Although acid-free paper has become more common, a large body of acidic paper still exists in books made after the 1850s because of its cheaper and simpler production methods.
Barrow conducted research into paper decay and found that no more than three percent of the books published between 1900 and 1949 would survive more than fifty years.
Barrow conducted research into paper decay and found that no more than three percent of the books published between 1900 and 1949 would survive more than fifty years.
In response to this, a Standing Committee on the Preservation of Research Library Materials was formed by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in 1960. Barrow also invented an aqueous process to neutralize acid in paper while depositing an alkaline buffer that would retard the rate of decay.
Regardless, in the 1980s, a pilot plant for mass deacidification using this process was constructed by NASA and was tested on books provided by the Library of Congress.
However, it was discovered in 1986 that the DEZ had not been removed in one of the deacidification runs and was pooled in the bottom of the chamber, and probably remained within some of the plumbing.
It was estimated that deacidification costs, excluding transportation and handling, during the early 1990s was $5–10 per volume.
In the end, Akzo decided the process was not a viable commercial proposition, and shut down their research at the end of 1994. == Adoption and costs == While deacidification has been adopted by major research libraries such as the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library, it is not clear that many archives, particularly those in the United States, have followed suit.
During 1995-1997, the Library of Congress received $2 million in appropriations to deacidify 72,000 books using the Bookkeeper commercial method and evaluate alternative methods.
It is available in Europe through Nitrochemie Wimmis (Wimmis, Switzerland) under the name of Papersave Swiss and the Zentrum für Bucherhaltung (Leipzig, Germany). The Wei T'o process uses methoxy magnesium methyl carbonate, or isopropoxy magnesium isopropyl carbonate, and new products are coming out in 2008.
All text is taken from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License .
Page generated on 2021-08-05