 This is Kristen Lays, and I'm with Heritage Preservation. And Heritage Preservation has been hosting the Connecting to Collections online community starting this summer. And it's a project we're doing with the Institute of Museum and Library Services in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History. And as you heard from Mike, Learning Times is an organization that's helping us with the design and production of the website and also these webinars. So before we get started, just to let maybe some more people join, I'm going to put out a poll about how you heard about today's event. Just wanting to see what we might do to encourage more attendance in these. And we're starting to do some evaluation. We've had our fourth webinar event with an expert. And we're planning more as we go into the fall. So look for information about that to come. We just wanted to see how people are finding out about us. So we'll leave that poll up for just a second. But it's been a great opportunity. The online community has now over 470 members, which is great. And we are planning a more extensive PR campaign at the end of the month. And so we welcome you to tell colleagues about it. Looks like you're already sharing information and have maybe participated in one of our previous events. So we encourage you to do that. You can also join the Connecting Collections Online Community Facebook page. If that's an easier way for you to get quick reminders or hear what's going on, that's another way to hear about us. Well, great. Well, thanks for participating in that poll. We will take all of that into advisement. And then just a little icebreaker, so to speak. Today we're talking about photo cold storage. And probably it's pretty hot where you are across the country, except for maybe our participant from Juneau, Alaska. Just curious what kind of ice cream you like. Not that you're going to be storing it in the same freezer as your photographs. Please don't do that. But just a little icebreaker to see how we all. So we're coming across the country, see how we all might compare to one another. Boy, strawberry just can't get any votes. Oh, yeah, here we go. Here we go. Seeing a lot, I'm originally Hale from Atlanta. I see a lot of other Atlanta colleagues on the line. Maybe peach is an option for them. And frankly, I tend to go for some pretty exotic Ben and Jerry's type flavors myself. Well, thanks. Well, without further ado, I think I will start our featured presentation today. And again, this is the Connecting to Collections online community. And the goal of the community is just to help smaller institutions, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and have a chance to network with their colleagues. We're drawing on a lot of the resources that the Connecting to Collections initiative that IMLS initiated. And that was included an online bookshelf of resources. And you'll find on the website all sorts of links to that. And then every other week or so, we've been having a featured resource. So obviously, today's featured resource is the National Park Services Cold Storage online video series. And it's a guide to long-term preservation for photographic materials. And you can set your settings on the online community so that you'll get updates when that featured resource changes or when we have discussion topics. So look under that Help button if you need some assistance in knowing how to change your settings for the site. Keep an eye out on our calendar for upcoming webinar events. And we also will post things that we think are of interest to the community, such as upcoming workshops or grant deadlines or other such items. If you have something you would like to share with the community and post on the calendar, you're welcome to email us through our contact link. So feel free to do that. And today, we are very fortunate to be joined with by Teresa Vollinger. She is a paper and photographic conservator from the National Park Services Harper's Ferry Center. She stars in their Cold Storage video series. And you may have been familiar with it for a while. You may have seen her there. And we're just very happy to have her today. This is part of a partnership, actually, that the online community has going with the National Park Service. There's so many excellent resources that they've developed for their staff and for their entire network across the country. And the rest of us who are not affiliated with the Park Service are so fortunate that they make these things available free and online, and that so many archives can benefit from this great information. And this resource is no exception. So again, this is just a screenshot of the resource we're featuring right now in the URL. You can watch it in the flash version, or for whatever reason, that's not possible on your computer. There's a non-flash version. But the flash version is great, because this can be a bit intimidating to sort of understand how to package, store, monitor, and access photographic materials in Cold Storage and just having some simple presentations on how to. It's, I think, such a great way to really come to grips with this topic. But we are so fortunate to have Teresa with us. Welcome, Teresa. Thank you, Kristen. And as Mike said, in that left-hand box in the Q&A, you can go ahead and type in any questions you have for Teresa on this topic. But otherwise, I will get started with just some general questions that I had as I was reviewing the resource. So Teresa, I mean, maybe this is really obvious, but your website makes it clear that only film materials are suitable for Cold Storage. So I'm assuming then any kind of tape-based materials like videotape or audio tape that's not appropriate for the kind of Cold Storage you're discussing here. Yeah, that's right, Kristen. We actually developed this project specifically for film-based photographic materials, although other types of photographic materials can also benefit. But just for the Park Service standpoint, that's specifically what it was organized and developed around. But materials that are magnetic media don't do so well in a frozen state. There just hasn't been enough research on it quite yet in terms of the magnetic tape itself and the other components that make up the cassette itself, the plastic, some metal components. So it's not really advised for those type of materials. And in the website, there are a couple of pages which kind of outline what you can identify in your collections that are best stored in Cold Storage. Great. Do you want to just outline a couple of examples of them? Like they're most common that just pretty much everyone would probably have in their