're using string tags, tie them around something stable. That's the best thing I have to tell you on that. Sharon wants to know about how to get rid of mold. Sharon, ideally you would work with a conservator on mold because it's a health hazard because you can do damage to the materials. Otherwise, if you wanted to do it yourself, my, so I would recommend a conservator. I realize you may not have the budget, and if you are willing to absorb the risk that comes with doing it yourself, my favorite tool for mold remediation is a soot sponge. But that's also a great question to talk about in the Hazardous Materials Workshop. And I think you should talk with that. Julie wants to know about newspapers, Julie, in Eagle Point. Newspapers are pretty easy. Open them out as far as you can, which is probably going to be so that there's one fold down the middle. Put them in acid-free, preferably alkaline-buffered file folders in flat boxes. I'm moving it back over. Boy, you guys have a whole lot of questions. This is awesome. John in Brooklyn has chemicals in plastic and glass bottles in the collection. Are they safe to keep in the collection? He's concerned with the plastic bottles. That one, John, we're not exactly what chemicals they are. It's very hard to answer. So I would say if you have access to some kind of an industrial safety resource, that's the person I would ask that question. So yeah, Susan says she will read the questions for me. That would be super helpful, Susan. So the next one that I see is from Barb Connor and I can only see need to advise. So what does Barb need advice on? Okay, so which one is the one you can't see? Oh, Barb Connor. Yes. Need to advise lay person with multiple paintings on storage. No shelving or bins available? Wrap in what? So no shelving, no bins. What should she wrap them in? Wrap them in. I would say I would go with probably something like Velara, which is a soft polyethylene that comes in rolls. Is it safe to store artifacts wrapped in acid-free tissue in old metal filing cabinets? I am not a fan of filing cabinets for a few reasons. They are space inefficient, but even more than that, they don't allow air circulation. So any acids that are being created by the object as they deteriorate have nowhere to escape to. All they can do is essentially cannibalize the objects, go back in and cause more deterioration, which then causes more acids, which then will cause more deterioration and it's a never-ending cycle. So if there is any way you can get it of the metal filing cabinets, that would be a really good thing to do. Okay. When buying quilt batting, it says make sure it's heat bonded and chemically, and not chemically bonded so there's no odd guessing or degrading. Do you have anything to say about that? No, I just think that's a really useful tip and I remember seeing that come across and thank you for saying that. Okay. We have photography developing containers in, did you already get this one? In plastic and glass bottles here is part of the collection. This is from John's Nereo. Yes, I think I've taken that one and that's the one that I am hunting to an industrial safety expert because I don't know exactly what the chemicals are. Okay, I'll keep that. We got that one. What do you do with moth-infested fibers? So I guess the first question is if they're infested now and if it's something that you can freeze, which is most textiles. You want to stay away from anything with metal, anything with beads, anything with glass, but most run-in-the-mill textiles you can put in the freezer and I would wrap it up in a Ziploc bag, throw it in the freezer and let the moths get frozen to death. And the other thing you can do is put them in a plastic bag and put them in something dark and put them in a closed car in the summer because they just need to get up over 104 degrees and you can do that for an hour and they'll be dead. And it won't hurt them. That's not long enough to really hurt something. Yeah, I had never heard that. Oh yes, it's very effective. I would imagine. And freezing, sometimes you have to do several times. Yeah, a couple of cycles is best for freezing. Yeah, is it always safe to go with unbuffered ash and pre-tissue if you don't know what something is made out of? Yes, if you don't know, if you are concerned that alcohol and buffered tissue is not the right choice, go with unbuffered. So yeah, when in doubt, unbuffered is safer. Okay, Deborah Stabber has, they have a 16 foot long, 26 inch wide at the middle, snake skin that's a little stiff. Do you have any suggestions? Wow, 16 feet, is that what the measurement was? Right, yeah. I've seen something like this wrapped around a very, yeah, I've seen something like this, it was somewhat not totally stiff, wrapped around a very large diameter, archival tube, so that it's not actually slightly stiff. Yeah, and that would be where I would go on that, I think. That's impressive, that's a really impressive snake skin. Yeah, right. What would you recommend