I would suggest you post this to the Conservation Online list which is made
up of conservators who might be familiar with this.   Looking at the costs
of the machines for this process, I have difficulty balancing this with the
cost of a refrigerator truck where you could store wet boxes of records and
prevent mold growth by temperature.
I noticed the advocates of the vacuum procress also urge you to save office
space
by vacuum storing all your papers and files.    Wouldn't it be cheaper to
either have
an efficient records management program, a microfilming or scanning
operation, than
simply "canning" your records?

Dean DeBolt
University Librarian
Special Collections/West Florida Archives
John C. Pace Library
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL  32514-5750
850-474-2213
850-474-3338 (fax)


-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Parapadakis, George
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 3:37 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Vacuum packed records - Sensible?

Hello all,

Our thoughts are first and foremost with the families affected by
Katrina. We feel pretty useless watching the devastation from afar
(Europe), but I'm happy to read on the list stories of people whose
property and lives has been spared.

I would like to ask your opinion: Back in 1988-99, I saw a small article
advertising an innovative technique of vacuum-packing records, to reduce
storage space requirements and to preserve the paper records from
environmental disasters, such as floods, insects, etc.

I have recently also seen another article where vacuum-packing has been
used to preserve records (books in this case) that have already been
damaged by water, by preventing the development of mould while the books
are restored.

http://www.conservation-by-design.co.uk/flood.html

Does anyone know if vacuum-packing techniques are used by any of the
record storage facilities, and would you consider it to be generally a
good idea for long-term preservation?

Best Regards

George Parapadakis
Solutions Architect

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
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List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance