 time to pass things off to our host, Susan Barger. Go ahead, Susan. Hi, everyone. It's nice to have you here. And I'm just going to go through my slides very quickly. The best way to keep up to date with us is to join the C2CC Announce List, which is a list served only for announcements. So maybe one or two messages a month and not for discussion. And you can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. And if you need help due to a disaster, a flood, a fire, whatever it is, you can, excuse me, contact the National Heritage Responders. This is their 24-hour, seven-day-a-week number. And our discussion forum has moved over to the AIC Higher Logic Platform. And so if you go to our website, you can get instructions on how to join that. That's the place to ask questions and get help from conservators if you need it. So please feel free to join that. You can always contact me. This is my email address. I'm happy to hear from you. And next, in a couple of weeks, we're going to have a webinar on how to close a museum, which is an important thing, what to do with a collection when a museum closes for good. Then the end of November, we'll also have a webinar on caring for plastics. And then in December, we're going to have one on packing materials and crates and stuff like that. And on Thursday, we start our first course. If you are interested in signing up, there's a link on the website to the registration page. And it's $149. So with that, I'm going to turn this over to Whitney Baker. So Whitney, go ahead. Hello, everyone. It's really wonderful to be here with you today. As you can see, I've titled this presentation, Preserving Artifacts of Free Speech, Caring for Political Memorabilia. If you live in the United States, you're probably well aware that we are coming soon on our midterm election. So if you're in a state like I am with a governor's race, you're probably somewhat inundated with political material right about now. And it may have gotten you thinking about getting out some of your collections that relate to political topics for maybe exhibits or research or class events or that kind of thing. So thanks to Connecting to Collections for providing this webinar at this time of year. So I'm Whitney Baker. I'm head of conservation services at the University of Kansas Libraries in Lawrence, Kansas. I believe I was invited to speak on this topic for two main reasons. One was back in the summer, late spring, early summer, the American Institute for Conservation Meeting. There was a really interesting panel on preserving social protest archives that I was a part of. And I talked there really briefly about things like buttons and t-shirts and the like. So I was able to include some of that today in this much longer presentation. And also, I think I have a bit of a reputation for being the crazy bumper sticker lady. A number of years ago, I got very interested in bumper stickers and then later on decals from a conservation perspective of how are they made, what's their history, what should be worried about as conservators of how to care for them. And so then I did publish about both of those types of materials for a more general audience. So I'll talk more about that later. I'm trained as a librarian archives conservator, so focusing on books and paper. I've been very lucky to teach a collections care class at the University of Kansas for the museum studies program on preventive conservation. And then I'm also a trained librarian. Anyway, as part of these webinars, we're able to do some polling. So I wonder if we could have our first poll up on the screen about who's here today. I'm curious about your affiliations. If you're willing to participate, we can get a sense of who's here, who's here, and if your background's kind of fun to watch, seeing the numbers going up. Museums ahead so far. It's kind of almost like a political race, isn't it? Okay. It appears that we have stopped here. So museum, okay, many people from museum, library and archives, as well as historic house and sites and government agencies. Hopefully. Welcome to everyone. Hopefully you'll find this to be interesting and get some new tips and ideas. Okay. So political memorabilia. It's kind of an arbitrary term when you come to think of it. It could include a lot of different things. And really any kind of object could become political if you stick a slogan or an image on it. So I've decided to define political memorabilia to encompass these three main areas. The first being campaign materials, which may be what people are mainly thinking of, especially at this time of year with our elections coming up. So signs and bumper stickers and buttons and that sort of thing for politicians who are campaigning. But you may also have in your collections information from political interest groups or artifacts as well. So maybe like the League of Women's Odors or groups like that who are working for political causes but are not running for office. In addition, you might have collections from politicians. So here at the University of Kansas, for some reason, we have a few of the governor's papers, governor's collections, most are at our state archives. But for some reason we have a few. And this artifact on the screen, which I think might not have been the best thing to put on this slide, is an actual plaque that was given to him. It's a buffalo chip. And I realized after I put this here that it's not a commentary on politics today. It may appear to be, but it was sort of randomly chosen. There's a lot of unusual artifacts that could be political. So in preparing this talk today, I tried to determine what political memorabilia could include. And so I polled a number of family friends and curators and various people. And most people, the number one item that came up was buttons. Followed by paper items like posters and banners and then bumper stickers. Those were the top items. So I've covered those materials today, along with a few others. But I'm sure there's a type of object I haven't addressed in this webinar. And I'd love for you to bring it up during the discussion time. And as I, we're going to talk about some solutions that I like here today. But there are often, as I tell my students, many right answers and defendable strategies. So these are, this is my perspective. And you, of course, have your own. Okay, we have another poll. This is our second and final poll. I've listed here some of the materials we're going to talk about today. And I'm curious if you, like I, have these in your collections. Okay, so far, yeah, well, and of course this is one where you can choose many things. So the numbers should be large on these. Okay, it's looking good. Paper items, yeah, paper items. They're all quite high numbers, as we're