institution? Sure. Any of your film-based materials, which would be negative, black and white and color negative, mostly things we focus on things that are cellulose acetate. Cellulose nitrate negative should also be in cold storage, but they have really specific requirements because of their flammability. So those need another level of storage environments in terms of the type of freezer that you choose and how you handle them. So your regular black and white negatives, four by fives, 35 millimeter film, slides. Slides are particularly important because slides are almost one of those things that's a double whammy, so to say, because their film base is cellulose acetate and their color. So they have two things. Their film base isn't very stable and their color, which I'm sure all of you who have slides at home from 20, 30 years ago have noticed color shift in them. Not all of them, depending on the type of film, but the slides are very important. And I know almost every collection I've ever seen has some sort of slides. OK, great. And so you on the side, I think, do a great job in sort of outlining some strategies on how to identify the type of film you have. So basically, it seems like that the age of the material is a good guideline for trying to understand exactly what you might have. It is, and it isn't. You can make a divide on manufacturer sometimes, especially the cellulose nitrate that kind of went out of manufacture in the early 1950s. But some people were still using it. They have old batches of film, and they're not going to throw it away, so they would still use it. So it's a combination of, like you said, age and a combination of just visual appearance. Things you can look for or identify it on our site, different edge markings. Some edge markings were put there for the use of the photographer. Some were put there just to sort of identify the film. And you can read on the edge. It'll say, safety film or nitrate. Nitrate would be the cellulose nitrate film, which is older film. And that's the one that has some flammability issues. And then they eventually developed the cellulose acetate film, or quote unquote safety film, because they realized that early on. They realized that there were issues with this film. And that's why early on, and I think it was captured recently in a movie. I can't remember the name of it. But they show a fire in a film house. And that happened because of the flammability characteristics of nitrate. And it tends to ignite at a fairly low temperature. It can ignite at like 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Somebody's attic can be that warm. And especially right now, our e-codes. Yeah. So a cinema paradiso? Yes. Yes. Isn't that? And the fires are very hard to put out, because cellulose nitrate, when it burns, it produces its own oxygen. So you can throw it in a bucket of water and it still can burn. So that puts the danger about it and why it's considered a hazardous material. And does the site go into detail on this nitrate and the specifics? As you said, there's another sort of consideration when storing that. You won't get into that much? Yeah, it goes into it a little bit. Because this project was designed around our acetate films, the Park Service a few years back had taken care of a lot of its nitrates. And what we had done with a lot of those, because they were in serious need, is do duplication and digitization of those. Right. So this more focuses on cellulose acetate, but in terms of how to store it, but it does go into identification characteristics of each one. Each one does deteriorate in a different way. And they're very distinct on how they deteriorate. And so on the website, there's some great visuals that just show you, OK, this is what serious cellulose acetate deterioration looks like. This is what serious cellulose nitrate deterioration looks like. So I think that helps a lot because sometimes you don't know the year of the film, or sometimes it doesn't have edge marking that you can tell what type of film it is, and you want to be able to store it properly. And but luckily, when it comes to film, unlike other branches of photography, it's pretty simple in terms of your choices for film base because there is only the cellulose nitrate, and then more recently developed in the 1960s polyester. So it's nice that it's simple and clean like that, but there's only a few choices anyways. And all of those are identified and the differences in them. The polyester film base material is fairly stable. And so if you have a black and white 4 by 5 negative, often in museums that is a copy negative or an interpositive that you get made for a archival copy. And that's very stable because your film base is stable and the black and white is stable because you won't have a problem with fading. So those type of materials are the one thing in the film world and photographic film world that really doesn't need cold storage. It's pretty stable in your normal archival environment. Great. That's good to know. I think most people, I think the word has basically gotten out to most people about cellulose nitrate. I guess the fear that I've seen sometimes in discussions is that people will panic if they realize they have a complexion. Sometimes, you know, just dry it like this solely or, I mean, obviously, as you mentioned, it's very important to address carefully. So would you would say if you're worried about it, you should contact a photo conservator first? I mean, I've heard people say, well, call the fire department or what have you. But is that maybe taking it a little too far too fast? I think so. Probably it doesn't have. I mean, especially if it's in a controlled environment, if it's in museum storage already, and depending how much you have. If you only have 10 4 by 5s compared to 4 5,000 4 by 5s, then you have something you have to think about if you have the latter end of that scale. But if there's only a few, it's just an awareness. It's just to be aware that you have it and that you can take special precautions if you need to and to kind of know what those are. Right. So OK. Well, great. I see we have a question that's come in. And again, to the participants, feel free in the Q&A box on the left-hand side of your screen. If you have any questions for Teresa, feel free to pipe up. And Carolyn in Florida said, if you freeze photographs of vinegar syndrome, will it slow or halt the process? That's a great question, Carolyn. And is everyone aligning? I can just kind of ask. I don't know if I can do a quick poll or whatever. Or just have people think about if people know of vinegar syndrome or have heard of it or have experienced it