Frances strikes Archives

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I was told about this same technique by a retired artist from the 
Smithsonian while at the O Scale National convention in July.  He described 
saving a private collection of wooden ship models that had gotten wet by 
taking them to a cold storage unit and freezing them.  I'd suggest 
contacting the Smithsonian.  I would think they would be sensitive to the 
archives plight and be willing to make suggestions.

David Ray

At 10:58 PM 9/9/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>If you don't have any preservationist archivists around: one trick that I 
>learned from my friend who is one is to FREEZE the material quickly.  The 
>defrosting action of the freezer will remove much of the water ice by 
>sublimation and dry out paper/books without the swelling you usually 
>see.  They do this here at the Dartmouth library for rare books that were 
>accidentally wet.  I don't think this would work for a large collection, 
>but it is a method to prevent rare and important items from having the 
>paper swell as it dries.  I would consult with a real preservationist 
>librarian/archivist to make sure I got it right.
>
>Best of luck!  That's an awful shame.
>
>Dave Bott
>___________________________________________________
>David Bott                      david.m.bott at dartmouth.edu
>
>
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