seeing here. Okay, well, that's good. So at least these are items that you have. I'm not coming out of left field. I'm discussing these types of materials. Okay, so this kind of gives you a sense, too, of the types of materials we're talking about today. And because I work with an archival collection, a lot of these materials are found in archives. Okay, so moving on to the next slide. I just wanted to give a shout out to my institution because all of the items, except for one that I think I've credited later on, come from the Spencer Research Library at KU, which is the Rare Book Manuscript and Archives Library. And we have a very large collection of, as it says here, contemporary political movements. And when he was a teenager, he started collecting materials from what I would call fairly fringe political groups, both left and right wing. And so this is one of our most heavily used collections. You may also have archival collections or museum collections that also have a lot of political materials like we do here. I just want to say I have pictures of lots of different things on the screen because we need pictures of objects. I'm not endorsing any political viewpoints or cause in this slide show. They are just examples used, you know, with material artifacts, not as political views. It shouldn't go without, I shouldn't have to say that, but at this day and age I just want to make sure we know. They're just here as examples. And they should be typical of what you also have in your collection, most likely. Okay, so when I am coming up with housing solutions, I generally keep these parameters in mind. So I work in the Library Conservation Lab and really our focus is on book and paper materials. But we often get a lot of artifacts, or three-dimensional objects, and I'm not a trained objects conservator, so it really would not be ethical for me to attempt to treat something. The best that we can really do for a lot of our materials is to house them properly. And so as such, we don't have a particular budget here at KU for dealing with these materials, and you might not either. So we try to use materials that we have on hand. We don't usually have the funds to purchase a lot of special supplies. Also, I've found that when we use boxes and other types of materials that most people are familiar with, it really helps my colleagues, my curators, for example, understand how to use the boxes or housings. So for example, we use a lot of standard-size archival boxes that we already found in our archival collection, so that they sit on ourselves very well. They make sense to everyone. I know that everyone can open them and close them properly when an object is removed and placed back. Also, because our collections are really heavily used, we really try to devise simple housing solutions that will be easy for someone to undo and repackage after an item is used. If something is going to be used in our context, we have seen the use a lot in class instruction. It's also nice if the box can function also as a display, so things don't always have to be removed if possible. Now, because if we get, let's say, a large collection of buttons and we're looking at every last one, it's a great idea, and especially because I have graduate students and museum studies to help, to actually go ahead and complete some level of inventory at the same time since we're handling everything anyway, because I find most of our permanent staff really aren't going to have time to make a list of objects. They're so busy with other things. Other things I think about for political materials or really any materials is what are the goals for these materials? Maybe they're going to be on a frequent display. For example, buttons. We often have in our exhibits here in this rare book library. Maybe they're going to be using classes or for research. Maybe they'll be put on bone for other institutions, so the housing may factor into that. Will individuals be allowed to handle materials? If so, it should be clearly stated when gloves are required and how to remove items from a housing. In addition, if materials will be used for research purposes, it's important to keep that in mind. I see some people are saying that they're not hearing very well. I'm not sure if there's anything we can do about that, but I will turn up the volume on my microphone if that is helpful. Okay. Mike says it's fine, so we're going ahead. Okay. Now, depending on how much background you have about collections care, this may be very familiar to you and it may not be, but I always like to just take a minute to talk about the agents of deterioration. When we are housing material, we're really creating a microclimate to help us buffer an item against changes in the agents of deterioration. For example, if something is in a very high and humid space, the box can protect it a little bit in correct temperature as well. It can provide some sort of light barrier, protect it perhaps a bit if there's a disaster with water to some degree, et cetera. These are in some ways more important than housing in that the agents of deterioration affect all of our collections on mass, so if the temperature or humidity is very high or very low, everything in your collection is affected. Okay. Just a very short talk about storage material terminology. I often get asked these questions and just in case this isn't familiar, I just want to make a point of seeing a few things about them. These terms are often used really freely when we talk about storage, and sometimes they're not clearly the scientific standards attached to some of the terms that we use, like acid-free, so I just want to make sure everyone, when they make selections for housing, is careful about thinking through what they actually are looking for. So pH technically refers to the acid content as a solution, but in our context we tend to refer to it as the acidity of paper or board products used in our enclosure constructions. And so if you look in one of the archival catalogs or one of the products or suppliers, they might often say the pH of the board or the box, and it can be complicated because some materials are best stored at more of a neutral pH if you look at the pH scale on the bottom of the screen. Some people call that acid-free, and that's not technically accurate, but that's often what we kind of mean by that. It may mean pH neutral. Some materials have something called a buffer or an alkaline reserve that's usually around 2% to 3% calcium carbonate added to the paper or the board when it's made to make the pH a bit higher. And so for most materials, well, you have to determine which is best depending on the type of material you have. Another word that's used a lot is archival, which technically just refers to