 And Jenny, if you'd like to go ahead and start whenever you're ready. Yeah, sure. Sorry about that guys. So I'm going to do a quick introduction to the community and then we'll jump right onto our topic. So Heritage Preservation is moderating the Connecting to Collections online community in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History and with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And the site is designed and produced by Learning Times. The goal of the online community is to help smaller museums, libraries, archives, and historical societies quickly locate reliable preservation resources and network with their colleagues, which we see you guys are doing over there on the left. So in developing the community, we've drawn on a number of resources that were developed for the C2C initiative, including the Bookshelf and the Raising the Bar workshops and webinars. Links to these resources are filed under our topics menu on the website. About twice a month, the online community features a helpful preservation resource or topic and hosts a webinar related to it. These resources, including a recording of today's webinar, will be archived at ConnectingToCollections.org. You can find a recording of all our webinars under the menu option meeting room and online event recordings. And you can also search by topic under our topics menu, which you can see there. Today, I am so pleased to welcome Mary. Mary Coughlin is an assistant professor and administrator for the Distance Education Program for the George Washington University's Museum Studies Program, and she has kindly agreed to lead a discussion today on object handling basics. Mary, thank you so much for joining us. Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Sure. Thanks, Jenny. First of all, I'm happy to be here, and the turnout is fantastic. And as people have been posting, I recognize a few students from campus and from our online program, so hi, Jim, hi, Justin, and anyone else I may have missed. Just to give you a background of who I am, before I started teaching full-time at GW, I was an Objects Conservator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. And before that, I got my graduate degree in the Winner University of Delaware Program and Art Conservation. My undergrad is in Historic Preservation from Mary Washington College. I also have intern experience at the National Park Service, English Heritage in London. And also, my first job actually out of college was Smithsonian National Museum with the American Indian, also in their Objects Conservation Lab. So object handling is something I think is very important. It's something that anyone who works in museums needs to be aware of and involved in and educated in. And so I really look forward to our discussion today, so hope you all have questions and we can have a good exchange afterwards. Thank you so much, Mary. So we do have a couple questions for our audience members. Just to get the conversation started and to see where you're coming from. And like we do on past webinars, we will pull a few names at random to win a door prize. But of course, you do have to be a member of the online community, so I have a way to contact you. So our first question today is what type of collections do you work with? And I'm going to actually start pulling a few of these over at a time and give you an opportunity to fill them out. Our next question, does your institution provide object handling training? Your options are yes, no, and you're not sure. And then if you do have object handling training, who gets to participate in that? Curators, collection managers, a couple of options there. And I'll pull over one more. And then do you have written procedures for object handling? I'm going to go back to this question when it looks like most folks are working with historical collections, 58 of you responded there. And then does your institution provide object handling training? You guys are still filling it out, but it looks like the majority is no. And that's not surprising. Okay, I'm going to move this one over. So if you do have object handling training, who receives it? And around 36 people said everyone who comes in contact, which is great. And then do you have written procedures? And it looks like a pretty even split there with yes and no. And then one more question, guys. And we'll move on to the presentation. Now, if you do have that written procedure, is it shared with everyone? Staff, interns, volunteers, and then of course your options are yes, no, and not sure. And I'll give you a second to fill that out. Yes, it looks like the majority of people are saying yes, those written policies are shared, although it's changing a bit. All right. Great. Thank you, guys. So I'm going to go ahead and move this over and move this over. And I'm going to pull over Mary's presentation. So throughout the presentation, feel free to type in questions over in that Q&A box. And I will hold on to them and I'll make sure we get to them before the hour is up. So Mary, I'll go ahead and hand things over to you. Great. Thanks, Jenny. And thank you all for answering those questions. I think they just give a context and an insight into maybe the experiences that you have all had and what your museums do with that. Because sometimes there is training, sometimes there's not, and then whether or not it's formalized in a written report or mandate or manual is good to know. The other question I should have asked is also when was that written handling guidelines, when were they written and are they ever updated? Because sometimes things do change. So the first slide we already did are welcome. You now know a bit about me. So let's just go to the next one. I get into the meat of our discussion today, which is the handling guidelines themselves. Truly only handle an object when you have to. It is a type of risk and potential damage, okay? Before you even touch it, there's some things that you need to do. If you are moving it, even if it's just across the room, across the table, certainly to another room, you need to make sure that you have a space ready. Is that space clean? Is it clear? And can you get there? Okay, these are vital things. You know, check out the hallway. If it's a day that you have, you know, packages arriving, if you have to go through a public space, is that route clear? And if not, can you make it so? And if you can't, you should probably put a phone when you're going to move your object. And then the other questions you need to ask is, can that object actually be safely moved? If it's too fragile, maybe you can't move it. If it's large, scope out. Can you actually fit it through the doorways? Are there other risks that