A Family History Mission: Learning About Document Preservation

The Endless Escalator from WalkingArizona

No. 50

Note: You can do a Google search for "A Family History Mission James Tanner" to see all the previous posts in this ongoing series. You can also search for "James Tanner genealogy" and find them or click back through all the posts.

An important part of our work as volunteer/Senior Missionaries at the Maryland State Archives is preparing the documents for digitization. When we digitize books, we face a number of challenges, but the books are essentially ready to be digitized even though some of them are falling apart from age and use. The loose papers, however, were mostly originally stored in folded bundles. This makes for relatively slow and very labor intensive preparation (prep) work on the part of all the volunteers.

We currently have four couples of "official" FamilySearch Senior Missionary Volunteers. But we also have approximately forty local, part-time, volunteers from the surrounding communities. Because the entire project has been going on for several years, we are nearing the end of the supply of books from the state and counties. But we still have millions upon millions of pieces of paper consisting of the original documents submitted to the Maryland courts to process and digitize. All of our cameras have now been converted to have the ability to do "flat work," i.e. digitizing these original documents.

One of the major challenges to this digitization process is the deterioration of the documents simply due to age and storage conditions. Many of the documents are brittle with age and use. Most have never been touched since they were originally submitted to the courts and stored. Unfolding these documents is part of the challenge.

The first thing that I have now seen first-hand is the need to preserve all historical documents in the best way possible. These documents are in all stages of preservation but there are some methods of preservation or lack of preservation that are more important than others. Here are some of my thoughts, not in any special order.

In no particular order, the main causes of document loss are:

• Use of the document over time
• Chemical changes in the composition of the document substrate
• Water damage
• Fire

I would suggest storing historical documents as flat as possible. Folding the documents creates almost permanent creases and stress along folds.  Most of the damage to the documents occurs along the edges of the folded documents, especially if the folds are exposed to sunlight or water. Here is an example of a box of records that have already been digitized and are now stored flat in file folders.

The most damaged documents are those that have been exposed to fire, water or high humidity. Many of the documents we see show signs of mold damage and some have active mold infestations and have to be curated to kill the mold. Here is an example of a slightly damaged document. You can see the discoloration on the side of the document when folded, that was most subject to damage from light. You can also see the discoloration along the edges of the paper where they were subject to light. 

This process of deterioration has been studied and the process analyzed. Here is one example of an analysis done by a group of researchers at the University of Rome in Italy. 

Mosca Conte, A. and Pulci, O. and Knapik, A. and Bagniuk, J. and Del Sole, R. and Lojewska, J. and Missori, M., Role of Cellulose Oxidation in the Yellowing of Ancient Paper, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 108, Issue 15, American Physical Society. https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.158301

The essence of the findings of this study is that paper oxidizes when exposed to air and light. As is apparent in the document above, the portion of the paper that was most exposed is the most damaged. Over time, the paper will simply disintegrate.

Water is the most destructive of all. Here is an example of a document that was written with water-soluble ink.

It is likely that some of these entries can no longer be read. Physical damage from long use is also a problem. This is one immediate benefit of digitization. The documents are no longer physically subject to as much use. Here are some books that show extensive evidence of physical use and deterioration.

I am writing a series of posts on Genealogy's Star about Preservation. This will likely be a very long series.