archive, but it is used to denote storage material oftentimes that is appropriate for long-term preservation. So we use that term really loosely. I just a few minutes ago said archival suppliers, but technically I mean companies that provide storage materials for us. So if you're not sure how something is made, it's important to contact the manufacturer and make sure they understand or they can give you information, so you feel confident in putting your materials in such a box. Okay, so the first category of material I'm going to speak about today are paper ephemera, and that's probably the easiest. I think most people are familiar with how to store small paper objects, but just in case we should go over it. What I have on these main slides is sort of some ideas of the most typical types of storage enclosures or materials. They're not the only ones, but those are most typical. And so small paper items might include pamphlets, leaflets, broadsides, small posters or the like. And some of these are fine standing upright in a pamphlet box. For example, many of these items will be put on their side in an archival folder or box, and some of these items might be best stored flat. Okay, so small paper items. The simplest method really to store small paper items is in an envelope or an archival folder. And in an archive setting, of course, it's typical for many items to be placed in one folder at a time. And so sometimes as you see here, we have a standard size 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper and then a tiny, tiny item. And sometimes it's a good idea to include an extra enclosure within the folder so that that item won't get lost. So an envelope or a folded piece of paper that's a little bit bigger. That's pretty simple. Some materials that are small and political are fine stood on end without an issue. In our library, we're really lucky that we store items by size. So we're assured of having most things in a pamphlet box be about the same size. And this system doesn't really work as well if everything is a different size. So we use large items next to smaller ones. So the larger items will start to sag and be unsupported. But for items that might be stored in a pamphlet box, like we see here a little brochure about anarchy, it looks like, it might be a good idea and fairly inexpensive to add alcohol and paper envelopes. They are quite inexpensive, relatively speaking, and will provide enough structural support for items to be stored vertically. Okay, so slightly bigger items, of course. Can't fit in a pamphlet box or that sort of thing. And are typically stored in folders and placed within a box that has one side that drops open to allow your hands to get in and firmly grasp the items inside. If an item is too large for a box or those kind of boxes are too expensive or unavailable, medium-sized folders could be placed on oversized flat shelves or in a map case. It's possible to add bumpers to a map case to section it off so that similarly sized folders could be stored together. And this usually is a good idea, so things don't slide around as the map case opens and closes. So I'm looking here at this item on the left, and it was created with magic marker, which could be unstable, so you'll of course want to inspect your items and just see if things like this might be best stored on their own, just in case you have fluctuations in humidity or a water leak or something of that nature. You don't want it to bleed on anything else. And here's a picture of a political newspaper collection that's been stored in a drop-front box, as I was talking about in the last slide. And for this particular project, we actually bought oversized end sheets from a bookbinding supply company. The reason for this is when we were trying to save costs, and they're not as durable as a folder would be, like a cardstock folder. But for this collection, we were always moving the box as a whole, not pulling individual folders out. And so that was able to... I'm sorry, I'm just hearing that we're having problems with the audio system. Let me see, Mike, can I dial in for my cell phone? Let me see. I will try that if you're all having problems hearing. Let me try that right now. I'm sorry, I apologize. We're having a couple of issues with it, and I think that that may help the issue. So just stand by everyone, please. Thank you. Okay. While we're waiting... We're not broadcasting. Oh, okay. You let me broadcast. I'll just say something. While we're waiting for Whitney to call us back, I just want to let you know if you post any questions in the chat box, I'll collect them so that we can answer them at the end of the webinar. And also be aware that when the advertisement for this is no longer on the home page of our website, you'll find it in the archives for 2018. So that's always the signal that I'd posted, the webinar recording, the PowerPoint slides, and the handouts. We're trying to correct this sound problem, and... This is Whitney again? Yes, you're back now. Go ahead. Okay, I'm sorry. Sorry, don't know what's going on here. Okay, apologize for that. Okay, so as I was saying on this slide, we had chosen to use oversized pieces of 80-pound paper instead of cardstocks 20-point or 10-point folders, which is another solution if you're trying to house things archivally but are not able to afford the fancier folders. But this we only do when we're moving the whole item at a time. Okay, hopefully people can hear. Let's see. So now let's move on to banners, flags, and oversized posters. Some typical materials you might use include tube, and here I've used that term acid-free, which of course is somewhat nebulous, but best to be unbuffered is what I should have probably written. Archival paper, such as often pH neutral if you're not sure exactly the composition of your item, and especially if it's a textile, you might include things like unbleached muslin or cotton ties. So there's two main ways to store oversized materials. Some are padded and boxed, and the other main way is rolled. And I'll also show you in sort of an in-between sort of way, which is rolled in a box. So here's an item from our collection that is very long. It's a bed sheet, sort of a mixed media item with magazine pages, photographs, and textile pieces attached. And it really is a challenge no matter how you look at it. I found this item in our stacks, folded in a box, and I'll show you pictures of how that looks because it was stored properly, if you will. But we've since decided to roll this item because it was hard to fold it with all these materials attached in such a way so that you didn't crease something. So if you do have something that's folded in a box, it's really important to create gentle rolls or gentle folds by using something