could happen? Again, what is the activity going like if you're moving it into another room? Do you need to put it on a cart? Do you need somebody to come help you, whether it's large or because you're moving it through a public space? Do you need a spotter? These are types of things that you need to think about even before you've touched your object. Touching it yet. Look at yourself. Do you have dangling jewelry? Do you have your ID badge? How are you going to tuck that away and secure that because you don't want that hitting into your artifact? If you're wearing rings, do you need to take them off? Sometimes maybe you should. Sometimes maybe it's okay not to. But if the object is large, can get cracked, can get scratched, is fragile, maybe even take off your rings. Find a secure place that you're comfortable putting them. And that if something happens, you don't have to explain something to your spouse. Also, we're not touching it yet. Look at the object itself very carefully. What are the weak points? There are fragile surface. Is there anything dangling off that needs to be secured? Does it have a lid? Does that lid, is it removable? Should you take that off? If anything has fallen off in the course of handling or looking at it, put that fragment into a labeled bag with the object. ID number, maybe your name, date, that type of thing. And again, if anything is loose or maybe it's going to rattle off as you're moving, secure that as possible. Take some tool tape, tie it up, that sort of thing. So again, we haven't touched it yet. We're just thinking and looking. Now, decide if you need gloves. This is a big one. This has sort of become the question mark for a lot of people. And there was a great discussion a few weeks ago in the discussion thread connecting to collections that I'm sure a lot of you saw or participated in. And really the question is, do you need gloves? So before you even decide if you need gloves, let's talk about why you're even thinking about gloves. Your hands themselves have oil, salt, dirt. Obviously your skin is moisture. Maybe especially in the winter months or if you live in a dry climate, maybe you've put some lotion on your skin. And now if you touch an artifact surface with that, you can now transfer all that material to that artifact. And some of that can cause some damage. The other side of the coin is that the object itself may actually be toxic. Maybe it was treated with a pesticide. Maybe the paint in it is lead-based or arsenic-based. Maybe it's a degrading plastic that is oozing out toxins. And now if you don't have gloves, you've touched it with your bare hands and now you're absorbing it. Or then you go and eat your lunch and now you've ingested some of that material. So gloves can be to protect the object and they can be to protect yourself as well. This time, however, clean... Oh yeah, let's do the gloves. I knew I was going to get talking and forget it. So we do have a question for you guys. Do you use gloves when handling artifacts? And yes, no. And the big question is, it depends. And there, do you want me to put the other one over as well? Yeah, let's do that. Okay. So if you are using gloves, what gloves do you use when handling objects? You have a couple options. And then one of them is instead of using gloves, you use clean, dry hands. And then you also again have the, it depends option. So Mary, it looks like a lot of people, whether or not they use gloves, it really depends on their situation. And it looks like on our next question here, cotton gloves are popular, nitrile gloves are popular, but then of course, it depends. It's also a large response. Yeah, great. Thank you guys. What about some of these options and maybe what goes into some of the decision making? So certainly clean, dry hands can be the viable, appropriate option. For instance, if tactile sensitivity is needed, you don't want to lose that if you're wearing gloves. A lot of times people who are working with paper, archives, textiles, they may opt for clean, dry hands. And that really does mean I've cleaned dry my hands before I'm touching this artifact. If gloves are assumed to be a risk, maybe the object is really large or slippery, a really big ceramic, a heavy glass, a vase or sculpture. Maybe you don't want a barrier between you and that object. You really want to be able to touch it and feel it. So again, maybe clean, dry hands are appropriate. In my opinion, if you are not sure, probably the safest default is to actually wear gloves. Okay? So let's talk about some of our glove options. My opinion, nitrile gloves are often your safest defaults. They are basically inert. They've got a good grip. They're pretty comfortable to wear. You should not buy the ones with powder. So look for powder-free gloves. The other factors to consider is that you need to choose the size that is right for you. So if your hands are small, do not put a size large on. Just as if you have big hands, you're not going to put a size small on or you're going to rip it, okay? So you need to probably buy a variety of sizes for the people who handle your artifacts and have those people know what size works best for them. As I'm sure you know from either your museum or even going to the doctors, nitrile gloves come in different thicknesses, colors. They kind of feel a little different sometimes. So you need to decide which ones are comfortable for you. Excuse me. Personally, I tend to like the purple ones. I think that they have a certain thickness. They're pretty comfortable to wear. They're not too, say, grippy as you put them on. Board of caution or warning, I should say, for if you are working with a lot of metals, there is a sulfur component to regular nitrile gloves. And I'm sure a lot of you realize that sulfur is a corrosive for metals, okay? So you want to avoid sulfur in metals. Therefore, if you are handling a lot of metal artifacts, you want to look for something called accelerant-free nitrile. In the image you see on your screen, they tend to be the bright green ones. Oftentimes they're going to be the accelerant-free, but looks to make sure that it actually says that on the box. Again, if you're using a lot of metals, that's what I would opt for. Other thing that people have noticed is occasionally some people have a bit of sensitivity to wearing the nitrile, their skin gets a little irritated, and they tend to do much better with the accelerant-free nitrile as well. So if you're having that issue or someone you work with does, maybe explore that as an option. In my opinion, the accelerant-free nitrile, they have a different feel. If you're wearing them for a long period of time, I never found them to be as comfortable. But again, if I'm working