Maitland A&H Project Blog 4

    When working at any job, there tends to be a part of the job where experience is the only way to learn. While working at the archive, Murphy's law has kicked and made the task more difficult than it should have been. When working, I realized that weather and archives tend not to work together. Trying to preserve items and controlling the temperature and humidity is essential. Changing one element could ruin objects quickly. While there, I had to work in a thunderstorm and worry about getting the things wet and transporting them from one building to another. I also had to work with power outages caused by the storm, which caused technical failures.

    While the weather is a mundane part of life, weather means everything to preserve objects for archival work. Sun damage is one of the most common problems that can damage a thing. Most archival rooms are windowless. Having any sun hit the object could fade the color or dry it out and make it brittle or stiff. The sun is the most common element; water would be the second most damaging element but could be the most catastrophic. Currently, I am working with many old photos and papers over 100 years old. Any moister will damage the documents and ruin them, and they have yet to be scanned and saved digitally. Even human oils could destroy the object on certain items, and gloves are necessary. Moisture in the air making paper clips rusty can also damage the papers. To make sure documents are not ruined, plastic paper clips are being used and are replacing the metal ones. Another protection implemented to help protect the item's safety is some papers and photos are covered by a plastic sleeve. While this protection is excellent, it could be expensive to implement as the sleaves could get costly, and the size needed to store them takes up more room.

    On my last visit to the museum, I was quickly thrown into a situation dealing with the weather. It started to sprinkle when trying to get the box I needed; knowing that the item could not get wet, we quickly had to dash to the scanner building. When trying to work and scan papers, the software was not working correctly and was either slow or did not want to respond. Only a few scans were able to be completed before disaster struck and all power went out. Once the power came back on, I could not use the computer for the rest of the day, and I could only fill out the forms. While I can not control what computer I use for scanning, if I had a choice, I would have it more up-to-date to make the process smoother and faster.

    This week was hectic. I still was able to progress a little; I could fill out two folders worth of documents. Next time I work, I will have only to scan the documents, which should take me just as much time as filling out forms. From experience, I learned that weather plays a vital role in how archivists work.

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