like tissue paper snakes to pad the folds so that makes all of them gradual. And it's a good idea also to add a layer of tissue paper to the bottom of the box to then insert the item and fold the paper around the item. And you can buy both unbuffered and buffered tissue paper, and many collections items really benefit from being in contact with buffered paper, often paper materials, but when you're not sure and it's a mixed media object like that, it's generally better to choose unbuffered. Okay, and here's what this box looks like. One thing we always do, and you may do too, but if not, I think it's a great idea to add a photograph to the outside of the box to really cut down on people opening just to explore what's inside, especially when it's something so large, it's going to be a real pain when someone takes it out to try to get the fit back down the way you want it to be. Okay, so here's another example. This is sort of an in-between solution. Let's say you have room for boxes, but maybe not for hanging rolled storage, and this particular item was very long but not super tall, so it was rolled and inserted inside a box. This solution takes a bit more hand skills, but it might be a good idea if you have a rolled store... you don't have a rolled storage area, but you do have a place to store boxes. This was developed by my colleague Angela Andrus, and in fact, in the handouts, there's more information about this. She wrote a blog post about this that you might enjoy reading. So she took an archival or good quality tube and used a saw to cut it down a little higher than the item, and then covered that tube with unbuffered tissue and then rolled the item, in this case image-side in, onto the tube, and then it was covered with a layer of polyester and tie with cotton tape, and you could use paper or muslin if you wanted on the outside as well. And then she took, if you can see here, she made this out of corrugated board and made a little half-moon cutout on some pieces of corrugated board on the edges to create a sling for this item to sit in. And this has worked really well. It's easily pageable, and again, it's always a good idea to put a picture of the item on the outside so you don't have to attempt to unroll this very, very long banner. Another great solution is rolled storage. We constructed the setup that you see here using a conservergram, which is in the handouts. There's our wonderful leaflets from the National Park Service, if you're not familiar with them. And we used playground chain, metal F-hooks, and electrical conduit. We had shelves since we're a library. We have lots of metal shelves, and we removed the shelves, so we just had the struts and the armature, if you will, and attached the playground chain to the shelving braces above. And we're able to hang quite a lot of materials in a small amount of space. Another thing that we always do, and I've mentioned it already, but I can't probably say it enough, is to add pictures of the items on tags that are rolled with the items, but then we also create a picture map to help locate items in an input per section so you don't even have to go to the items themselves to locate which of these identical-looking flags you're looking for. Here's another example of how you could have rolled storage. It's better if you can stick something to the center of the tube and hang rather than placing tubes directly on a surface, but sometimes that's not possible. So here, someone used brackets along the sides and then padded them with ether foam to create a gentle surface, like a colleague gave me this picture and she didn't want her institution to be identified, but you can see it's a lovely way of creating a lot of storage in a small amount of space because there's a few rolls per bracket. So that's another option as well for oversized materials. And again, that could be textiles, it could be posters, anything that's very long and oversized. Okay, so bumper stickers and decals are the next area. And of course, as I mentioned earlier, I have a lot of research interest in these materials. With bumper stickers, I examined over 2,000 of them and looked at how they were made and how they had aged and also how they've been stored in different museums and archives collections. And my hope was that I could provide data that would be useful for collections managers and archivists in their hopes to better understand these materials. So the main problem with these collections, of course, is that they stick to themselves and other things. So if you'd like more information, probably more than anyone would like, you can look in the handout for the articles I've written. They're both an open access journal, so you should be able to go online and read a lot about the history of bumper stickers and decals. A little bit more about bumper stickers. They're generally made of either paper or vinyl, and it's surprisingly hard to tell the difference sometimes. You'd think it'd be clear, but it really isn't always. And they have an adhesive layer on the back, which has the adhesive changed over time. And then there's also, of course, a removable paper liner, which is impregnated with silicone. And it is kind of amazing to think about how those liners, those back liners, attach to the item when needed but pull off when we want them to be removed to be stuck on something. And of course, they were not made to last very long, but they are really rather complex in their composition. The main point I would say about these is that bumper stickers, either because of their adhesive or the vinyl, if they're made of vinyl, can off-gas or emit gases as they age, which can be damaging to paper and photographic collections. So it's really best to store them separately from paper or photographs if possible. Oftentimes, they're sort of all mixed together, per topic or, you know, Eisenhower collection, and they're mixed together. But it's best to store them separately when possible just because of the risk of the bumper stickers damaging other types of materials. In addition, the canals are a little simpler in their construction. They're usually coated with some sort of water-activated adhesive and made out of paper. They are not really off-gassing a lot, but they are really sensitive to moisture since that's what makes them stick. And so it's really important that they're stored in a cool and dry place, and they're generally pretty stable if atmospheric conditions are correct. Now, the only big concern with that besides their adhesive issues is that they aren't usually printed on very good quality paper, so they might yellow, become more acidic as they age. After looking at the way bumper stickers and the canals have been stored in a lot of institutions, I really think