in their collections. And Carolyn, that's something that happens pretty much early on as cellulose acetate films start to deteriorate. And it's a really good indicator that your collection is right on that edge of starting the deterioration process. Because it's kind of the first thing that happens before cellulose acetate starts to deform or starts to distort in any manner. You start to get that smell and you open a box. And literally, for people who aren't aware of it, it smells like vinegar. You will know when you open that box that something is going on. And when you have that, you really want to consider cold storage very soon for those types of collections, because they are starting. And yes, it will slow it down. It will not halt the process, but it will slow it down. And that's one of the reasons that we do cold storage. It's the only thing that we can find that's going to slow down with any success, any sort of deterioration process. There are some great resources on the Image Permanence Institute website. And I think Kristen was going to maybe refer to that later. In terms of time frame and gain of longevity of film, that's cold storage versus just keeping it in normal environmental conditions for museums. So that's a great reference. I mean, it could add hundreds of years of life to your film, even if it's at the stage where it has vinegar syndrome. And it seems from the research that IPI have done that once the vinegar syndrome starts, deterioration starts kind of rapidly increasing. If you looked at a graph of it, of deterioration process in film, it'll be trucking along nicely in normal conditions for about 40, 50 years or so. And then all of a sudden, when you get to that one point where it starts to deteriorate, the graph will just go up at a steep angle. And it will be a matter of five, 10 years if it's not taken care of, that deterioration will increase that much. And so if you have discovered it, you open that drawer and, as someone once said to me, it's now like dill pickles. Exactly. Is there any hope for duplicating those materials at that point? I mean, duplicating. OK, so it's still not harmful to try to duplicate it? No, absolutely. And that's a really good point, because it's a really good time to consider duplication, because that is usually the first thing that happens. And that's prior to it starting to distort. Psyllium acetate has a really quirky way of distorting where it gets this thing called channeling, where the emulsion and the acetate are expanding and contracting. And the acetate is losing plasticizers at a different rate than the emulsion. So you get almost these creases, and there's some good pictures of this on the website, that Park Service website. So the creases where the acetate is bubbling up almost make it really hard to get a good scan, especially in transmitted light if it's a negative, because you have all these lines that are running through your image. So if you get your scanning done before it gets to that point, you're going to achieve a lot better results in that. Right? So I guess also lesson learned that you shouldn't break with your collections language. Check on them, even if you feel like they're re-housed appropriately. So well, Debbie Rossi and Shelton, Connecticut, has asked a question that actually I had as well. I mean, I think one of the greatest parts of the website is it shows how much you can achieve with just a commercially available home type freezer. Because especially for some of the institutions who benefit, or we want to have benefit from the Connecting to Collections online community, pretty expensive specialized pieces of equipment may be without that reach. But for several hundred dollars, a home freezer could actually do quite a lot for your collection. And Debbie was specifically saying, is that cold enough for nitrate? And you had to reference that before, not quite. Yes, well, it is. A home freezer, and that's actually what we use for the park service. And we have used them in a number of different sites for exactly some of the reasons that you just went through, Kristen, it's very expensive. We have almost 400 different locations with collections. Some just don't have the space or the staff, as I'm sure a lot of you can understand time to work on this. And so just obtaining one freezer, usually people have enough space for that. And certainly just the top of a home freezer unit, if that's all the space that you need, that's just fine. The only thing, Debbie, with your question is I really wouldn't recommend that for nitrate, because it would be more of the cellulose acetate. Because cellulose nitrate really needs what's called a flammable storage freezer, because of that flammability issue I talked about before. But certainly if they're on the edge of deteriorating and you're trying to make a game plan, it's better for them to be frozen, even though they won't strictly be following fire code. And that's the problem when you get into with museum environments and storing cellulose nitrate films. There's certain fire codes that need to be followed. So that if you have a bunch of those, that needs to be thought about and taken care of. But on the website, there's a lot of references to what to look for in a home freezer. Frost-free is definitely recommended. Many of the freezers that we've purchased in the Park Service are just, I don't know if I can give a name brand here, but Sears Freezers, just a regular freezer, does just fine if you follow the normal and outlined packaging procedures that are on the website. Okay, great. And we were joking before, but no, you could not put your lunchery right in there too. Yeah, yeah. Kristen and I were talking about that prior to the call, and that actually is a good point because if you have a lot of different people in and out of that area, it's going to be tempting to want to do that. And so one of the things that we have on the website and our little list of things to look for is locking that has a freezer that has a lock on the outside. So, and a lot of them do come with that. So you can prevent the lunch situation from happening. And I suppose that's also good just for the security of the collection as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, and I guess you're trying to keep the condition inside the freezer as stable as possible. People are popping open the door a lot. Right, you're not achieving that. That's just getting into another area, and we might be crossing into the issues of wrapping here, but we can just see. But she was just saying, what's the best way to control humidity if we're using like a restaurant or home style freezer? And she's