Documents & Vital Records

Preventing Damage to Paper, Books and Microfilm

One of the most daunting tasks faced by record managers is recovering wet documents. Fire suppression, floods, rain, sprinkler pipe breaks and other disasters can leave paper records, microfilm and microfiche soaked with water. While you might think otherwise, 100 percent recovery is possible if you respond quickly. The basic strategy is to keep photographic media from drying and blocking, and to freeze paper documents to prevent further damage (which is the only way to save gloss finished paper). Here are the steps you should follow for recovery:

1. Seal the film. Photographic media (microfilm, microfiche and x-ray film) should be your first priority. Prepare a list so the contents can be tracked. Then, box and seal to prevent drying, refrigerating (at 35¼ - 40¼ F) if possible.

2. Freeze the paper. Puckering, swelling, ink smearing and blocking occurs as long as paper is wet. Inventory these documents, pack in boxes with plastic liners, palletize, and freeze. Once frozen, the damage ceases and the loss is in stasis until restoration can be accomplished.

For critical documents and special collections, blast freezing is best but seldom available in the time frame required. The freezing process is usually accomplished with refrigerated trucks that will transport the documents to the closest freeze dry facility for restoration (see step five below).

If documents are covered with silt (as a result of flooding), they are rinsed and cleaned on site before freezing. Remember that once frozen, documents become blocks of ice; if the unit you wish to consider is less than a box, separate the documents into modules with plastic or wax paper before freezing.

3. Separate vellum and leather bound documents. Vellum and leather are derived from animal skin and should be carefully separated from the rest of the documents. Drying should be done slowly and in a controlled fashion. Unlike other materials, they should not be heated during the freeze dry process.

4. Reprocess the microforms. As implied above, the emulsion layer on film will stick to contiguous substrate if it is allowed to dry, resulting in tearing and loss of data if you subsequently attempt to separate the film. Restoration involves machine reprocessing of wet microfilm and manual processing of fiche and other photographic film. Film may also be frozen for indefinite storage without further damage. For restoration, it must then be thawed and wet processed.

5. Freeze dry frozen paper documents. The next trick is to dry the paper without exposing the documents to the liquid phase. This can be accomplished by forcing sublimation (solid-state to vapor-state drying) in a freeze dry chamber with sufficient vacuum.