with metals or if you have a skin issue, you want to look for the accelerant-free nitrile. So why not cotton? A lot of you said you wear cotton gloves. A lot of places use them. They're comfortable. They're available. Nowadays, you can put them under the, you know, the green umbrella because they're reusable, which is great. Problems with cotton become... that oftentimes, especially after washing, they may become ill-fitting. They just don't fit the same as they used to. And if that happens, you run the risk of being able to snag them on an object. They can also sometimes leave a bit of lint behind. That's why you're leaving material on an object that's not, you know, natural to it. The real issue, I think, with cotton gloves actually is their porosity. So again, the idea of salt, dirt, and oils and moisturizers in your hand can actually wick through that glove and still get deposited on the object itself. Okay? The other thing, because of the porosity, again, it can work the other way. If the material is oozing or has pesticides on it, that can now work its way through the glove and onto you. The other aspect with cotton gloves is even though it's great that you can wash them, you really have to do an honest assessment of how often are you all really washing these gloves. Okay? Because now, if you've touched something that's contaminated in any way, and then you re-wear those gloves and now you've touched something else, if you still insist on wearing cotton gloves, which I know a lot of people are very wedded to them, my one giant request is that you do not use the cotton gloves with the friction dots on their palms or on the finger pads. And on your screen in the bottom right-hand corner is sort of an image. I'm hoping you can get a sense of what I mean by that. And hopefully you can make out some of those dots on them. The reason I do not want you all to be wearing these dots, the friction dots is because they are actually made out of a harmful material called PVC, which is a plastic, polyvinyl chloride. And that PVC over time can start to degrade and now you can spread harmful materials from your gloves to your objects. And in some cases, people have been able to say, oh, what are these dots? I don't know what the surface dot is. And it actually is because they were touched with cotton gloves with these friction dots. So that is one big takeaway today. If you're using friction dot gloves, let's get rid of them. Some of you also said latex. A few of you had latex as an option. And even when you go to the doctors, some doctors will still use latex. They're a good barrier. They're a really comfortable fit, but you do have a risk of allergic reaction to them. Even if you don't have a latex allergy now, if you wear them a lot, you can actually build up a sensitivity over time. The other issue with latex is they also have sulfur used in their production. And as I mentioned earlier, that sulfur can damage objects, particularly metals. So really latex isn't used that much when it comes to object handling. You might also see vinyl gloves. They are a good barrier. Not the best fit. I think you can make that out from the image on the screen. The main issue with the vinyl gloves is they are actually chemically unstable. And as they degrade, they can also transfer those degradation products to the material. Also, a slight risk of allergic sensitivity when it comes to vinyl as well. You honestly tend to see them in food handling industry, but I've seen them in a couple labs and around for people to grab for handling, and it's, again, not the best option. So why not always clean dry hands? Again, if we're talking broad umbrella of mostly objects, again, not thinking about the paper and the textile options, but thinking three-dimensionally, I always clean my hands always. This, I thought, was a brilliant, clever display that I saw in a historic house when I worked at English Heritage. And what they did was they had samples of materials that they had in their collection, and then one side they covered it with plexiglass, and the other side they encouraged the visitors to touch. And as you see over time, you can see that the bronze starts getting worn away, the patina is getting changed. On the cotton polyester textile, that should be white, and actually right now is... Let's see if I can get the arrow going. Oh, thanks. So this should actually be white, and you see just from people handling it that it actually is basically brown. The same with the leather. This is all handling damage here and on my silk as well. So I think that's a good visual for people to realize, oh, you know what, hands are kind of dirty, and all that material can get transferred to the object and change it. Over here I'm hoping you can also make out the fingerprints on this brass, and that's just from touching it. One of my big takeaways I'm hoping you get today too is that when you touch metal, always, no exception, you wear gloves, and I hope that those gloves are not cotton, and I hope that they are accelerant free night trial. If you touch metal with their hands, even if they're clean and dry, you are transferring that material and that material will etch the metal. So always gloves with metal. No exception. So let's get to handling now. When you are handling, now you've made your glove decision, you're going to use two hands, you're going to support the object by the body. Whatever the main bulk of the body of that object is where the most robust part that's where you want to be handling it. You're never going to lift the handles or straps, even if that's how it was made to be used. For instance, maybe you have a suitcase in your collection, and now you have to move it. Well, if the same suitcase was in your home, yeah, you'd use that handle, but now that it's in the collection, you don't pick it up by the handle, you pick it up by the body. Furniture, never by the arms or backs. For furniture, the really the strongest area is going to be the seat, painting. Never by the frames or the hanging hardware. Again, evenly supported. That's sort of the main takeaway for how you handle something. You want to figure out the way to evenly support it. Textiles never lift them up by their edges. They're oftentimes fragile and heavier than you think they are. Maybe slide something under it. Again, this idea of even support. And also make sure that you look at the surface. Is it fragile? Is there anything flaking or friable? Be careful then of not touching the surface when you're handling it. Other thing to keep in mind is to only handle and move one object at a time. Some of the smallest things, you're not going very far. You want to save yourself some step and you think, okay, well, I can