This Zui, the third in our Hazardous Collection Items series held in partnership with National Service Te Paerangi will focus on Poison Books and Cellulose Nitrate Film in Collections. It will be held online on Thursday 3rd September 7-9pm.
Free for NZCCM members and $10 for non NZCCM Members. Feel free to pass this invite along to anyone who may be interested in attending!
We will hear from two amazing speakers who are hands on in their fields and after this an hour for you to ask questions. The discussions session will not be recorded so that you can ask tricky questions in a safe and non-judgemental setting. A great opportunity to get more informed on serious hazards that are present in almost every library, archive and museum today.
Firstly Laura Mirebeau, a Book and Paper Conservator at Archives Library New Zealand. She was born in France and holds a Master in Conservation of Cultural Materials from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She came to Aotearoa in 2012, first as an intern with the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tāmaki, then to take up her role at the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. She has been leading the investigation into hazardous materials in bound collections at the library. She particularly enjoys pop-up books, Ethiopian manuscripts and opening cans of worms!
The Poison Book Project undertaken by the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library and the University of Delaware raised international awareness on the presence of arsenic (specifically, the emerald-green pigment copper aceto-arsenite) in Victorian-era publisher bindings. This research was widely publicised in the mainstream and conservation media and a myriad of similar projects have sprouted up in smaller or larger, private or public libraries around the world. Following in the Winterthur’s footsteps, the National Library is also investigating its Victorian-era, brightly coloured book holdings. This presentation is a summary of the work undertaken at the National Library in the field of hazardous materials identification in books in the past few years. It includes an overview of a pilot survey in the Rare Books and Fine Printing collection, the subsequent development of handling & storage instructions for the hazardous books identified and a summary of the latest research outcomes in the field of biblio toxicology. It will be discussing the challenges that arise from looking for hazards and finding much more than expected, and how prioritising the health of people can shape institutional processes and policies.
Secondly Mark Strange, specialist conservator of photographs at National library and Archives NZ .
Mark’s presentation outlines a survey of cellulose nitrate film within the National Library of New Zealand’s unprocessed photographic collections held in the Wellington building. The presentation gives a brief historical context for nitrate film, its emergence as a revolutionary photographic support material and examines its inherent instability, deterioration mechanisms, and associated preservation risks. The presentation discusses the significance of nitrate negatives as historical primary artefacts and explains the Library’s approach to long-term risk management through controlled atmosphere cold storage. The most recent survey of the collections to identified, quantified, and assessed the condition of nitrate film, among the unprocessed collections of film. This survey considered date ranges, and used examined edge markings, notch codes, and the physical condition to identify over 5000 probable nitrate negatives found within 186 boxes. The survey also revealed substantial quantities of decaying acetate film and highlighted numerous historically significant but largely undiscoverable collections. These findings support improved preservation planning, risk management, and future discovery and access initiatives.