that this approach, which is very simple, is the best. They're really generally fine stored vertically in alkaline folders and document boxes as with other archival materials. I would encourage you, if you can afford it, to store them in their own folders since there's always that risk of sticking together. And also, if you store them vertically, you'll minimize the pressure that might result from a stack of items pressing on top of one another. If something's particularly sticky, I have found it best to add a piece of silicone release paper, cut slightly smaller than the folder, just fold it in half so it has a little folder within a folder, just to contain that sticker from other materials. It's interesting, and it might be a little counterintuitive, but I found that some bumper stickers in particular that have been stored in mylar or polyester start to stick to the mylar, or there may be some sort of bonding happening with some of the inks and some types of polyester. So silicone release paper seems like a safer choice, and I wouldn't have necessarily guessed that until I saw it in some storage environment. Okay, so that's the sticky items. Buttons, of course, are something that we often associate with political materials. There's a lot of different ways of storing these materials, and you can look online and find lots of ideas. I'm going to give you my favorite idea. It's not just the University of Kansas that uses this. A lot of institutions do. What I really like about this is it avoids using the pin backs or the metal parts in the actual housing. It's really tempting to stick them to things, but oftentimes that metal might be fragile or rusty, and you don't want to cause damage to an item you're hoping to preserve. Since they're wonderful political, I'm sorry, wonderful exhibit and teaching tools, they're often brought out, at least here. We're always using them, and our curators like to bring out one at a time for different events. So I like the solution a lot because it allows you to easily remove one item without affecting all the other items. So this system involves using boxes within boxes, and many of our supply companies sell commercial slide boxes that are long and skinny that sit within a larger size, fairly standard archival box. Purchasing specimen bags, plastic specimen bags from one of these suppliers is pretty inexpensive, and it can go a long way to preserving large collections of buttons. Now in the handout I have some other ideas. Other people who have written some solutions, so feel free to look if this idea doesn't work for you. Another thing to consider about buttons before we get into the solution is that they can weigh a lot more than you think. We often seem to get very, very large collections of buttons, and so how do you make each one accessible and retrievable while still keeping their blueprints small? This box, for example, has over 900 buttons, and it was so heavy that two people had to pick it up. It was too heavy for one person to carry. And so, you know, this is just one record storage size box, but it really was heavy. So we need to make sure people can pick up our storage solutions as well. So in this case, this is what we've decided to do, and many institutions do. Using these long slide boxes, we've put our buttons in individual polyethylene bags. And then because we're a conservation lab, we always have lots of paper scraps or board scraps around. So we'll cut a bunch of those to size. All the labeling information can go on the piece of paper. This particular collection had individual barcodes. Those can all go on those pieces of paper as well. And then the button is just slid into the bag separately. I am not, so nothing is being stuck to anything else. The button is just slid into the same bag. This has worked well because, again, as I've said, one of our archivists in particular loves buttons, and she's often removing one or another. And this way she doesn't have to disrupt the entire group of buttons. So here's an example of what these slide boxes look like within their overall box that they come with. If you look in the right here, you can see that we've used both the bottoms and the lids of the slide boxes, just to, because they both work for our purposes. You may also be able to see that we add some little card stack dividers. For this particular collection, the archivist wanted things to be arranged by topic. That was a graduate student project, because there were a lot of buttons. And so as you can see, it says peace, no nukes. So anti-nuclear war and peace buttons are in a category, and she could easily find things. Something we also do is add an inventory in a pocket on the inside of the lid of the box so that she can also look there without having to look through each item. But she could if she wanted to, because they're all protected, and it's easy to sort of work your way through them. And sometimes there's oversized buttons. They can get quite large. And we found what the archival companies sell as shoeboxes, or I think they're 5x7, 8x10 size boxes. Just adding some cardstock to make dividers has worked quite well for us to store a lot of materials in a small amount of space. Okay. So I thought I'd also include ribbons, because before people used buttons, they often had political ribbons. And sometimes, as you see in this picture from the Library of Congress, you can have a ribbon button combo. And with ribbons, they are often very fragile and often from quite a long time ago, and it's really best to store them flat whenever possible to avoid further creasing and crumpling. I'm sure textile conservators have other ideas, but this is what we do in lieu of having a textile conservator on site. So here's an example that one of my graduate students came up with here. We actually created a mat, a window mat. If you're not familiar with how to do that, there's ideas in the handouts here that might give you some ideas of how to cut a mat or how you could also purchase a mat if you're not able to cut them yourself. So what we were trying to do is just to stabilize these items, which are often quite fragile. So what happened here, which I hope you can see, is that the width and the height of these ribbons were measured, and then slits were cut through a mat board a little bit out on either side of the ribbons. And then polyethylene strapping, which is the softest strapping you can find, is laced through those slits and then secured on the back of the mat board. We've used double-sided tape that's taped to itself and not obviously to anything else like a ribbon. And this way, the ribbons are secured and they're not obscured. You can see everything that's happening here at these ribbons. Then this is the window mat that went on top. In