by Charlie Costain, Director, Conservation and Scientific Services
At the May 1999 meeting of the Canadian Association for Conservation of Cultural Property (CAC) in Winnipeg, the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI) circulated a draft document outlining our current research activities. Delegates were asked to review the document and propose (and rate) possible new topics or areas for future research. The top 10 ideas from that exercise are shown in Table 1. Although ongoing research commitments do not allow us to address all these issues immediately, direct feedback of this type is extremely important in orienting future research directions. We realize that this list is only a snapshot of the priorities of those people at the conference, but nonetheless it gives an interesting indication of some current concerns. In this article, I would like to comment briefly on CCI's potential to undertake research activities in these top-rated subject areas.
Given that the request had been for potential research topics, we were surprised to see this item on the list — and rated considerably higher than any other. This indicates clearly the desire for CCI to become more involved in advocating conservation and its importance to Canadians, and to take on a stronger role in promoting the concept. We agree that raising awareness of the fundamental importance of conservation is a priority, and are currently looking at possible strategies for doing so within the government, the heritage community, and the general public.
Three of the top-ranked concerns centred around mould, requesting better information on treating mould-infected collections and handling the health risks associated with mould in collections. It is possible that this topic was prominent in the minds of delegates because of Monona Rossols' presentations during the pre-conference workshop "Green Conservation: Environmental and Human Safety in Conservation"; but there is no doubt it is an important question for both the survival of collections and the health of those who work with contaminated artifacts.
A considerable amount of information on treating mouldy artifacts is already available, but the recent heightened awareness of possible long-term health problems resulting from such collections has raised new questions. CCI's Sherry Guild, with assistance from Tom Strang, has been working with Health Canada to study some of the treatment and safety issues related to a large federal collection. We are also collaborating in two projects responding to serious mould outbreaks in archival and library collections. By developing working solutions to the situations experienced in these projects we hope to expand our theoretical base, thus allowing us to identify where additional research is required and what expertise is needed to conduct it.
This type of information is necessary not only for archives and libraries, but also for many corporate collections and groups where oral history is an important part of tradition and memories. CCI has just recently begun research in this area. Joe Iraci and Stefan Michalski presented a seminar on archival preservation issues in the spring of 1999, where participants identified digitization of paper-based collections, and also data migration of electronic files, as primary concerns when dealing with their collections. Joe Iraci has also been looking at some stability issues related to new media, and over the next year will be pursuing the issue of standards for transfer.
The conservator who proposed this topic was seeking information on coatings for bright metals and their successful application. This is an ongoing problem for many museums, as achieving a uniform impermeable barrier can be very difficult. Some of this information is presently covered in existing CCI Notes; however, if there is sufficient demand, a new publication on this topic could be produced in the future.
The amount of plastics in museum collections is a growing concern for conservators, and Scott Williams at CCI has been working on the problem for some time. Areas of current study include identifying which plastics are present in a given artifact or collection; determining their stability, and their mechanisms and rates of deterioration; and identifying practical methods for slowing down these processes of decay. In the future, this information may be available on the CCI Web site, or as a professional development seminar on plastics. To date, we have not specifically addressed the cleaning of plastics in collections.
Conservation scientists have only recently started working with widely recognized standards organizations to establish guidelines that have particular relevance to the preservation field. The advantage of having this kind of published standard is that it has immediate credibility with people working outside our profession, and its influence can extend well beyond our normal sphere. A number of standards are currently under development, or have recently been published.
Stefan Michalski has been instrumental in preparing a new chapter "Museums, Archives, and Libraries" for the 1999 ASHRAE Applications Handbook. This publication is the 'bible' for engineers working in North America, and should simplify the task of convincing engineers and architects of the specific issues that must be addressed when designing functional buildings for heritage collections. Stefan is also involved with the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) as part of a committee that is currently developing an international standard for museum lighting.
In other work at CCI, Paul Bégin, Elzbieta Kaminska, Joe Iraci, and David Grattan have been working with heritage professionals and industry scientists to develop a Canadian standard for permanent paper. Their work has resulted in the recent proposal of a new Canadian standard, which differs from the international standard in that it allows the presence of lignin in the paper. In addition, this group is participating in an international research program aimed at developing a new American Society for Testing of Materials (ASTM) standard for measuring the aging of paper, which is a central technique for many long-term stability studies.
In recent years we have been putting a considerable amount of effort into the development of emergency response and disaster recovery plans for heritage institutions, as have others across the country. As part of CCI's outreach programming, David Tremain and Deborah Stewart present a seminar on this topic. They have been developing a template that museums can use to design their own emergency response and disaster recovery plans. Unfortunately, the development and successful implementation of such plans is fairly complex, and a 'fill in the blanks' approach is too simplistic to be really useful. Work is continuing in this area, however, with the goal of finding an approach that is both simple and effective for most institutions.
As new technologies develop, new materials and products will be introduced into collections. We hope that the permanent paper initiative will ultimately result in the widespread use of a more stable substrate, but that still leaves the issue of the stability of the ink, and how well the ink is adhered to the paper. We know that the manufacturers of coloured ink-jet inks are achieving improved colour stability, but at the moment we do not know how stable the inks are, or how great a difference there is between products. Keeping abreast of the stability of these materials will be an ongoing challenge. CCI's forthcoming Technical Bulletin The Stability of Photocopied and Laser- printed Documents and Images by David Grattan should assist conservators in assessing the stability of some documents.
This has been a major issue with natural history collections for many years, and the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) has coordinated some research in this area. While a few of the more concrete aspects (for example, questions dealing with determining alcohol concentration or leakage rates from containers) have been addressed by various parties, many issues remain. At CCI, we do not currently have any projects in this area.
In conclusion, the ideas generated by the delegates at the CAC conference were extremely useful, and we greatly appreciate their input. Although it will not be possible to resolve all the conservation issues identified, this exercise has pointed out some key areas that need examining. Should you feel that there are other areas that also need attention, please send your ideas directly to me.
Charlie Costain, Director Conservation and Scientific Services Canadian Conservation Institute 1030 Innes Road Ottawa ON K1A 0M5 Canada tel: (613) 998-3721 fax: (613) 998-4721 charlie_costain@pch.gc.ca
