is for Books in Boxes in the A to Z of Tools for Legacy
In order to preserve important items you will want to keep heat, light, and humidity as constant as you can. Boxes are ideal for keeping dust and light off of items you want to preserve. As we covered in the first post in this series, acid free and lignin-free, archival boxes are ideal for storage. High acid, poor quality boxes can damage items, but so can dust, grime, and light. It is advisable to wrap items in archival tissue paper and store in stable if not perfect environment.
Libraries and museums make have skilled staff who can craft cases for items. There are craftspersons, often book binders, who can create a safe storage case for books and items you want to preserve and store.
Here you can see the crafts mark stamped on the inner flap of an archival box made in Tucson to store a set of early 19th Century volumes of a chemistry text.
Family bibles and treasured volumes can be stored in highly customized boxes. In the following image you can see the storage box with individual flaps that protect all sides of the volumes.
Boxes can be made to look like the books they are to store.
In particularly unregulated or unstable environments, the use of glass front book cases can provide another level of buffer between unstable environments and items to be preserved.
Antique stores or estate sales are great places to find display cases and shelving. Local paper and book crafting groups, such as PaperWorks, a group of paper artisans in the Tucson area, can be a great resource for learning about local resources. Many regions have such interest groups.
Legacy Tools
April 2016 A to Z Challenge
Letter B Boxes for Storage Tools for Legacy projects
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