take two at a time. What's the harm in that? But really, you should be one object at a time. If you're moving just even more than a few steps, try to put it on a support board or a cart, some sort of level of support as you're moving it. And maybe you do need to even add extra padding, tissue paper, volara at the film, something to stop it from bouncing around as you're moving it. And again, just to reiterate, make sure that you have a clear path and a clean space for the other end however far you're moving it. Whether it's in another room or just the other side of the table. Another thing to evaluate is your collection of carts. What is available to you to move these objects? A lot of institutions are going to have a rubber-made cart like you see here on the right. But maybe for some large objects, do you have a flatbed cart available to you? On the bottom left, you see a really big ship model. There was no cart available to fit on that. So thankfully, one of the flatbeds we had, you could actually take the handle off of it, out of it. So that's the other thing. Now go look at your flatbed. Can you do that? If you're buying, if you need to purchase a flatbed, try to get one that the handle is removable so that you have more flexibility with it. So these are things to think about. Maybe for some smaller, fragile objects, I've seen people transport them in a basket like you see here, and that's fine. Just make sure that you pad it out again, tissue at the fold of the Lara. Those type of things, whatever's in the basket isn't going to hit into each other. Don't underestimate the importance of re-housing and its impact on handling. So here you see some glasses each in its individual box and that's great because now when you need to access something a researcher wants to look at it, you need to move it, you're going to handle it by the box, not by the object itself. So that again, you're minimizing the handling risk. Maybe in the lower right, maybe you can re-house to do some handling better. So again, to organize it so that you're not touching the object itself, you're touching the box, the storage. So you can do re-housing and handling almost together sometime. The next object is stored up high. If it is on an upper shelf, if you need to get a ladder or a step stool, it's best to honestly ask for some help. As you're coming down the ladder, hand that artifact to somebody, don't come all the way down with it. And now I'm going to seem to counter contradict myself when I say avoid transferring an object directly to another person. It's really truly best, with the exception of the higher up shelf ladder issue, to put the object down on a table and have that person pick it up. You don't directly hand it to them. So you put it down and let them pick it up themselves. And certainly if anything is large, heavy, or awkward in any way, get somebody to help you. You don't want to get hurt, and you certainly don't want to hurt your artifact. And as soon as you have more than one person involved in this moving and handling, really do make sure that everybody knows their role. And here you see an illustration of that. So a really big heavy lighthouse lens, so he's got glass, he's got metal, needs to go up high, needs to use a forklift. You're going to have people up top, and you're going to have a spotter at the bottom. And he's watching everybody, everybody should know their roles before they even got up there, that that object can get safely transferred to where it needs to go. And you can see that everybody's wearing gloves too. I really thought it would be fun for the next few minutes to think about specific objects and how you might go about handling them, okay? So in this object, which happens to be a hot water urn from the 18th century, if I was you, the first questions I would start to ask are what are the materials? I'll give you a moment to look at it and think about what materials you think you're seeing here. The bulk of it is actually made out of enamel, which is glass fused to metal. And hopefully also you're making out the fact that there is actually a lot of metal components. There's the handles and the base and the spigot. Would you wear gloves? If you would wear gloves, which would you do? Think about it. For me, I would actually wear a night child with this, especially with the metal component. Where would I pick this up? What do I think the body of this piece is? Actually, I forget how to get the pointer back. Thank you. Oh, I can't do it. If you hold down your mouth. For some reason it's not. The main issue here is to think about what is the bulk, the body of this, the most robust part. And that is going to be basically where you start seeing the enamel, the vase, or the hot water start to occur. Certainly there's handles. I'm hoping that nobody thinks that those handles look like something that you should grab. We're not going to touch the handles. Other issues to think about, there seems to be a lid. Is that lid hinged? Or is that lid come off? If it comes off, I would then remove it and separate it. The other thing I would start asking myself is how does that sit into the metal base? What does it mean to be a hot water urn of this period? How did they work? Maybe that's good to sort of know before you're touching it. Or explore. Can I basically lift this main part out of the base? And the answer is yes, you do. So if you didn't know these things and just touched it, you run the risk of the base sort of sticking for maybe an inch or two and then dropping down. You run the risk if you don't take the lid off of it toppling over. So really know what you have separate the parts if you need to. The other question is now that you have it in three different parts how are you going to transport it? Are you going to do it all together in a cart? How are you going to separate those things? Are you going to pad it out so that they don't bounce together? Especially for the main body of the urn itself? I don't know what that bottom is like when it comes out of the base. Is it rounded? Is it open? Is it flat? Can it sit up like it normally does? Or do I have to lay it on its side and pad out a support? If I do that you want to make sure that none of the pressure points can end up on those really delicate handles. And you want to make sure to watch out for that spigot as well. Not sure how strongly attached that is. So these are some of the things I would think about before I even handle this object. And I'm sure a lot of you have these same thoughts. And maybe you're at the point of, you know, you might not even realize the stepwise approach that you're just naturally taking before you're handling your objects. But I think sometimes it's good to