asking about trays of silica. Well, that's a good question. And you really, what you want to do is we're not gonna try to control the humidity in the freezer itself, because we realize it's going to do what it does, especially if it's a frost free. You know, as it goes through that defrost cycle, it will cycle up. And we did testing for this when we were looking at our freezers for the Park Service, that normally a standard household freezer might be about 60, 65% RH, but then when it goes through the defrost, it can go up to about 95, just for a little while, like for a few hours as it's going through the defrost cycle. So because of that, and we know we can't control that, that is why we do the packaging that we do, the vapor proof packaging. And when we package the items, because we're trying to keep them very airtight and vapor proof, we make sure the room that we're packaging in has an acceptable RH, an RH that we're okay with. And we monitor the RH inside the packages with little humidity cards that we put inside the packaging to make sure that the boxes are maintaining the RH that we packaged in. And we did some initial testing on that just to make sure they were as vapor proof as we thought they were and put hobo data loggers inside the packages. And then data loggers just inside the freezer itself. And we noticed as the freezer went up and down like crazy throughout the day, the packages that were packaged properly only saw maybe a 1% change in RH, where the RH changed outside the packages and the freezer could be 30, 40%. So the packaging really did a good job of maintaining a microclimate, which is what we're really trying to do with that packaging design, to create a stable microclimate inside there that you can peek in and look at when you open your freezer door by looking at the little humidity cards that you can read through the packaging. Thanks, that's great. Sure. So why don't we go through those packaging steps, because the site does a great job. So if any of you have not looked at that video yet on the site, I think if you're intimidated by this idea of packaging, you will get all your step-by-step instructions from that lovely Teresa and her sister. So, but you want to just say exactly, you want to just go through them quickly. I mean, you wrap each piece of film individually, I mean, group them, so maybe just go through that quickly. Yeah, sure. A lot of times, for example, say you have four by five negatives. A lot of museums have those or you have slides in binder boxes. You can wrap right in the storage box that it's already in. That's absolutely fine. One of the things that we do prior to wrapping is fill out any empty space in the box. That will just allow for less air to be inside the box, so more likely maintain that microenvironment in there. And also will allow, if you have to rearrange your boxes in the freezer and kind of put boxes on the side, it won't let collections shift inside the boxes. It's going to keep them nice and stable. So you just have your regular box with your label on the outside. And the first thing that we do is put a humidity card on our box. That's our inner humidity card. And then the first layer is the bagging system and the two-layer bagging system. The inner box is what's called anti-static shield bag. It's a vapor-proof bag. Similar in properties to things like marble seal. A lot of museum people use marble seal. Aluminum and plastic material that can be used to isolate things like wood and shelving that you wouldn't want to off-gas on to collections. So you have this semi-transparent vapor-proof bag that you wrap on the outside of your box. And there's a lot of instructions on making sure you get all the air out and proper sealing of the bag. And then you put another humidity card, indicator card, on the outside of that bag. And the reason we do two humidity cards is the one humidity card on the box is monitoring the inner bag. And the humidity card on the second layer is monitoring the outer bag. And so both of your humidity cards are, would these cards read from blue to pink? I'm sure a lot of you have seen them. If the whole card is pink, it means your humidity is way up there, you know, above 60, 70% of our humidity card ranges, I think range from 10 to 60 or something like that to the ones that we put on our boxes. So that's a danger zone. Usually after 60% is when you really start to get concerned with problems with humidity. So the outer bag is just, it's a archival polyethylene bag with a Ziploc. However, it's a little thicker than your normal kind of Ziploc bag, normal Ziploc bags of the grocery store, even two mil. This is six mil. It just gives a little more heft to the bag, a little more durability, a little more vapor proofness. And then that bag is wrapped in a similar manner and pushing the air out, taping it down and sealing that off. So there's some really great images of that whole process as a video of the whole process of how to wrap. And there's a lot of little quirks that you could run into when we even tried to put those on there. So if you have all this particular problem, we have a little video of solutions for particular problems with wrapping. That's great. I mean, in the Park Service, I mean, how long have you had materials roughly in storage? I mean, do you have to ever rewrap things? Is the plastic stay pretty stable while it's in storage? Yeah, so far this project for the Park Service winner fifth year. And I just went back and revisited one of the first parks that we wrapped, which was kind of fun. And all the boxes are doing great. I haven't noticed any change. And one of the things that we recommend in the video is doing that kind of monitoring, especially within the first year to go in and maybe quarterly, just take a quick glance at all your little humidity cards and just see where they are. And also, when you first put your boxes in the freezer, do a recording of your baseline of where you are, where all your humidity is at that point. So then you have a pretty good idea if you're seeing any change. Okay. And yeah, so far, so good. Everything has been really stable so far, so. And as you said, I mean, it seems like the system that you've developed in the micro-climate concept, that you shouldn't have much of a problem with sort of where a box is placed within the freezer or needing to rotate them or anything like that. Right, it should be doing its job as a micro-climate. Absolutely, absolutely. That's great. So we had a question about vacuum sealing. Mm-hmm. Do you have an option? You could do that to help get air out and also seal the bags. The reason that we didn't do that with the Park Service is that this is a service-wide project and we couldn't get everyone a vacuum sealer at every park. Right. And we wanted it to be easy without a lot of equipment and just anyone could do it anywhere. And some of our parks are pretty remote. And so we found when we did experimentation with sealing the edge, either heat sealing it or vacuuming it out and sealing it, the effectiveness was the same. We had the same results no matter how we closed it, as long as we sealed it really well and were careful. It didn't seem that there was a great advantage, except for probably quickness in terms of the vacuum sealing. But for cost and maintaining those in all the parks would have been a lot more expensive. So that's the reason we went with them. When you watch the video, we just kind of roll the ends and tape them up. So that's the reason we went that route. Great. So again, if someone has it, terrific. But it's another savings in terms of the vacuuming project. