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The Storage and Security of Rare Books
Francine Laliberté,
Chief, Trade Collections Section,
Library of Parliament
Special collections indicate the need for enhanced storage and security. While rare books can take many forms, can vary in cost, and be centuries or weeks old, all, by reason of their rarity, require a greater level of storage and security than regular collections. Once a library has defined its rare book collection and provided measures for safe handling, it must consider effective means of protecting rare books while they are in storage.
This article examines the requirements for rare book storage. Storage facilities vary from library to library, and depend on the space and budget available. However, if a library owns rare books, it has the custodial responsibility of protecting this collection in the best possible manner. The following recommendations are realistic and practical methods for preserving your collections. In today's budget-conscious society, cost-effective preservation strategies are more palatable to library management, and, therefore, more likely to be approved and implemented.
Storage
The issues surrounding rare book storage include the organization of a rare book room (or vault), the environment of this space, and the housings used to contain the shelved books. Adequate space, a good floor plan, temperature and relative humidity controls, proper lighting, and a concern for acid-free materials are some of the factors that must be addressed.
The location of a rare book room is an important consideration. Outside walls should be avoided, as they are subject to excessive fluctuations in temperature and relative humidity. Similarly, the rare book room should not contain radiators, heating ducts, or water pipes, and should be free of direct sunlight, because all have potentially damaging effects on the collection. Proper shelving equipment must be sturdy enough to take the weight of the books, and preferably be made of metal with a baked enamel finish. Wooden shelves can splinter, and if not properly aged or treated, may exude unwanted oils, resins and gases. The shelving units should be raised from 15 to 20 centimetres off the ground, to afford some protection from water pooling on the floor in the event of a flood, or even during basic floor washing. The area below the bottom shelf is best left open so that dust and debris can be removed during regular housekeeping. To increase their sturdiness, standing units should be bolted together, as well as to the floor. A certain number of deep shelves should be provided for folios and extra-folios. This can sometimes be a separate unit, with pull-out drawers for easier consultation. Proper bookends are essential. The debate over hanging bookends and standing bookends is ongoing. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Libraries must, therefore, decide according to their needs, but must have enough bookends of the correct size to be used throughout the collection.
A good floor plan is a great advantage, since it tells you whatever you need to know about the rare book storage area. Most of all, it expedites retrievals. The floor plan also marks the location of such controls and equipment as, electrical outlets, air conditioners, sprinklers and monitoring equipment, and any potentially damaging water and steam pipes, drains, or turn-off valves that may be in the room.
The rare book room should also be examined for points of access. The routes should be carefully monitored, and the doors and windows secured. An alarm system connected to the main security office of the institution should also be installed on all of the doors and windows. The room should be kept locked and have a separate key from other areas of the library. Key distribution should be carefully controlled and limited to authorized staff. Some institutions monitor access by using card-key or passcode readers.
An appropriate environmental setting is most effective for the long term preservation of your rare book collection. A suitable environment lessens the risks of damage, reduces the day to day wear and tear, and slows down the natural deterioration processes. There are three major components to the storage environment: relative humidity, temperature, and lighting.
Relative humidity (RH) is one of the most important elements of the storage environment. Its two elements are: an appropriate humidity level, and relatively stable conditions. A relative humidity of 50 percent or more was, until recently, the recommended level for libraries and rare book collections. Now, much drier conditions are considered appropriate. However, various materials demand a moderate RH level. Vellum and parchment are extremely vulnerable to dry conditions, with desiccation causing the vellum to shrink excessively, ultimately cracking over the rigid frame of the book boards. Another important fact is that vellum and parchment are easily damaged by rapid and excessive changes in humidity. Leather is similarly subject to cracking and deterioration below 30 percent RH. Certain glues are also highly susceptible to low RH conditions, again causing the material to dry out and later to disintegrate. Because of these problems, 30 percent is recommended as the minimum RH level for the storage of rare books. At the other end of the scale, RH levels higher than 65 percent promote mould growth in your collection. Because of this potential for mould, an RH of 60 percent is recommended as the upper limit for the storage or rare books.
A stable RH is the second most important factor. An ideal RH level is pointless if it cannot be maintained. In a Canadian environment, with long dry winters exacerbated by the need for the extensive use of central heating, a drier climate is easier to maintain for the better part of the year. It is preferable to choose a relative humidity level that is easier and less costly to maintain than to attempt to achieve a higher, and controversial, ideal setting. Therefore, a relative humidity level of between 30 and 40 percent is recommended for the storage of rare book collections in Canada. At the same time, the level must be kept relatively stable. A day-to-day variation of +2 percent RH is the desired norm for rare book storage areas, with a monthly variation of +5 percent.