for old scrapbooks with photos glued to that awful black construction paper? Is it worth leaving them glued to the paper? Scrapbooks are, I love scrapbooks. Scrapbooks and I have a, yeah, I love them and I hate them because they're kind of a pain but they're so beautiful and so wonderful. The first question on that is, can you even get the photos off? If you can get the photos off and there's no great artistry, I would probably take the scrapbook apart. If there's great artistry and taking the scrapbook apart ruins that. You just skipped it. I would have a harder time making that call. Oh, I'm sorry. So if there's great artistry, take the scrapbook apart. If it's just photos that are adhered to a page, then yeah, if you can take the book apart without doing damage to the photos, I think that's great. If you're going to take the book apart, before you do that, I would take pictures of each page or scan each page so you have a record of what it looked like. You just lost you again. So you had a record of what the pages looked like. Are you back? The next question that we have is I've also related to scrapbooks. It has to do with, what do you do with the scrapbooks from the 60s where they were in that horrible sticky stuff? And hope it's, am I back on? I think I am. Rebecca, I think you're off. Try- Susan, I'm hearing you just fine. I'm not hearing Rebecca, though. Rebecca, do you mind turning your audio up and back on? We're working on this. Oh, there you are. Okay. You're there, but you're going in and out. Yeah. Kate Hill in Kansas City says, we have some large metal chrome or chrome plated scissors that are currently sitting directly on a metal shelf for the few layers of acid-free tissue, be enough of a barrier until we can find a more permanent storage solution. Oh, Rebecca's reconnecting her audio. Hi, Rebecca. We're hearing you type. So, it looks like your microphone's on, but I don't know if, yeah, we are hearing you. Can you hear me now? Okay. I don't know what happened there. So, but apparently reconnecting fixed it. So, yes, to the chrome plated scissors. Acid-free tissue would work, but those sound pretty sturdy to me, and the tissue might get torn pretty easily by them. So, I would say if you had a piece of acid-free board, that would even be better. Okay. We have a question about a four-foot-long Nigerian ceremonial, I'm not sure what, from Alicia Nottingham in Port of Spain, Trinidad. So, Alicia, if you could write in again what it is. And then there've been a couple of questions about leather that's drawing out. And- Okay, yes. I see something about putting creams and oils and things like that. I highly recommend against any kind of a leather dressing for leather, because it can end up doing a lot more damage. And I think also- For leather with vinegar. That makes me nervous too. Yeah, right. What's the best way to handle a large woolen blanket that needs to be folded due to space constrictions? Acid-free tissue, between the layers and an acid-free box? Yes, absolutely. And pad up between the folds so that it's not a sharp fold, it's a softer fold, softer, gentler fold. Yeah. Okay, let me just, I'm gonna quickly go through here and see if we've missed any questions. Yeah, because I saw one about stained glass, but I didn't see what the question is. Okay, I'll see if I can find it. Since that person asked twice, I wanna make sure we get an answer. Yeah. And please go back to the leather question. The leather, I- Yeah, you're cutting out stuff. Well, it may have been me sort of struggling with how to address the leather question, because yes, I agree that the drying leather is a problem, but I also have seen too much damage done by leather dressings and oils and creams to feel comfortable recommending that for leather that's drying or dry, as much as I hate to have this be the best answer that I have is I, an objects conservator who can consolidate the leather, or if it's a leather book, a book and paper conservator will consolidate the leather, they'll paint a, they'll paint a consolidant on it which will hold things together. Unfortunately, leather is just a pretty terrible material and it deteriorates, we don't have a great solution for it, except for consolidation by a conservator is the best one I have. Yeah, so the question is, what does consolidate mean? Hold it all together. Yeah. So I don't want to use the word glue because it's not gluing it all together, but the consolidant will force everything to consolidate, will force everything to stay together and stabilize it. Okay. It says, does wearing nail polish have an impact when handling materials with nitrile gloves? It shouldn't unless, so I'd be worried if you have nails that are long and beautiful, I would worry about them puncturing the glove. And if that happens, having color from the polish offset onto your object, but otherwise I think the nitrile gloves are probably an effective barrier for nail polish that's not wet, which I'm assuming it's not gonna