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I think the video is good for small institutions because it really focused on simplicity and affordability. Great. So now we're getting into. We had some questions from Rukshana in Los Angeles. And you and I talked about this before the webinar, getting into access. And as we were talking, it sounds like they're in the same situation in LA. You are compelled, say, by the video, to get your things into cold storage. But then you always had that project. You were going to digitize all these things. And maybe you haven't yet. So I guess there are a couple of questions here. How do you sort of plan ahead on a project like this and then say you need to get into those boxes again? Can you talk us through how that's done? Sure. And as Kristen and I were talking a little bit today earlier, this is an important topic because, of course, your collections and access is going to be important. And a couple of those things, especially the film-based collections, is that we find with the Park Service collections that if we have researchers or whatever that wants to come in, if we have print copies, that's usually fine. And we never need to take the negatives out. Or many of the collections just aren't accessed very often. But if they are, we do encourage them to digitize them prior to cold storage. Or if they're unsure, it is OK to take them out a few times a year, not much more than that. Research that, once again, IPI did kind of says that if you take them out more than one or two times a year, you're losing the effect of your cold storage. So what practice we've been doing in the Park Service is if you find you're taking something out, take that time while it's out, if you can, to digitize it and then put it back in. And then at that, many of the Park Service collections are so large, they can be 20,000 objects. To take that time to digitize everything before they went in would just be more time for them outside of cold storage, giving them time to deteriorate. So we're kind of putting them in spaces for a while. Packaging them up, putting them in spaces, and just waiting and seeing how much use they get in some instances if you're unsure. But certainly for high-use collections, I would recommend doing some digitization before they go in. Or at least, as you said, at least make sure there's print access copies. Exactly. If there's a print access copy, there's different ways around it. Yes, and that is correct. I just noticed the bottom part of the thing. It does take some time to unwrap. And it does take some time to repackage them. So you want to think carefully before you start wrapping and packing or before you start taking things in and out. Because it is time-consuming. It takes 5, 10 minutes per box to do all the wrapping, so. Right. And then how do you acclimate? Something's been in a cold environment. Do you need to take steps to acclimate materials either in or out of cold storage? Yeah, definitely. And that's another one of the reasons that we do the packaging to prevent condensation on the film. So what we recommend is, and this is kind of hard sometimes, because you need to think in advance a little bit, which isn't always easy. You may get a researcher in there who, you know, I need things today, only have one day. And you have to tell them, well, you have to wait, you know, five, six hours for this to come to room temperature. That can be difficult. So that would be the only problem if you were limited in time. But usually we recommend if you know you want to access a certain collection, you know, the night before you leave, take the box out, let it sit out, let it just acclimate with its packaging on. So it's acclimating back to room temperature very, very slowly. And then the next morning, you take that packaging off. And you're going to have your condensation on the outside as a plastic, but not on the film materials inside. Great. Well, I think another follow-up that Luchana had was, you know, so this is like a long-term storage thing. But it also seems to me it's such an effective storage technique that would you agree it's sort of worse people maybe upping this in their priority list of all the many collections. If they have a significant amount of film in their collections, I may know it's the cellulose acetate, especially. You know, so they're long-listed to-dos, digitizing or putting things in a cold storage, especially since, you know, in the grand scheme of things, it's relatively affordable to do. What do you think is better? Is it better to prioritize getting the stuff into storage? If you have, I guess, a decent amount of access material? Or is it better to think about, no, we just don't want to take it in and out and in and out. Well, I definitely think it's better yet to probably get it into storage just to have time to think. It's going to give you that time. It's almost like disaster response kind of theory. Freeze it and then think about it. Because, you know, sometimes you just have too many things if you've ever been a disaster to work on at once. And so if you freeze it, it's going to hold it in spaces for a while. So I think that's probably the better choice there, I would say. But yeah, I mean, it really is something to think about that's going to be permanent. So it's kind of hard to wrap your brain around, you know, putting your collections like that. But usually we start with film-based materials, films that are right around 50 years old or so. Now granted, there's a great variance in how they were stored in the past. But those are the ones that right around that time start to deteriorate. And so across the park service, across the board, we have a lot of