step back and really reflect what do I think about before I handle something. Let's talk about this one. This is a Plains Indian War Shirt from the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Indians. So the first thing I'd look at and think, okay, what materials am I seeing? The answer is you're seeing some native tantide as the base substrate, the bulk of the shirt itself. Some tantide fringes coming off. The red and the green that you see coming off in the fringes as well is actually dyed horse hair. You have some ermine fur hanging off of there too. And then the yellow and purple pattern is going to be actually dyed porcupine quill. Okay. So if I'm looking at this, maybe at this point I'm thinking, okay, this is an organic material. It's looking like it's aging pretty well. Okay, this shirt is probably about 19th century. And I'm not seeing a lot of insect damage. So maybe there's an alarm bell going off. I wonder if this has been treated with any pesticides. Okay. So at that point now maybe I'm starting to think about gloves. And in my opinion at this point the gloves now become a lot more about protection for yourself. Okay. If there's a risk of any pesticide exposure you're going to want to have gloves. In my opinion those gloves a good choice for that is going to be nitrile. They're going to protect you and you can dispose of them as well. Because again this idea of not wanting to transfer toxic materials to other artifacts or other people is important. So maybe if you're looking at this shirt and you think how am I going to move this? You look at it, it kind of looks heavy and it really is. It's a heavy shirt. So you might want to get somebody to help you. Maybe in this case lifting it out by the shoulders and then sliding a support board underneath it that doesn't go against the fringe is a way to then to move that and support it. And then what you're going to want to do is either have two people holding the board or moving that board to a cart and pushing it that way. Going to a new one. Archeological pewter plate fragment we have here. So you've got some metal in archaeological context. Do I want to wear gloves? I'm hoping at this point as soon as you know it's metal that you're saying yes, we're going to wear gloves. Question is which gloves would you grab in this case and why? My opinion is nitrile. Hopefully maybe an accelerant free nitrile if you're worried. And then I think you should start asking yourself why. There's a couple reasons. You don't want your fingerprints to etch in this archaeological fragment. And there's also an element of protecting yourself from a health risk. It's good to know about this plate fragment is that it's from the 17th century and so at that point pewter has a lead component. And what you see up in the left corner in the thin sort of arm part that white accretion or concretion is actually some lead corrosion material. So the lead component in that pewter plate is actually corroded and it's turning essentially lead white. You don't want to touch that. So wearing a glove is going to protect the object and it's going to protect you as well. Other things to think about are going to be the weak points. Where am I really going to grab this? The sturdiest area is going to be sort of the bulk of it that you don't see the corrosion product. The other thing when you start looking in the area that I highlighted as corrosion, I think you can see the cracks. So that's going to be an area of concern. The other thing is especially with the lead corrosion it can actually get kind of soft. You want to be careful with that. Question now about how to move it. It's small. It's light. It's not heavy. Have your gloved hands and walk somewhere with it. No. So you're putting it in a box maybe putting that box in a basket or in a cart and doing it safely that way. The other thing I want you all to think about especially with this lead corrosion issue is that whatever now I'm putting it on I run the risk of that lead flaking off and then cross-contaminating something if I reuse that box for that support. So you either want to clean it out or throw it out. So not the object of the box. Let's go modern because I think sometimes when you have a modern material people lose all their handling skills. I've seen it happen. It's really great when it comes to candling historic artifacts and decorative arts and fine arts. If there's something that they're familiar with they almost forget that it's an actual museum object. And here you see something from the hip-hop collection in American history. The boom box. It's pretty big. It's pretty heavy. But you wear gloves. It's a hard plastic so there's some slickness to that. Does that change your mind about gloves? It's a lot of plastics. For me, that's a red flag to put gloves on. Because as plastics age they can also release components that are not good for you. Let's say that way. So my opinion again, this is a time to maybe put on some nitrile gloves. How am I going to pick this up? There's a handle. Do I use that handle? I'm really hoping you don't. The other things I want you to think about are do the speakers detach? Should they detach when I'm moving them? Are they firmly attached if I leave them in place? How far are you going with this? There's a plug. How is that going to attach itself? How am I going to secure that when I'm moving it? So all these things you need to think about even with something that's familiar or what maybe used to be more familiar as this boom box. And a few more samples or examples. This is a shit model. Again, it's pretty large. Larger than that boom box What materials am I seeing? A lot of painted wood. Some metal. Even some textile components in the rigging. There's actually plastic is what's making up the windows. Does that change anything? Very risk to handling. I hope you can make out that there's some damage to the rigging, there's some damage to the railings. It's really fragile. A lot of this is on this tension set. Shit modeling. Do I need a hand? Is it so large that I need somebody to help me even though it's really light? The answer is yes. Get somebody to help you. Do I want to wear gloves? I think so. And here we go. For those of you who like Star Trek these are Spock's ears from the Wrath of Khan in the collection of American History. So what are these made out of? These are actually made out of latex. And I think you can make out in the image that they're starting to crumble and wear away. They're really fragile. So does this run a risk for me for handling? What is this latex made out of? What kind of degradation products are associated with latex? The other issue is handling becomes a real risk for these. You're going to touch that