Like relative humidity, the temperature for the storage of rare books requires both a desired setting and general stability. Complicating the problem, temperature is directly linked to relative humidity. Heat reduces the RH level. Cooling raises it. Temperature also has an effect on the longevity of modern paper. For every 10 degrees Celsius increase in temperature, its life is halved. Therefore, as low a temperature as possible is recommended.
However, the rare book storage rooms must also be usable by library staff. Therefore, very low temperatures are not. In light of this, the recommended temperature level for rare book storage areas is approximately 18 degrees Celsius. A cooler temperature is recommended if practical, but only feasible if access is limited to short periods. Some libraries employ cold storage as a means of preserving rare books. If this is being contemplated at your institution, remember that items being removed from cold storage require time to acclimatize to regular room temperature. This can take hours, depending on the difference in temperature. Cold storage is not a practical solution for heavily consulted items.
When establishing a temperature, stability is again desired, with a day to day variation of only +1.5 degrees Celsius recommended, and with an overall variation of +5 degrees. Relative humidity should take precedence over temperature. The temperature should be raised or lowered gradually to keep the RH within the desired setting.
Light causes two problems for books. Not only does it yellow paper, but it also bleaches both the binding materials and papers inside the book. This is readily apparent with newspapers, which yellow after a few days of exposure to strong sunlight. The text blocks of books are protected by the covers, but the bleaching effect of light fades the bindings, whether they are paper, cloth, buckram or leather. Light also increases the physical degradation of paper and binding materials, prompting embrittlement and cracking. The two negative aspects to light are: the level of intensity (measured in lux), and the number of ultraviolet rays (UV) (micro watts per lumen). The light intensity prompts the bleaching effects; the ultraviolet light causes the yellowing; and both cause the physical breakdown of the paper and binding materials. Therefore, both must be eliminated, or, at least, reduced as much as possible. These effects occur with both natural and artificial light. High levels of artificial light are just as damaging as sunlight. The detrimental effects of both are cumulative and nonreversible.
The most obvious means of eliminating or reducing light damage is simply to keep the lights low. Therefore, the lighting for your rare book room should be separately controlled and turned off whenever the room is not in use. To this end, some libraries use a timer switch to ensure that the lights are not left on. If you have a large rare book storage room, several light switches for the lights are also recommended, so that only those lights needed to illuminate the area of the stacks being searched are used. This ensures that the remainder of the collection is not subjected to unnecessary light damage. Rare book rooms should not be constructed with windows, either directly to the outside where they would be subject to damaging sunlight, or even to an interior space. Any windows that exist should be covered with heavy curtains or blinds which should be kept closed.
While the environment of the rare book room is extremely important for the longevity of the collection, another environment, that of the microclimate, can exist when housings are properly employed. A housing is any special enclosure used to give individual protection to extremely valuable or fragile collection items. A good housing structure for a book, print, manuscript, or photograph is relatively inexpensive, provides adequate space, and offers protection from the room environment. It serves to protect these items from dust and abrasion, and to ensure the integrity of items that are in pieces. These enclosures are also useful to protect damaged items awaiting repair. Housing provides a safe and stable microclimate for the enclosed item. At a minimum, broken and weak bindings are to be tied, using unbleached cotton or liner tape. The tape should be wrapped around the four edges of the book without exerting any pressure, and the knot or bow positioned across the fore-edge of the book where it will not dent the cover, or interfere with shelving practices. Weak volumes can also be wrapped in acid-free tissue, mylar book jackets, or placed in phase boxes.
The phase box was developed by the Library of Congress around 1971 to house their deteriorated and damaged materials. Simple and effective, it is made from two archival quality boards laminated together. Conceived as a temporary housing, it was designed to enclose damaged books and all loose parts compactly, until they underwent proper conservation treatment. It has been of great help to many institutions without the funds to repair their books. Lost pages, abraded leather, and loose covers are problems that the phase box cannot cure but can prevent from worsening. The phase box and the tuxedo case for smaller books and pamphlets, can be produced in 20 to 30 minutes with a minimum of equipment, or purchased from a commercial supplier. Phase boxes are generally for larger and heavier volumes, and require a board thickness that will ensure adequate protection for fragile books. Tuxedo cases, named for the formal appearance of their tie-like front flaps, use thinner boards, which while not as stiff as the boards of phase boxes, offer adequate protection for the smaller books and pamphlets for which they were designed. Solander or drop-spine boxes afford the greatest protection for bound volumes, both during handling and in the event of a disaster, and are readily available on the market
Rare material is often old and fragile and may need further protection, especially if an item is brittle and in need of repair. Filing cabinets may be used to house small items, such as correspondence, legal documents, pamphlets, small booklets, and other such ephemera.
