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CULTURAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM University of Barcelona
CULTURAL PRODUCTION Techniques of preservation of documentary heritage
All the material which enters the archive goes through a protocol of preventive preservation,
starting with the installations of the archive, stored in controlled temperature and humidity.
Documents are objects and must be treated in the preservation aspect,
and require stable conditions of preservation, humidity, temperature, etc., without great fluctuations.
The documentation depositories are the most important place of the archive
and where documentation has to remain longer,
and their main function is to guarantee the preservation conditions of documentation.
There is a special depository for more delicate materials such as acetates, nitrates, colors...
Material is protected with neutral pH preservation covers,
and placed inside boxes adapted to the different photographic formats, be it positives, negatives...
There is always a physical treatment, to clean the physical elements out of which the most dangerous is dust.
Dust is usually a breeding ground of various potential pathologies which should be avoided.
The depository in which the documentation will be stored depends basically on the material.
We have a depository with stricter temperature and humidity conditions than the others,
so it is reserved for movie materials, audiovisual...
The big process of preservation is also replacing the originals for their digitalizations,
so digitalization is, basically, a process for the preservation of the original work.
Digitalization is a good system of preventive preservation.
Digitalization is a very interesting way of moving the originals away from the daily manipulation.
Digital technology allows a bigger diffusion through Internet without the need of going to the archive.
There are some formats which do not have any possible alternative other than digitalization,
for instance, video.
In the Photographic Archive of Barcelona, we started digitalizing and selling images via Internet in 2004.
There was an intense growth, but it is still insufficient,
out of the more than 2 million pictures we have in storage, less than a 3% are digitalized.
Regarding the problems of digitalization, it has several disadvantages:
first, digitalization is expensive. A budget allocation is required to do the digitalization.
On the other hand, digitalization requires previous knowledge
that goes far beyond the archival science knowledge, requires software and hardware knowledge.
And finally, digitalization sometimes is done before the essential previous work.
The digital world is in constant evolution, so formats and software change constantly,
moreover, hard drives have a proved life of only about 3, 5 or 6 years.
In the past, you could leave a scroll in an attic, and unless there was a water leak,
you could find that scroll 200 years after inside a box.
This will not happen with this documents. We should keep them or we will lose them.