be wet at the office. Yeah, so Meredith Yall asked about what's the best way to store old guns and bayonets? We're actually gonna have a webinar on that in June. So why don't we have a look on that? Yeah, I'm gonna defer that to an expert on firearms. Yeah, and Guru Fateh is the one who asked about the best way to store stained glass. And I am seeing an answer from Paolova. Vertical, yes, I would say vertical. And make an enclosure with a soft center to protect the glass. I think that's a really lovely, elegant solution, Paolova. Thank you for taking that one. And then what about glassine? Glassine is usually pretty terrible paper. I would go with acid-free tissue instead. Okay, and I saw a question scroll past about flags. Yeah. And yes, I would roll flags like other large textiles. If they have any kind of applique on them or any surface decoration, I would roll that side out so that it's not squished when you roll it around the core. But yeah, that's, I think especially if you don't have a fancy flag storage solution, that's a really good way to handle that. And I'm keeping adding the evaluation web address so that you'll please fill them out. And I won't have to chase you because I forgot last time. Okay, so, yes. Brad says, if the flag is deteriorating flat is better, yes. Anytime something is deteriorating flat is the way to go. And there's one on how, what's the best way to store kites? And how to store for strings on kites. How to store for strings on kites. Wow, that's fascinating. Wow, so first, boy, I wish there was a way for you to send me a picture because there are so many kinds of kites out there. There you know, kind of the standard diamond shaped kites and there are box kites and there are fancy dragon kites and each of those could potentially have a different solution. But I would say box. Use acid-free tissue to pad potentially if you have some kind of a box kite that you need a little more structure to the support for and you could use corrugated board or cut a, boy, it would be so much easier if I could like show you what my hands were doing. But, right, because if you could see my hand, you would see I'm designing an enclosure for a box kite in front of you. But I'm envisioning perhaps some ethophoam cut with, no, I wanna store it. Man, this is really fun. What a great question. I'm so checking my good stash and see if anybody has done anything about storage of kites. Yeah, I think that's one that it's really, really specific and I'd love to talk more with you about it. If you shoot me an email, we can talk about it forever and think about it. Okay, Alicia Nottingham did it right back in. She says, we have a four foot Nigerian sword. It has a leather holster that's too big for any boxes, boards we have. Can you recommend, what are your recommendations for storage? And I'm concerned about the splicing a board together as the sword and holster are very heavy. How do you make sure the joints don't fail? Yeah, man, that's a really, really, really tough question, Alicia. I would also try to avoid splicing the board together. That's something where I would probably want to try to build a custom enclosure for it. But what I am hearing you say, or seeing you say, is that you can't get any board that's four feet long. You should be able to. Well, but she is in Trinidad, so I'm thinking it might be a shipping issue. Yeah, or you might be able to get a wooden building board and then cover it. We're gonna have two last questions. We have four minutes and then we're gonna go off. Please do the evaluations. So one of the questions is, what's the best way to store plaster busts? Okay, plaster busts. I would probably just store them on a shelf. They're probably too big to get into a box. So store them on a shelf and make sure your housekeeping program is good so that they don't get dusty. Yeah, and the last one is we have carpet rolls. Can carpet rolls be used if they're wrapped with saran wrap? I don't think so. What are, I'm confused about what we're using the carpet rolls for, but saran wrap makes me nervous. Yes. I don't know what that plastic is off the top of my head but I do not trust it. Shrink wrap is sometimes a solution but it's also not very chemically stable. So my advice would be, try to find another solution if you can. Oh, Jean says Tyvek. Tyvek might work really nicely. Tyvek is very inert, very sturdy. It's gonna be way sturdier than saran wrap is. And it looks like people are logging off and I just want to thank you too. Yes, I wanted to thank everybody for showing up. I am impressed with how many people came and how smart and interesting your questions are. And we hope that we'll see you next week. Yes, come learn more about mannequins and then in May learn about hazards. And in June learn about guns. Yes. Well, we'll see you next week. We're in the middle of the April wall of Palooza. We'll finish it next week. Thank you all. Bye bye. Thank you all. For giving us these evaluations. Bye bye, everybody. Bye.