Records are damaged by acid from any source. Unless they are properly protected, this damaging acid will migrate from one document to another. Therefore, every item should be protected by a folder, envelope, box or interleaving mat board. These protective enclosures should be either acid-free or buffered storage materials, with a minimum PH of 8.5 alkaline reserve. While it is incorrect to assume all documents to be inherently acidic, it makes good preservation sense to protect rare collections from migrating pollutants. Therefore, libraries should use acid free enclosures on all materials, to keep this migration in check, protecting those that are not acidic, and containing the acids for those that are. When an institution does not have a rare book room, or if it cannot be locked and properly monitored, locking filing cabinets can serve as secure housing for valuable items.
Security
Security concerns for rare books are greater than for regular collections. Questions of access, identification, and disaster planning are important elements of rare book security. The role of the library as information provider must be married with these security concerns. A dichotomy, but the library must meet the needs of its public, as well as the security needs of rare collections. The more pro-active a library can be in this area, the greater the success in maintaining the physical integrity of the rare book collection.
Surveillance, both of internal staff and external patrons, is a reality when caring for rare books. Internally, libraries must be able to trust their own staff, and access to the collection should be limited to authorized personnel only. All references, both for staff and external users, must be checked carefully, and this includes student help. Maintenance personnel should never be left unsupervised in the rare book room. External patrons must receive the librarian's authorization to use the collection. Anyone consulting special collections must provide adequate proof of purpose and personal identification. All briefcases and bags must be checked at the point of entry, preferably outside the reading room. It is even better to have all briefcases, bags and heavy coats checked into lockers.
The issue of control is extremely important. It is not unusual to have patrons placed in rooms with open shelves of rare books, with little or no staff surveillance. The ideal is to have a rare book consultation room which does not have open shelves. The room, monitored by staff, should be for consultation only. These rooms sometimes have glass walls to make surveillance easier. At a minimum, libraries should designate a special area of the reading room for rare book consultation. It should be equipped with book cradles, gloves and pencils, and library staff should be on hand, allowing research under conditions satisfactory to the library and the researchers.
A more formal type of control is the inventory. Without a complete listing at least every three years, you do not know if an item is missing. This is most critical with special collections, as frequently these items are not marked as library material, to avoid marring the material any further. Tattle tape is not used in rare books either, as it damages the spine and bindings. Each library should develop its own policy for rare book processing, covering both preservation and security concerns.
A thorough inventory also indicates the magnitude of your collection, and could be used to evaluate your collection if there is a disaster. A copy of the inventory itself should be kept in a place other than the library. It is recommended that both a hard copy and a computer disk be kept off-site (in a safety deposit box, for example), and another set in a separate part of the library. They should be updated regularly to give as exact a picture as possible of your collection. In the event that the collection is damaged, burgled or destroyed, you must be able to identify all material to reclaim any stolen property. A good inventory should consist of: complete accession records (including date of acquisition, price, place of purchase, and provenance), detailed cataloguing, and copy-specific information which will provide positive identification. Records and lists kept to fulfil the requirement of insurance policies are also useful.
Securing the rare book facilities against fire and water damage is integral to disaster prevention, disaster response, subsequent conservation treatment and security concerns. Smoke and heat sensors and alarms should be installed in the room. These systems should be connected to the security office for 24-hour monitoring and response. A fire suppression system should also be installed in the rare book/special collection room.
It is important that the heads of a sprinkler system operate independently. They should also be equipped to detect rapid increases in temperature, and release water only over affected areas. Dry and wet pipe systems are now filled with pressurized air, with the pressure released when heat-sensitive sprinkler heads open, directing water only to the sprinkler heads where the fire is detected.
In the past, libraries were concerned about possible water damage, but this fear has since been balanced by improved conservation techniques for restoring water-damaged material. In most instances, the installation of a sprinkler system reduces fire insurance premiums. These savings can, therefore, offset the cost of installation of water sprinkler system.
All fire suppression systems, including fire extinguishers, must be checked regularly. All library staff must be made aware of the fire detection and suppression systems, and the locations of manual fire alarms and must know how to use fire extinguishers.
