Volume 14, Number 4
Jul 1990

News

NEDCC Has New Address, Same Phone

The Northeast Document Conservation Center will move to new quarters at the end of July: 100 Brickstone Square, Andover, MA 01810. Their phone remains the same: 508/ 470-1010. Fax: 508/475-6021.

The "Ageless" Project At CCI

David Grattan, at the Canadian Conservation Institute, has been investigating the Japanese oxygen absorber "Ageless," but has not reported any results until recently because of problem with analysis and uptake measurement. Those problems have now been overcome, and he has sent out a project status report, dated March 1990, to all who wrote to him requesting information. It will be some time before he has enough data to publish a paper, but he says he does have enough information to show that the "Ageless" method is capable of extending the lifetime of historic organic materials.

The reason he refers to it as the "Ageless" method must be that the objects being protected have to be isolated somehow from the oxygen in the surrounding air. He used flexible oxygen-barrier envelopes made of five kinds of barrier films. Into each envelope he put an "Ageless" sachet, silica gel, an "Ageless Eye" indicating capsule, and a sampling serum cap vial. Oxygen levels almost too low to measure were achieved. He also measured oxygen uptake of several rubber and plastic objects, and concluded that it would be necessary to use a second outer bag to keep the oxygen levels so low that the object could not compete with the "Ageless" successfully for the oxygen that would leak in over a period of years in storage.

He may be willing to send this five-page report to people who request it, especially if they plan to use "Ageless," but it is not yet clear what relevance it has for book and paper conservation.

Other information on "Ageless" can be found an p. 148 of the 1988 volume and on p. 5 of this volume of the Abbey Newsletter.

Accomplishments Of NLM Permanent Paper Task Force

Charles R. Kalina, Special Projects Officer at the National Library of Medicine, sent in a report of the Task Force's activities in June, for the readers of this Newsletter:

The highest priority [of the Permanent Paper Task Force], pursued by individual members within their spheres of influence as well as in the name of the task force as a whole, has of course continued to be encouraging publishers to use permanent, acid-free paper with a focus on biomedical publications, and, of increasing importance, to have them identify when a publication is printed on acid-free paper by including an appropriate notice....

Following a mass mailing campaign aimed at domestic and major international publishers in the summer of 1989, an NLM survey shows that a third (337.) of the non-third-world periodicals that NLM indexes for the Index Medicus and MEDLINE are now printed on acid-free paper, and a little more than a quarter (26/.) carry an identification of permanent paper use. Two years ago, only one percent of Index Medicus journals were known to contain notices indicating that they were printed on acid-free paper, &id an additional 11 percent was printed on acid-free paper but not yet identified as such. Titles that are printed on acid-free paper and that also carry a notice to that effect are clearly marked in the NLM List of Journals Indexed in Index Medicus and the List of Serials Indexed for Online Users, beginning with their 1990 issue. A permanent paper notice is also incorporated in SERLINE, NLM's online file of serials, shortly after such information about a journal is received. A copy of the announcement of the identification of acid-free titles as it appears in the Index Medicus is enclosed [below].

Permanent Paper Notice

Beginning with the 1990 issue of the LJI, entries for indexed journals known to be printed on acid-free paper and to carry a notice to that effect contain the designation "ACID-FREE." The ACID-FREE notice appears following the ISSN, or if there is m ISSN, after the place of publication.

To report other IM journals printed on acid-free paper or to obtain information about permanent paper and how to indicate its use, contact: Special Projects Officer, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894.