conservation, we often add a third layer to our mat, which is another piece of solid board on top that's hinged and then can be opened. This is what eventually happens with this item as well. So again, if you aren't familiar with how to mat, you can look in the resources for more information. And if you had a button ribbon combo, you would have to somehow strap across the ribbon or create some sort of bumper with corrugated board or foam around the edges of the button to keep it in place. I didn't have a button ribbon combo that I can find at my institution, so you have to sort of imagine that part. But the idea is to provide some support, keep everything flat and stabilized. Okay. Moving on here to another type of political collection. T-shirts. Now, these are kind of a more modern political artifact, but of course, not many events happen these days without a commemorative t-shirt. You may have things like this in your collection. We have hundreds of them. So this is a fairly simple way to store many items in a small space. Again, we tend to use the standard archival boxes because our people at our institution, our curators, understand how those function. And then we tend to roll them. So we'll roll for us usually on rolled-up tissue paper. Okay. Here we go. So in this case, what we've done here is folded into sleeves and rolled fairly loosely around those tissue paper cores. We always try to roll so that the picture is up and you can see what everything is without having to unroll them. Before we roll our items, we often take pictures of them so that, again, we can create some sort of visual inventory. And someone I know had asked a question about this, I'll just address now. It's not that typical in archives to have pictures of everything as it might be in a museum. And so this allows us to create some of these visual files that we wouldn't otherwise have. I think it's standard in museums to have pictures when you can, but that's not always true in archives. So we will create a picture of each item. And then I usually put that in a pocket, as I've said before, or a sleeve on the inside of the box lid. And then we also have pictures on the outside of everything that's stored within the box to help people find things. And, of course, there will be paper records or online records that will point you to individual boxes. Hopefully there's an inventory of what's in each box. But sometimes that doesn't happen. So at least this gives you a better sense of finding things. Okay. And I thought here, I have this one last type of object and then I wanted to leave a lot of time for questions. Sometimes you have random things, if I can call them that. It was political collections in particular, like these plaques or three-dimensional artifacts that are often not a great exhibit or research value per se, but still are in your collections. And you need to make sure that you take care of them properly. So what are some simple solutions if they don't necessarily rise to the top of importance, but you need to take care of them? And actually, I found this picture in our stacks. And I should say we're not in an earthquake zone because this is a bad idea to have something like this on the top shelf if you aren't in an earthquake zone. It's a bust of a former governor of my state sort of hanging out there. And the question is, is it okay there? You know, maybe it is just fine where it is with some sort of dust cover or protection. In other places, like, again, if you're in an earthquake zone, you secure this better and probably not on the top shelf. So some solutions that are materials you might use include soft Tyvek or unbleached muslin, various types of boxes or lids, tissue paper might be helpful. We use a lot of isofoam and plastizote foam in our collections. Perhaps you do too. And then cotton tying tape always comes in handy. Okay, so this is a very strange plaque I will admit. It had a lot of comments when it was in the conservation lab. It's actually a plaque that was given to a former governor of my state, Kansas, by a shoe manufacturing group. So it's a plaque, but it's a three-dimensional artifact and sort of a bear to store. And probably will never come out for research or exhibit. But we want to make sure to protect it. So in this case, as I put here on the slide, a dust cover is probably fine and just enough. So you might consider vacuuming or just making sure there's no dust around this item. And then a soft piece of Tyvek, thick tissue paper or unbleached muslin could all be used as a dust cover. And this item was loosely tied to a secure area of the item with cotton twill tape. And then before I would put something like this on the shelf, I would put a tray lid or a piece of corrugated plastic or something underneath to help slide it in enough to shelf safely. There's not really very good handholds on this item. And of course, you don't want anyone to grab the shoe at the top and have it come apart from the rest of the plaque. This is another example where having a picture label to cut down on curious unwrapping would be a great idea. If you have more important, I shouldn't say important. Everything's important in terms of its architectural value, but we don't give everything equal attention. So something that you might want to have more attention placed on or maybe stored flat, some of these plaques. What we often do is take one of our standard size boxes and pad with some sort of foam or tissue paper. Here are two examples that we've housed in our collections. Leaving finger holes to remove things safely. And what I like about these solutions is if these items are using exhibits or in classes or for research or groups coming by, you don't really have to take them out of their housings to make them usable. People often ask about hot glue. And so I might just mention here that there are better and worse kinds of hot glue. I always purchase from one of the archival suppliers. Like I was talking about earlier, we can't always do all of the testing ourselves on materials. And if I have a question, I call and ask them about the composition of their materials. I would encourage you to do the same if you're not clear on what's good to use and what's not so good to use. Okay, so I hope you've enjoyed this presentation today. I've been caring for some types of political memorabilia. I apologize for some of these audio difficulties. I hope you have come up with some new tips or ideas. And I wanted to mention that the slides with the notes will be connecting to collection sites. So I have included the notes. If something wasn't clear in my reading or speaking today, I would love to open the webinar to questions at this point. I'm going to look over here. I can read them off for you if you