material and the chances are you are going to lose some of that material. So again, this idea of handling the time of risk is really important. These were in your collection, would you wear gloves? Don't think at this point it'll be shocking when I say that I would go for nitro for this. And a lot of that is going to be protection for me as well as protection for the artifacts. The other thing in this image that I'm sure some of you are questioning because I remember that some of you work with archive materials is this piece of paper that says these Spock's were used by Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan and then a signature of Leonard Nimoy is this part of my accession? The artifact that I'm in charge of and need to handle. And if so, how would I go about handling this piece of paper? Okay. Do you change to clean dry hands at this point? Do you get a spatula and put that under it to lift up the paper? Hopefully nobody is going to touch the paper lifted up by the corners. So this idea of what is your artifact and what you need to care and worry about is really important. And one more in what is perhaps the most important slide I've ever given in a talk in my life is that this damage is actually from handling but it's important to realize that the damage is not from mishandling, okay? So this artifact was on display is from 1950s TV show and it was on display relatively long term and it needed to be removed. So the person went in, they looked at it, okay, where am I going to grab it off the support base? Do I have a space I'm going to move it to? Is that space clear? Put on my nitrile hands. I'm using two hands. I've decided how I'm going to support the body and move it and it all just crumbled away. Very sad that poor person's heart must have just sunk. But the reality is they actually didn't handle it improperly. It's just the material itself had an inherent vice and over time, unbeknownst to anyone that plastic over time went from being soft and flexible when the actor would have to put it on for the show and over time it lost all of its plasticity, became rock hard and rigid and just crumbled away at any touch. And the person did the right thing. They then collected the pieces, told the collections care unit put everything in a box and that was that. So again, damage from handling can happen. It is a time of risk but hopefully you now know hopefully things to do so that you can handle it the best way possible. Thank you all for your attention. I'm sure you've got some questions and so I think we can get to them, right? Yeah, definitely. That is a very depressing last slide. I know I was so torn about that one. But it's a good note to make. One of the burning questions that's been going on in our chat box over here is about how to handle paintings and your suggestions about how do you lift a painting without using the frame and so I think we might have worked it out but if you could kind of just give us your suggestions on how to handle a painting. Sure, basically by saying not the frame it's not lifting at the top of the frame so you're going to probably support the bottom and the side and certainly in large painting you're going to have at least two people doing or you might need even three so basically by not lifting from the frame or the hanging hardware it's just not doing the one hand lift from the top. Okay. I don't know if that's what was worked out among the participants or not. I think that was the consensus. I have another question from Jane in Illinois she's curious when you're working with lead you talked about using gloves but should you also look into using a mask as well? I think so and certainly the Peter Plate Fragment that I treated when I was in school and so I worked with a mask, with gloves a lab coat that then I put in the wash after each session and also I would work by a fume extractor. So I think personal protective equipment is very important and if you're not sure what the appropriate measures are then stop and ask or look it up and it's okay to say I'm not comfortable with this I need some time to do some research. Okay. As you might have expected we have a good number of questions about gloves and I think this is a great one from Elizabeth she's curious that her institution is not in the financial position to go with nitrile gloves and is in using cotton she's curious what are the recommendations about cleaning cotton gloves? I think if you're going to reuse the cotton and I do get that from a financial point of view also from a sustainability point of view what you want to look for when you're washing the gloves are going to be sort of the purest detergent that you can find so ones that you know free of dyes free of fragrances I know a textile conservator who does a lot of her her glove washing and things like that with the 7th generation brands and there's other brands that are going to be great but that's those are the key things that you look for basically as pure as possible and the thing with the cotton gloves and nitrile is it might be if you can afford to maybe you have a stash of the nitrile gloves that you just use when it's really vital when you're worried about your health and you pull those out then and then just dispose of it so maybe for you it's not an all the time answer but maybe it's something that you can have on hold for the time that you might need it in your collection and then another question if their institution doesn't have a washer is it safe to wash these things at home this is where I think a knowledge of your collection and its history is pretty key so if you can get a handle on what is in your collection what was it exposed to in your museum if it was collected elsewhere what was it exposed to then and I think that it becomes this time of self assessment if you are pretty sure and you feel very comfortable that pesticides were not used then okay I myself can't imagine a scenario that I honestly would be comfortable exposing myself or my family to the potential risk of this I know that's not an answer that maybe is the friendliest but I think the reality is if you don't protect your health nobody else is going to and for as much as we all love our collections and would do anything for them I don't think a health risk is something that should be on that list and that's a great point to make and we did have a question from Kathy about how much natural gloves cost and Julie pointed out she gets hers let's see from Costco two boxes for about $20 you factor in the washing the cleaning of cotton gloves you might end up even on that purchase that's a good point that is a really good point I think and yeah shop around if you can buy it and bulk grade if you know you can