A water detection system is also desirable, especially if the library is susceptible to natural flooding, surrounded by water pipes, or located near rest rooms. It should be installed if a water sprinkler system exists. The water detectors react in the presence of water, not under conditions of high humidity. They are fitted with audible alarms, and may also be outfitted with remote indicators. In conjunction with smoke and heat detectors, they provide the greatest protection against fire and water damage for special collections.
Fire suppression systems use inert gases to suppress a fire rather than water. To date, halon gas systems are used most frequently. However, new laws regarding the use of hydrocarbons mean that they are being phased out and replace with new environmentally safe gases. The halon (halogenated hydrocarbon) gas system interferes with the combustion cycle to suppress the fire. The gas does not damage the books or papers, and leaves little residue after use. It also does not harm any patrons in the room. The halon system was expensive to install, and required a sealed room to be effective. For this reason, it was installed only in separate, vault-like rooms built to house special collections.
Most recently halon gas has been replaced by an inergen agent. The inergen agent is a plentiful, non-corrosive gas that does not support combustion, or react with most substances. The inergen agent is a mixture of three inert, oxygen diluting gases: 52 percent nitrogen, 40 percent argon, and eight percent carbon dioxide. The inergen agent extinguishes the fire by lowering the oxygen content below the level that supports combustion. When inergen is discharged into a room, it introduces a mixture of gases that allows a person to breathe in the reduced oxygen environment, with the agent actually enhancing the body's ability to assimilate oxygen.
Disasters, an ever-present danger, remain an important issue for rare books. A disaster plan should, therefore, be a top priority for any library. The first responsibility of the senior officer responsible for writing the disaster plan should be to outline a program, beginning with a survey of the collections and review of the physical layout and staff. This includes an audit of potential dangers. The ability to mitigate these dangers greatly decreases the risks to the collection. A proactive security policy should be in place to respond to the dangers highlighted in the audit. Both security policy and emergency plan must be kept up-to-date with current names and telephone numbers of members of the security and emergency team.
Training staff in security measures is a high priority. Staff must know their responsibilities, and the reporting structure of the disaster team. One very important measure is to show trust and concern for your well-trained staff, hence avoiding destruction and willful mishandling of collections. Training must be ongoing, and must cover new staff, new collections, and new techniques in disaster recovery.
The best way to handle disasters is to assume that they can and probably will happen to you. A good plan should include a disaster prevention section and a disaster action section, the first to prevent or minimize damage and the second to control the salvage operations after the event occurs. The Library Preservation Committee has published a kit on disaster preparedness, which discusses this subject at length.
An effective disaster prevention and recovery plan includes:
This is by no means an exhaustive list. Rather, it suggests guidelines for your disaster plan. One important element of the emergency plan is the identification of your most valuable collections and their destinations when endangered. Library collections must be prioritized, and staff trained accordingly, so that they are aware of the areas to be salvaged first in a recovery operation. In most cases, this will be your rare book collection. If a fireproof vault exists, for instance, the material should be taken there. In the event of fire and the lack of a fireproof vault, a temporary secure area in the library should be designated for special collections materials. Should the entire library be unsafe, off-site storage must be available. All this must be established in the disaster recovery plan. Another important element in successful salvage is the availability of cold storage for water-damaged materials. Cooperative strategies between libraries and local businesses is a cost-effective method, as commercial disaster recovery/cold storage trucks can be quite expensive to rent, and availability can vary by region.
The issues surrounding rare book security stress the need for team work within the library. It is only by working together that the library can provide proper surveillance, complete inventories, and minimize damage from disasters. This team approach should be developed through sharing information, frequent training, constant feedback on the quality of this information, and information on where security activities could be improved. The more staff are aware and involved, the more effective the security network will become.
The storage concerns outlined above are useful to libraries in both old and new buildings. If you are fortunate enough to be planning a new library, the architect must be made aware of the spatial and environmental concerns for your collections. Older buildings can be renovated to improve special collections storage. Depending on the money available, you could develop a new space for your special collections, retrofit existing space, or simply buy lockable cabinets. It is recommended that libraries purchase some archival housing materials, to protect their more rare or fragile material, especially if secured space is a problem. Staff can be trained in proper handling and housing of rare collections, to help heighten preservation awareness. If a library owns a rare book collection, time, money, and staff must be committed to its perpetual care. Proper storage and security will safeguard this investment for the future.
Bibliography
Council of Federal Libraries. (Revised: 1998-05-28).