films from the 40s and 50s. And so there's so much on that edge at once that our solution was just put it in cold storage and we can think about it, about a different strategy later. Because who knows later? I mean, even if you digitize now, what type of reproductive digital media is going to be available 20 years from now? Maybe something even better, more archival. So maybe you wait for that. Hard to say, right? That's true. But actually, now that you've mentioned disaster preparedness, I've got another question. So again, to the microclimate achieved by the good packing, if you lose power and your freezer is about power safe for the weekend, again, will that microclimate sort of buffer you a bit in terms of something like that? Absolutely. Absolutely. It'll almost just be, I mean, if you have a freezer full of thermal mass of that freezer, it will probably last a good long time as long as you don't open it up. But also, it'll allow it to slowly acclimate, just like you took it out of the freezer and put it on the counter for eight hours or overnight. It's not going to be getting any condensation or anything, even if the freezer on side is sweating and dripping. If your package is really well, you should be just fine. It's just going to slowly come up to room temperature. And I suppose, given two scenarios, one in which your institution has not taken a step and has not put film in cold storage and they lose power for the weekend, and the age of access to them in the building is way off the charts, for God forbid, you're in a hurricane area and you really don't have even access to your site and high humidity. Again, I guess the cold storage is just another level of protection against an unthinkable situation. Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. Yeah, it is. And then a great question from Per Contas in Cincinnati. So are there monitoring systems that you know that sort of alert to freezer misfunction or humidity distress? Yes, we do have. There are some data loggers that you can get that will monitor and can alert staff off site or within the building. Some of the freezers, even the household ones, have little alarms like door jar kind of things, which aren't great, but they're better than nothing. But you can go from that simplistic little door jar beeper that your temperature is too high in there to full out monitoring systems. Some of the monitoring systems, though, I know depending on what they are, you have to drill a hole into the freezer to allow a wire to come out of it. But I think those are even changing in terms of their technology. OK. So that would be something you'd buy separately from the freezer? Yes. Glass plates are touchy depending on what type of glass plates they are. Usually glass plates that are collodion, if you know if they're collodion versus gelatin, collodion do not do so well in terms of being in cold storage. There's often problems in the past with the emulsion popping off when you're dealing with collodion materials. And also, a lot of the glass plates are black and white, and they're on glass, which in itself is quote unquote relatively stable. So unless they're a color material, they're not as vulnerable as the film, because the film, it's the base itself that's the real vulnerable part, requiring the extreme of cold storage versus just good museum environment. So in glass plates, you do relatively well just fine in terms of just being in your regular museum storage environment. That's great. And then up on the screen now, you can still see I have a link to some of the Image Permanence Institute references. This is just a handful of some of the things on their website. But if you're a participant throughout there, so you have questions or concerns, I mean, these are very easy to use, resources, and we'll tell you right away that the IPI media storage quick reference. I think they have even a wheel format. We'll tell you right away what sort of things you should be thinking about. Yeah, those are excellent resources. And I think we have links to those, too, through our video and our tutorial on our website, too. And there's a lot of resources linked to that. We kind of tried to structure the actual DVD or online version with multiple layers. So we have the videos for quick overall information. And then it goes deeper into reference materials. If you want to know more, and kind of just different layers of how much you want to know. So there's a lot there. That's great. And does it get into how you can find some of the materials you've referenced, like some of the archival and packaging materials, they have links to that as well? Yeah, there's a list of supplies and what to think about when you're buying supplies. We even have references, sometimes even trying to decide what size bags do I need. We even have references to that, what size fits, what size box. Obviously, little things are really important when you get into it. So try to cover from organizing your collections in terms of preparing them to go into cold storage, just in terms of getting them in boxes and getting them in some sort of outer container to purchasing the materials, to wrapping, and monitoring and access. So all those different subjects are covered in the tutorial. Great. Yeah, it's a really, I can't say enough about the site. It's really useful. And you also referenced it is available as a DVD, is that correct? Yes, it is. Ordering information on that same flash site, or is that something we should put up out on our? That's actually, we do have some here that would be available to institutions that we can send you if you would like a copy. You can just email me or call me. And I can see if I can get you a copy on that. There's no charge for the DVD. OK. Great. Well, we might just put up your email address here on the chat. Absolutely. You don't mind? No, absolutely. And while we're doing that, I guess back to the emergency situation. If the power goes out, or for whatever reason, you have a freezer malfunction, do you need to repackage? I mean, you talked about how the condensation is trapped between the outermost layer and the innermost layer of plastic. Actually, it won't be trapped between the two layers. It'll be on the outside. Oh, OK. It's out of plastic. Yeah, I think so. Sure, sure. And yeah, if it is trapped, then you have a problem with your outer bag. And we need to replace your outer bag. So no, you wouldn't have to. Your humidity cards that are attached to your bags inside will tell you if something had gone wrong. I don't know why it would go wrong right at that point. But if it did, and your humidity cards are all pink or say above 60%, then sure, you'd