want. Okay. Okay, so Donovan said, do they make unsized and unbleached muslin that would be suitable for storing rolled textiles? And then Amanda Richardson says, I saw that talus has it. But can't you just wash muslin, unbleached muslin and to remove this size? I know many people do do that. I'm just looking here in the Gaylord catalog. I'm not really an expert on muslin. I'm sure there may be textile conservators who could better answer that question. But yes, it is a great idea if you're able to wash materials. I'm looking here at the Gaylord catalog, which I happen to have in front of me. And it seems they sell unsized, unbleached muslin. So I think many of our suppliers apparently do sell it. Good. And Amanda, thank you for noting that you also saw that on the talus website recently. The more places the better. I think in the resources on the Connecting to Collections Care website, we have a lot of the companies. We have links to a lot of the companies that provide archival materials. So Catherine Owens says, does the archive not use a collections management database? It holds pictures. Yes. And that is a great question, Catherine. And I sort of addressed that a few minutes ago. But no. No, that's not that typical, at least. And I work in a large research library. A lot of the collections are very paper-focused. Most of the time. So we don't really think too much about these artifactional materials that are often kind of extra additions to collections. And sometimes they kind of get put aside because archivists are trained mainly to work with paper. So yes, where a museum might have a collections management database that has a place for pictures of individual items, archival collections are often thought of really on-mass. And so we don't always have that. But that is a very good point. And one, because I'm coming from this archived side of thing, I didn't really think about. If you have a collections management database that has pictures, you are way ahead. So congratulations. Well, I think it was a really good suggestion, though, to have a map with images. Because even if you have pictures in your database, you may not be carrying your computer around with you when you get to the end of a range and need to know what objects are there. Missy Molkalecki. I'm sorry, I just butchered your name. Do you do anything special for vinyl banners? Now vinyl banners are much like vinyl stickers that they have potential for off-gassing and negatively affecting other collections stored nearby. I would suggest that you wrap something like that or fold it or however you're going to store something that's oversized in buffered paper. If you can afford something like microchamber paper that has zeolites in it that actually can capture gaseous molecules, you should do so. But that paper is quite expensive. It might be worth it. And I would definitely store vinyl separately from other types of materials. Yes, vinyl is a wonderful and difficult material. Yes. OK, so Catherine Owens says, we stick our buttons at the foam to give them some rigidity in the bag. I take it that's a bad idea. I don't know that it's necessarily a bad idea. It definitely works for rigidity. And again, there's many ways of dealing with things. And a lot of people store buttons in that way. I just like this idea of the bags because you do not then have to rely on the metal backings to actually hold it to something else. Because again, sometimes those pin backs can be fragile. They can snap off or be rusty. You're doing your best and I appreciate that. Isoflame is a good quality material and it may not cause much damage. But you might consider in the future not using the metal parts to stick it to something else. Yeah, Catherine Owens says, if you have narrow ribbons, we've used mylar sleeves for film negatives and then slip them into acid-free paper-negative sleeves. So that's just a suggestion from her. Thank you, Catherine. That's a good idea. So Tracy Hampton says, we have cotton slash canvas tote bags. Any suggestions for storage of those? Yeah, well that's another political item, isn't it? It hadn't even occurred to me. Generally with anything that is three-dimensional, you'll just want to make sure that it is supported in all parts. So if you have room to pad the canvas tote bag, I would probably put some bald-up tissue paper inside and put it in a box and it would probably be just fine. Probably some of them you could probably roll like you do your t-shirts. That's true. You could roll them as well and that would take up a space. So thanks, Susan. That's a great solution. Jessica Pace says, the AIC-OD testing wiki provides information on the types of 3M low-melt glue that have tested well. So I think the ADI testing wiki is on the AIC wiki, so I can add that to the handout and I'll post it when I post the recording. Actually Intamin says, I work in the National Mall in Washington, D.C. We could potentially be collecting thousands of political objects a year. We don't have the staff, time, storage, or money to care for this many objects in perpetuity. Do you have any tips for choosing the best examples to collect in terms of objects that are made of the most stable materials? That's a big question, isn't it? Made of the most stable materials. I guess that's one thing to think about, but also there may be materials like bumper stickers that are not all that stable as a class. So finding the best, you might look and see, of course, if something is yellowing or emitting an odor, that might not be as stable as other materials. It's hard because the best examples, yeah, I'm trying to think like in the terms of politics, if you would have examples from, let's say, campaign materials, a few examples from different people's campaigns. Boy, that is a hard question. Let's see. I'm not sure if I can... The best examples may not be made on the best materials. It depends what you mean by the best. If you mean the most stable materials, that's one thing. But sometimes you're right, but it's not necessarily the most visually attractive or the most representative of a class of materials. But it is true. Political objects are just all around us, and we can't preserve everything, so it is important to make informed decisions. But that is a question that we probably could talk about for some time and might need more information to answer fully. Yeah. Danetta Holds says, Excellent information about storing materials. I have some items like feather headdresses, axes, things like that. Do you have any suggestions on storage? Before you start, Danetta, look at our last webinar on feathers and care of feathers that may be very helpful, and that's in our archives for 2018. So, on... I was going to say the same thing. Oh. Yeah, and I can add that to