Cleaning Paper Views
Dry removal of sticky deposits and surface accretions can be considered a kind of surface cleaning. Sticky tape adhesives damage paper and can create the physical hazard of bonding papers to adjacent papers and enclosures. Some old tapes fall away as they age and leave thick, hardened adhesive residues. These residues, although unsightly, are not an immediate hazard, and they can be addressed only by a professional conservator. In fact, tape removal itself is difficult and should be referred to a professional conservator. Sometimes, however, tape adhesive absorbs underlying text or image and the tapes cannot be removed at all. Insect excretions and rust deposits, such as those left by rusted paper clips, are not only disfiguring but also the source of ongoing damage to the paper. It is a good idea to remove these deposits when feasible.
Moldy materials are obvious candidates for surface cleaning, which may be all that is possible or necessary. Mold activity should first be stabilized by providing the affected materials with a prolonged environment of low relative humidity, generally below 50 percent, so that the mold goes dormant. Mold removal is a delicate procedure and requires careful work hygiene to avoid spreading contamination as much as possible. Mold can also affect the health of personnel, so protective equipment such as respirators, gloves, and fume hoods should be used when removing it. Therefore this work is probably best left to a professional conservator, or in the case of large quantities of moldy office or archival papers or nonrare books, brought to a commercial enterprise that offers disaster-recovery services.
Several erasing compounds on the market are primarily intended for use by graphic designers and architects. They come in containers of granules to be sprinkled on soiled drawings, or in cloth bags that leak small amounts of granules as they are rubbed across the surface of the paper. These granules are potentially damaging because they are abrasive and chemically unstable. In the past conservators recommended that practitioners simply clean the paper thoroughly of these granules after using them, but microscopic examination of cleaned test papers has shown that considerable residue of the granules remains embedded in the fiber structure of the paper afterward. Conservators prefer to use granules produced by grinding up vinyl block erasers, available commercially from conservation suppliers. This cleaning agent is less abrasive and breaks down less during use, so it has less of a tendency to leave residues behind.
The erasers used to make these compounds are also sold as blocks, such as the noncolored Eberhard-Faber Magic Rub Eraser and the Staedtler Mars Plastic Eraser. The blocks are sometimes useful for surface cleaning. More commonly used by conservators nowadays, however, are vulcanized rubber dry-cleaning sponges, which were intended originally for soot removal following a fire. The sort recommended for cleaning papers is not the pld"chemical spongesrd" because conservators avoid sponges that contain solvents or cleaning agents. The preferred sponges do not leave damaging residues on paper and they are not abrasive. They degrade upon exposure to light and with age, so they should be stored in an air-tight container in the dark.
Cleaning Paper Images