want to repackage. But it shouldn't, because the packaging's not really seeing that. So you need to take a towel and just wipe off the condensation on the outside of the boxes. But other than that, I think you'd be OK. OK, I think you're right back in the freezer. Right, yep, yep, absolutely. And I see a question, another question from Debbie about taste images, tin types and daguerreotypes. Those you also wouldn't want to freeze, for a multitude of reasons, but some of the same reasons there's been that tape, because you're dealing with, if things are cased, plastic or leather, glass and metal, and then the photographic cells. So you're dealing with a lot of different materials expanding and attracting at different points. And that's where you can get in trouble in the frozen state. So I wouldn't really freeze cased images, like tin types or daguerreotypes. OK, thanks. But you know, that brought to mind the issue with slides. So slides are cased in some type of a cardboard type material or in plastic sometimes too. Is that an issue? No, no, it's not an issue. The film in that case, the film itself is exposed. And in those cases, especially with the paper ones, the paper is fine, because often our enclosures are paper. And paper is just going to expand and contract and let off moisture as humidity changes in the environment. But even in the plastic ones, there is space if the plastic of the little slide itself needed to move. But no, it doesn't seem to be any issue with slides, even with slides that are in plastic sleeves themselves in binders or in those binder kind of boxes or kind of old boxes that you can buy. They seem to do just fine in that case. OK, that's good to know. Yeah, I suppose in even those plastic slide holders, it's really the film is sort of floating in there. It's not moving. Exactly. It's attached, actually. Exactly, so. Exactly. OK, great. I'm trying to think, are there other points that you know are kind of common questions you've gotten as you've visited the parks or sort of any troubleshooting about what you have to work on? Well, I think the most concern, I think, is the access question that seems to be the most common thing. And I think the part that sometimes takes the longest, once you get down to the packaging, it's not so bad. But just preparing takes a long time. And I understand in small institutions, the number of people working on your site is limited. So you're going to have to make a list of what's going into cold storage, lists of things that you may need to access, what is where. Often what we'll do suggest, and this is one thing on the website that we show, is making a map of your freezer of what boxes on what shelf. And that's a really nice thing to do to help you keep track of what is where. And so when you open that up, you're not standing there for a long time, like when you're trying to decide what to make for dinner with the freezer door open. And you can quickly know exactly where that box is. So any issues, I think, involving access, because we understand, I think some of the parks feared when we came around with this cold storage issue that we were saying, that's the end of your contact with those collections. And that's not what we were trying to do. So you can still access them, just more on a limited basis. And so actually, that brings up a point about labeling those boxes before you put them in there. I mean, you can pretty much see through the plastic. So you can like take the box itself. Exactly. And not use any kind of adhesive label or anything like that, I'm assuming. You can use adhesive labels or write in like black, India ink or something, just the vapor proof bag, the inner bag, it's only semi-transparent. It's not completely transparent, like a regular polyethylene is a black bag. And one of the reasons we chose the one that we did are other barrier films that are similar to it are completely opaque. So that's an issue, because you can't see the boxes at all. And even if you could put a label between the two layers of bags, there's something really, I don't know, something really wrong about not being able to see your boxes that makes us nervous. So that accessibility, just to be able to visually see your label, whatever they may be, do that semi-transparent vapor proof bag is a really nice thing. Because otherwise, you just have that urge, like, what is going on under that inner bag? So yeah. OK. Another question coming in on sort of appropriateness of this technique for different kinds of material. So what about motion picture film? Does it matter if it's color black and white, acetate, polyester? Do you leave everything on the metal reels? Yes, it is appropriate for motion picture film. And yes, we found that it's fine to leave it on the metal reels as long as they're not rusted. You can even use your older film cans to package them in. As long as they're not rusted, they do just fine. And I see she says, apply equally to color black and white, acetate, polyester. Yes and no to that. Apply equally to color in all instances. Yes, no matter what the film base, even if it's polyester, if it's color, you're going to get fading. Black and white, you don't have to worry about the polyesters, just the acetates. If you have black and white and polyester, you have two very stable things. And those two things in combination only require just normal archival conditions. Right. And that's, again, just like the IPI media storage guide. Yeah, I mean you've got limited time to do this kind of packaging. Obviously, supplies cost something. You might have limited room in your freezer. So it's good to sort of have a hand on what really is going to benefit from cold storage so you can prioritize accurately. Right. So let's see. We also have a question about negatives in sleeves and then also then nitrate negatives in sleeves and then but also just some more information about the sort of archival materials and plastic pages. So I'm assuming that you want any kind of plastic sleeve or plastic pages to be the highest quality, archival-y, safe, polyester-lean type of material to begin with. Right. If you can and you're doing your film-based media is not housed currently, then sure. Choose the best quality materials you can. And plastic is fine. Plastic or paper is fine. But truth be told, for the Park Service, we had so many that were already rehoused. And like I said, I don't have to bring this up again, but sometimes there's 10,000 in paper enclosures, let's say, that may be slightly acidic because they've been in those same enclosures for 25 years. Well, we don't have the staff to re-house all of those. And if we did have the staff to