the handout, too. Fantastic. Political material? Do you have any suggestions, Whitney? I'm on all sorts of things. Well, just in general, storing any type of material, you want to make sure that you fully support all the different parts, that you stabilize materials. It's generally a great idea when something is three-dimensional to store it in the way it was intended to be good or housed or used, but that's not always possible. Making sure the parts are all stabilized is sort of most important, but when you have something that has potentially a lot of loose pieces or are made of composite materials like it acts might be metal and wood, you'll have to think of what part of that acts, for example, is the most vulnerable to the agents of deterioration or perhaps falling apart or decomposing in one way or another and address the most vulnerable parts of an object. It's kind of a general suggestion. Yeah. Hillary Sullivan says, what suggestions do you have between vinyl or plastic memorabilia that started to plasticize? We are at the end of November going to do a webinar on plastic, so pay attention to that. Whitney, do you have any suggestions? In general, I would separate those materials from others. There's a lot of interesting research going on right now about cold storage of plastic and if that's a good idea or a bad idea, and I'll be really interested to tune into that webinar and see what the speakers suggest about that. It could be that that might be a good idea. Separating or segregating those materials is important. I might go ahead and take digital images of items at that time because when they start to plasticize, you really can't reverse that. It's kind of a point of no return in a way. It may be worth keeping. In some cases, maybe it's a time to deaccession, but obviously a curator would have to make that decision. All right. Julie Saylor says, do you have any advice for how to store or preserve political yard spines? You know, I thought about this yesterday as I was walking home and seeing all our governor's signs, our governor candidate signs, and realized this had already been sent off to connecting to collections. So I would say to you, it kind of depends on if it's most important for its information or its artifactual value. And if it's something that you mainly are interested in, the poster itself, and you would have to talk with a curator or perhaps you are a curator and decide if the metal parts matter to you or not, if they do, then you might store it in a different way than if they don't. Of course, if they don't, then you just basically have a poster. But if you are keeping the metal prongs, perhaps you want to preserve it as an example of late 20th century, early 21st century political activity, then you have to obviously be aware of the metal. So you might store it flat in some sort of folder, although I would make sure to indicate that there's metal involved. Sometimes they're stable enough to store vertically, although I would turn them upside down with pieces of corrugated, either board or plastic in between. In general, another idea might be to somehow, if you have a map case and you can sort of segregate or put bumpers in so that they're long, skinny areas. If you have a number that you want to include together, that might work as well. I would put a buffering material in between different ones. If it's been in the ground, I would probably try to make sure to wipe off any loose dirt or that kind of thing before you store it long term. I mean, that definitely is a political item of our time. Yes. Well, even in the past, I remember finding yard signs in the attic of a relative long deceased. Maybe they're not that new. Yes. Right. Well, the plastic ones are. And C. Donovan says, what about how to preserve foam core posters that have been attached to foam core and that might have been burned by tiki torches? Hi, Sue. I know, Sue. Thanks for that lovely question, Sue. Well, that's good luck to you, Sue. Now, while foam core is probably the least stable part of that particular item, but again, if the whole thing has been burned and it's not very stable, I would probably again separate it from other materials. And again, if you can afford the microchamber paper that might be a good opportunity to use it, taking some pictures of that item might also be good. And it may be that the burning or the bird marks are super important to the artifact and its history. So preserving that information is probably a good idea, but I would segregate it. And thanks, Sue. That's a really challenging question. I would like to know more about that particular item. That sounds complicated. Yeah. But politics, there's often a lot of passion involved behind political rallies and that kind of thing. Yeah, maybe Sue will tell us more about the torches. I know where Sue lives, and I know there were some large political rallies not too long ago there. Maybe it's related to what has been going on related to that in her part of the world. But often political rallies, for example, can become very heated, literally or figuratively, and the burn marks might be important. But burn materials should be segregated for a number of reasons. Yeah. And I think that's all the questions. Do you have anything else you want to add? No, I do apologize for the audio challenges today. But thank you for those of you who have hung with me during this time. I hope you've gotten some great ideas about different types of artifacts. And again, you're always welcome to contact me. Actually, I feel like I have a slide with my email, which I should have put up sooner, wbaker at KU.edu. I'd love to talk with you more if you have further questions or if I can be helpful to you. Thanks a lot. And so, as soon as the slide announcing this webinar is no longer on the main page of our website of the Connecting to Collections Care website, you'll find it with the slides, the slides with the script, the recording, and the handout. And that'll happen in the next couple of days. So look for that. And I'm sorry about the sound, but we're always working on sound, and sometimes it works better than others. And a lot of it has to do with where the sound is originating or where we're from. We switched to using a phone bridge, but at KU, their phones are voice over IP. Oh, okay. That's where we get problems. So I'm sorry about that. I'm wearing a headset. No, it has nothing to do with the headset. I'm wearing a headset, too. And Theresa Pennington, if you send me a message, I will send you something to show that you logged in. And that's all I can do. Okay, so thank you very much. And we'll look forward to seeing you all at the next webinar, which is the beginning of November, and or if you're taking the course. Thank you very much.