get it off of Amazon there's a lot more vendors for it now you don't have to go to the specialty catalogs anymore for them okay and then we actually had a couple, Joanna earlier now Kathy are asking are nitrile gloves reusable and I know Amanda pointed out that they're likely one use is that correct that is mostly correct certainly not beyond a day I think you don't want to again it's what am I handling what are the risks so if I'm handling something that I have the risk of transferring to another object then throw them out I have been known in treatment if I know I'm going to go back to the same treatment you know after lunch I might take my gloves off put it on my bench go have my lunch put them back on but keep an eye on them if they start getting worn certainly if there's a hole in them if they start changing colors then yeah throw them out but I wouldn't wear them more than a day so they're not reusable in that sense but you might be able to get a little longer wear then you know you don't have to touch an object throw it out get a new one to touch the next object if you don't think there's a risk of cross-contamination of pesticides, toxic things like that okay let's see I had another question earlier on when we were talking about metals he's curious is sulfur an issue with all metal objects? is that a concern at all? it is a concern at all it's probably the biggest concern with silver so if you've got a lot of silver in your collection sulfur has the risk of really affecting that and sulfur has other sources than these gloves it's in the environment it's in wool things like that and it tends to tarnish really fast in the presence of silver tarnish is fast in the presence of sulfur but it is something to consider with all metals actually okay and then another question about why you shouldn't use natural gloves with the powder inside and somebody pointed out that it gets everywhere exactly exactly okay let's see Devin has a question about the friction dot gloves let's see should they be replaced with nitrile gloves when you're lifting something or can you use the friction dot gloves when you have to handle something and lift it and move it my opinion and advice is to never use the friction dot gloves in any scenario because of the presence of the PVC it's just a bad plastic we know it does bad things to a lot of materials and it's not good and to be honest I think the friction and the solidness that you'll feel is equivalent to wearing the nitrile anyway so truly go back and look at your stash of gloves and really please let's not use those friction dots anymore we know better now okay let's see I have a couple more nitrile questions for you let's see what is the typical shelf life for nitrile gloves do you happen to know it's pretty specific I don't know offhand but I have worked in labs that you know you have ended your money and you buy things in bulk and then for the next few years you kind of just go back to your stockpile and keep using them I mean they're essentially a plastic but they seem to be in a relatively stable plastic and so I think if you get a good deal it's okay to stockpile a bit maybe if they're 10 years old you'd start questioning but the other thing is I think if you get the box out if they smell funny if they look different of the color shifting you'll probably have visual or other clues that maybe they're not aging that well so if you're not sure about it don't use it but I think it's okay to use ones that you know that you've had around for a while okay let's see I'm actually going to pull over our evaluation we've got about 10 more minutes and we have a lot of questions we'll try to get to them all and so this is our evaluation for this webinar if you could just take a few minutes to fill it out they really help us play in our future events and we'd love to hear what you guys think but keep your questions coming let me get to the next one let's see okay here's an interesting one Cynthia is curious about nitrile coated cloth gloves that you can get from hardware stores what do you think of those? I have seen them I haven't tried them myself but I think that that they should be okay because for those who haven't seen them basically you have the cotton on the back of your hand and then the nitrile usually is in the palm and so the thought then being that the contact wouldn't get through the material wouldn't wick to or from the glove because you've got that nitrile palm I think they're worth exploring my question would be how good is the fit so as long as you wore them and you feel comfortable and I don't feel clunky I think that it could work in certain scenarios you'll lose a lot I think of the tactile quality but I think they're worth, again if the fit is good and you're comfortable with them those could be an option okay and then we have a question of what glove you would prefer to use when you're dealing with potentially a moldy object and the question came about a moldy book and a moldy photograph would you suggest? Sure I think when it comes to mold you have to protect yourself as well and I think that becomes nitrile gloves, one-time use contact, throw them out and honestly in the case of mold you also are going to want to consider using a face mask so that you're not breathing that in or doing your work with some sort of extraction okay so mold is a serious thing it's a good question okay so we have some more specific questions about particular objects and what you would recommend we have a couple questions about photographs, would you recommend nitrile gloves for those and Kathy also points out what if you have a photograph that's flaking on the edges is that an opportunity you would rather do the clean dry hands what would you recommend for photographs? It probably depends on the medium for the photographs if you've got a paper substrate then maybe it becomes the idea of paper but if you have a silver clodium print and then hopefully you're not going to touch that image surface but the silver is going to react the same as any silver so you run the risk of exposure to sulfur, exposure to your hands that way so I think it depends on the photo itself and I think like anything the minimizing the handling itself this is a good question to I think grab somebody who deals a lot with photo archives as well as a photo conservator which isn't my specialty so I don't want to guide you guys too specifically because I think this is a case that you really want to get an expert involved in. Okay let's see we had a question earlier about using cotton gloves when using paper items and Joanna pointed out that cotton gloves are kind of falling out of favor would you recommend the nitrile for paper or clean dry hands? I think