re-house all of those, it would probably still take a year and a half to re-house all of those. So talking with various photo conservators about this, we all kind of agreed that when we put something in cold storage, not only is it slowing down the deterioration of the media itself, but it's also slowing down deterioration of everything else. So your acidic envelopes aren't going to have the same effect as they once did in just normal storage conditions. So oftentimes, if we have a whole box that are in semi-asidic envelopes, we'll just package them that way to get them frozen and get that deterioration slowed down in terms of everything, every type of material that's going in there. Great. So again, another way to prioritize when money is in short supply, time is in short supply. Sorry, you don't have to re-house everything if you just down, because everything is going to slow down at that point. And I saw someone ask them a question about nitrate negatives individually housed. Sure, nitrate negatives can be housed the same way as cellulose acetate negatives. They will still deteriorate, but much more slowly, so the off-gassing will be much slower. But once again, the nitrate negatives need special storage freezers. Great. Let's see, Dan, she said, OK, so just more questions about the storage materials. Yeah, if you're just re-housing, yeah, it's best to go ahead and use some good quality plastic sleeves. And the sleeves are fine. It doesn't seem to have any problem, because you have your microclimate in there with condensation on the plastic between the plastic and the slides or anything like that. Great. Well, everyone, we're in our last three minutes. So if you had a burning question, this is a good time to type it out. And as we mentioned, this whole webinar has been recorded, and we will get it up on the Connecting to Collections Online Community site. Maybe today, if not very soon, in the next few days. So if you have a colleague or someone you think might benefit from this information, please feel free to point them to the site. And then again, I'll put the slide back up. The resource itself is here, and it'll be a link, too. It'll be up on the online community for another couple of weeks. But certainly, anything we feature on the online community site, we archive. And there is a link on the Topics menu, two-care photographs. And so you'll get references to this, as well as a link back to this recorded webinar and some other resources that we've come across, like some IPI materials and yet even still more links. So feel free to refer people to that as well. And then I did want to say, in looking for a conservator, the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works is a great resource. Just on their home page, they have a Find a Conservator link. And they can connect you with a photo conservator in your part of the country. And that's just a great way if you've got additional or very specific questions, if you need some consultation on how to handle a restorage project at your institution. It's great to have a conservator come to your institution or understand your specific issues that you might have questions about before you undergo any major project like this. I had a question from Holly in Chicago. Should you separate different types of film, especially nitrate, from other types of film when you're packaging them up? That's nice. Yeah, Holly, definitely the nitrates, if you can. I know it's hard sometimes to do ID on everything, but the nitrates would need those different freezers. So you don't have to worry about most of your films, which are sides and negatives and stuff which are most likely cellulose acetate after a certain year. That's fine to have them in the same boxes. But the nitrates have a little different requirements, so those would need to be separated out if you can. What about other types of films? I mean, is it boxed, or is it preferable to keep them segregated? For other types of films, there's only really only two other types of film bases besides the nitrate, the cellulose acetate, and polyester. And you don't need to be putting the polyester in there if it's color. And it's fine if it's color, polyester film, no matter what it is, from 35 millimeter film to slides to whatever, if you had different sizes of negatives in one box or something like that, that's just fine. OK, so even a set of slides or negatives in one box? Sure, absolutely. I mean, chances are people have a quantity of these kinds of materials they'll need at points of box. Full enough binder boxes, slides, or yeah, definitely. Definitely, but yeah, it's fine to store the different types of media together. Good. OK, well, I've put up on this page that we are doing in an evaluation. And my understanding is you should be able to click on this link. Mike, tell me if I'm wrong about that. At the very least, you can cut and paste this into your web browser, but we'd really appreciate any feedback you had on this webinar, especially as we plan other ones. And we have an opportunity for you to nominate topics that we might be able to tackle through these types of webinars. It's just a great opportunity to give you very quick and easy access to some of the great preservation experts around the country that Heritage Preservation is fortunate enough to interact with on a daily basis, and we can make them accessible to you all as well. So we hope these are useful for you, but we'd love to have your feedback on it. So I think we're just about at 3 o'clock. So Teresa, I just want to again thank you for your help and for all of this information and also to the Park Service for making this excellent web video series available to the rest of the country because all of the research you did and the firsthand experience that you had is really a great thing for us all to benefit from. So thank you so much. Oh, you're very welcome. And it was a lot of fun. I was glad to do this. And feel free to check out the site and also other NPS resources, like NPS Conservatgrams, which are also online. And we wrote three of them for this project in particular, and anyone can feel free to contact me with questions for the questions after this webinar. I'm more than happy to assist. So thank you very much for all and who joined today. Yeah, thanks. And I did put up your email address in the chat and also steal the questions. If you think of one later on, you can always go to the Connecting to Collections online community and just post it as a discussion topic. And we'll track down Teresa or some other expert and help you out. So thanks, everyone, for participating. And I hope you stay cool and have a great afternoon.