Roofing and pest control

Mary Baughman's note on Pest Control reminded me of an interesting
discussion I had at AIC this year arising from the use of CRI's
MicroChamber active archival storage material for photographic glass
plate protection.

The custodians of a local historical society archive had used
MicroChamber active boxboard to line existing storage housings and
were telling me how there had been a noticeable reduction in carton
smells each time the containers were opened to retrieve or insert
photographic glass plates...a result of the pollutants being
absorbed and neutralised by MicroChamber's combination of molecular
sieves and alkaline buffers.

What interested the custodians more however and certainly came as a
surprising bit of news to me was that this collection had also rid
itself of another problem .. insects and pests, which it appears had
previously been attributed to "naff" smells coming from the
previously unprotected enclosures.

Mark Vine

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 9:14
                   Distributed: Friday, July 28, 1995
                        Message Id: cdl-9-14-007
                                  ***