for paper it tends to be clean dry hands or you know if you have enough tactile sensitivity with the nitrile I think that I really didn't mean it when I said I think the nitrile is the safest default and you write the cotton gloves just aren't that used anymore they're not recommended too much anymore people make the argument that they're more comfortable or oh I can only get my volunteers or my researchers to use them well the answer really is if you provide them where you say this is what we're doing now this is our protocol to kind of have to listen to you so it's up to you guys to sort of guide some of these changes that may be happening or should be happening at your museum. Okay I have a question I'm going to move it away just for a second give us a break on glove questions we had someone who was curious let's see Melinda was curious do you have any recommendations for handling taxidermy? That one becomes that opens up that the idea of what are the health risks how was it taxidermy what materials were used how do I protect myself so really in that case again I'm going to go back to my tried and true of nitrile gloves and also thinking do I want to wear a lab coat or some sort of protected apron that I'm going to wash things like that because a lot of times especially in older taxidermies they're going to get treated with things like arsenic and mercury and really dangerous things so you want to protect yourself okay let me see we have a few more questions we've got about four more minutes I'm going to try to get through them another question about a specific object what would you recommend when handling film or audio reel and this was a type of glove question sure again with I think I'm going to go with nitrile again let's just put that caveat there that I'm not a photo or archivist a photo conservator archivist but I'm comfortable saying nitrile because especially a lot of these earlier formats are going to be plastics that we know are not stable and that they degrade so things like cellulose nitrate, cellulose acetate and so the sort of the handling that can come with that is dangerous and there's also material that can leach out of those that you can absorb so it becomes this issue of protecting yourself protecting the object so honestly grab a pair of nitrile I think it's fine okay we have a question too about looks like it was from Justin he says he's a frequent user of natural gloves and he notices that they tear is this common or he's curious is he using them using the wrong size or perhaps the wrong brand that's a good question they do sort of have some of them have different thicknesses of gauge and so maybe if you're running to that problem maybe try a new brand the purple ones they really do seem to be a little bit thicker and so I think they last a little longer than say the blue nitrile the other thing is to know the fit it's kind of like a glove you'd wear in the winter can you move your fingers does it go all the way down to the webbing or is there like a gap are you comfortable, can you spread out your fingers are you fighting against the glove if you're fighting against the glove it's probably too small okay we had a question about nitrile gloves using them over the long term they'll cause allergies and you mentioned that accelerant free was a good option if that might be an issue have you seen that in people who use nitrile gloves often I haven't seen it and I haven't heard it reported but I have seen somebody who had a skin reaction to nitrile and then using the accelerant free so I think if you know yourself and you know I have really sensitive skin I might just opt just from the get-go for accelerant free okay and Pat has a great question here we've talked a lot about nitrile gloves we're curious here are there conditions under which you would not use nitrile gloves which we brought up a few but what are specific circumstances where nitrile gloves are not appropriate that's such a question again moving just to reiterate the idea of if you're using a lot of metals and if you're seeing a reaction there's some studies to indicate that there can be a reaction again this idea of accelerant free same goes we just talked about the skin issues but otherwise that's sort of the best glove that we have right now for inert protection again for you and for the object so again that's really why I recommend it as just if you're not sure you don't know what glove to grab that the nitrile really is the best default that we have right now okay let's see I'm gonna do one more question guys because we're running out of time let's see we had a question from Anne who's curious if you had any recommendations for folks who might sweat a great deal when using nitrile gloves if you have any suggestions about preventing that or making that a better situation that's a good question and that is something that certainly does affect more people or some people rather than others and I've seen it and certainly for myself you know some days it seems like oh god I take it off and they're all wet and gross and you just throw them out and the idea of reusing them is so appalling while other days maybe you're better and you can actually put that glove back on I think in that case it's hard I think it's one of those you know maybe avoid putting the moisturizer on before you're gonna put the glove on avoid that in the morning so that your skin is a little drier because you can actually your skin feels softer after a long term wear of the nitrile it's almost like the moisture is built up and you know made your skin more supple I think otherwise I have heard of some people trying to put a really thin cotton glove and then the nitrile on over that as sort of an absorption layer obviously the risk for that is to fit and losing the tactile sensitivity but depending on what you're doing you'll get the answer OK well guys we have a few more questions that we weren't able to get to so I'm going to strongly encourage if you go to the Connecting to Collections online community to continue this discussion on the discussion board then if you post a question we will definitely try to get an answer for you so I'm afraid our time is up Mary thank you so much oh thank you all this is fun the webinar and all these related resources will be available shortly on the website and just what we have coming up we're working right now on scheduling a small series of collection management webinars for March so keep an eye on the website and we'll also alert you when those are available and we do have a webinar scheduled for March 27th at 2pm and we'll be covering how to display costumes so please join us for that thank you all so much for participating today have a great afternoon