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(2/2) I collect pamphlets that were printed from 1900-1950, and recently I’ve been trying to store them better. I’m stacking them flat in plastic drawers (model# 116859 on the Staples website), but I feel like maybe I should be doing more to protect them – maybe individual plastic bags, maybe something like cardboard right next to each one for stability? Especially since some are VERY flimsy. Do you have any advice or know resources where I could learn about proper pamphlet storage? Thanks!

Hi! 

A good rule of thumb for storage of paper items is that paper is the best way to store paper. Of course, you want to use very high quality paper filing supplies, so look for words like “buffered” or “acid-free” on the box. I highly recommend buffered paper folders to store the kind of materials you’re talking about, because they were made in the “brittle book” period (1850-1970’s). Acid-free paper and board does not remain acid-free if it is used to house acidic things, because eventually the acid will migrate from the acidic thing to the non-acidic thing and cause it to become acidic. Buffered paper has an alkaline buffer in it, which prevents this from happening.

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Here in our special collections/archives (and many of the others I’ve worked at), we house pamphlets individually in folders (they look just like the folders you’d see in a filing cabinet), which are then kept upright in archival boxes (like this one from Gaylord). So the pamphlets (in their folders) are stored with their spines down,  not stacked flat on top of each other. 

Manuscript Box - open

You also want to make sure that the folders are the right size for your pamphlets – they can get damaged if the folder is too small and the pamphlet sticks out beyond the edges of the folder. The other important thing (if you are going to use this style of storage) is to make sure the boxes are packed correctly – you don’t want them to be underfilled, which will cause the folders to slump and the pamphlets to get all misshapen, but you also don’t want them to be packed so tight that you can’t pull one folder out at a time. And you also want the folders to fit the box correctly, so they don’t slide around left-to-right in the box and let the pamphlets slip out. You can either buy or make (using good-quality archival board or, NOT cardboard) box spacers to take up the extra space in your storage box, to prevent folders from slumping. In a pinch you can use a smaller box (plastic or high quality board), a plastic magazine holder, or any other thing that has a non-flexible shape.

This is not to say that you can’t use a plastic file box instead of the more standard archival style boxes. In fact, I store lots of my personal archives in those sorts of boxes, because I’m absolutely paranoid about my apartment leaking. I don’t see an advantage of using those comic-book style bags for storage, though – buffered paper folders are the standard in archival storage, because unlike plastic they let the paper breathe and also mitigate the acidic degradation of paper.