What Does It Mean to Preserve Documents and Books?

by TATIANA POPOVA

The YIVO Preservation Department works to safeguard all the materials in YIVO's collections from deteriorating over time. Preservation is a set of activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record, book, or object while making as few changes as possible. Preservation activities vary widely and may include monitoring the condition of items, maintaining the temperature and humidity in collection storage areas. Documents, posters, photos, community records, books, pamphlets, and newspapers are all materials that need to be preserved and cannot be digitized without first being preserved. Preservation ensures that the materials are not crumbled, look clean and professional, and provide the maximum amount of available information, which ensures that digitization will be successful.

Documents need to be carefully reviewed page by page while wearing gloves to protect them. When preserving a paper document or a book, for example, the process might include evaluating its condition, cleaning the cover and inner pages, stabilizing the document or poster (which may involve removing harmful fasteners, flattening the book and pages, and cleaning the pages to reduce the possibility of abrasions and further deterioration), mending any rips and tears, re-housing (creating custom housing such as acid-free wrapper mats, phase boxes for books, etc.), and overall protecting and caring for the materials. Once an item is cleaned, repaired, and stable, they can be delivered to the digitization lab.

YIVO has many important collections, such as the Strashun Library Collection, Vilna Collection, and Bund Collections, that have specific, unique preservation needs. Some of these materials have been torn or crumpled. Others have been smuggled, buried, and hidden during and after the Holocaust. Many of the documents have survived the WWII. Since they were hidden and buried under exceptional circumstances during wartime, they still require a lot of conservation work even now. Pages of many documents are torn and crumpled and cannot be handled without proper care.

The most valuable books from the Vilna and Strashun Library Collections are held in the YIVO Rare Book Room and have been digitized. Additionally, several thousand Yiddish and Hebrew books have been carefully reviewed, preserved, conserved, re-housed, and digitized in the course of the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections project.

Many of the materials at YIVO require special handling. Oversized posters, old newspapers and books, and materials that survived World War II in particular tend to need extra attention and time.

The Preservation Department is responsible for preserving these precious documents and books for the future generations. Time works against us. The longer an item sits without being preserved, the more it can decay and crumble. This is why we work diligently to preserve as much of these treasures as possible. We instruct all staff handling materials about the best preservation practices. Together, we make these important materials accessible to the public, researchers, and scholars.

Tatiana Popova is the Head of Conservation for the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections.