Week 7:
African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa

By Jessika Castillo-Rivera '14

Small Fellow in Museum Studies

African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa | Cedar Rapids, Iowa

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July 9, 2013

Monday: No staff meeting, Claire and I are in Chicago visiting/touring the Chicago Symphony Orchestra archive. Talking to another archivist, and someone who is pursuing archival studies, about how much we love…well, the stuff, organizing, playing detective, and helping people find the information they need. It was great. Maybe I like the technology implementation side a little bit more, because going through 2,000+ photos three times by hand can be a little tedious, but having archival based discussions was really lovely. It makes me seriously consider pursuing archival science in the future.

Tuesday-Wednesday: I continue working through Powell’s paper materials, this time I end up finishing it! I’m not sure if I mentioned it before, but Powell was an inventor as well. Much of the paper materials I went though today was patent requests, letters between him and manufacturers, etc. Powell was working on a finger printing game, see?

Wrapped up tight.
Wrapped up tight.
Enough for two boxes, actually!
Enough for two boxes, actually!

But there were also plenty more photo albums and post card albums to go through too, so time was divided between more photocopying, placing paper, and keeping everything in it’s natural order (which is a heaven send, sorry if you’re tired of hearing that!).

Newspaper album no. 1
Newspaper album no. 1

Thursday: Off day! National holiday, and all. I was able to use one of the recipes I had pulled out from an old newspaper from the Powell Collection for a cookout though. Well, I fiddled around with the recipe, but it was well received. Check it out below.

IMG_1015

Friday: Stamps. When you think about it, stamps seem pretty counteractive to archiving. They are built to stick to things. Seeing as a Powell was a stamp collector, I would have to go through the collection and figure out a way to store it, and even if storage was viable. Here’s what I came up with:

PLASTICS
There are five different thermoplastic films used to fabricate mounts, sleeves and pages for displaying stamps and covers:
PET polyethylene terephthalate (marketed as ‘polyester’ or Mylar or Melinex)
PVC polyvinyl chloride

PE polyethylene

PP polypropylene
PS polystyrene
The commonly held notions are that PET is good, i.e., safe to come in contact with philatelic materials, and that PVC is bad. Recent articles by Dr. William E. Souder conclude that these widely accepted ideas are unproven. The following information is based on those findings.
PET – After contacting seven leading international repositories of stamps and other historical documents, Souder concluded that “No standardized scale for measuring the degree of ‘archivalness’ exists.” On the negative side, PET readily degrades in sunlight unless it contains ultraviolet inhibitors that may do damage to stamps. This shouldn’t be an issue for AAMI purposes though, nothing comes into prolonged contact with direct sunlight, thankfully.
PVC – The most controversial of the plastic films considered here. Even though it is one of the oldest and most successful plastics, in use for scores of household products, PVC has been the brunt of environmental and health criticisms and has been cited as destructive to collectible postage stamps. uPVC appears to be free of problems for stamp collectors, and has been used for many years without any serious issues. Dr. Souder’s article on three year oven testing shows that uPVC performed equally as well as the other commonly used films. Only pPVC and glassine performed unacceptably.

PE – Polyethylene films are highly flexible and are somewhat cloudy which preclude their use as mounts. However, they are easy to fabricate into cover protestors and are relatively inexpensive. They begin to soften at 150-2300F, well above the expected usage conditions of the films.

PP – Polypropylene films have high flexibility with acceptable clarity, and they soften and degrade at high temperatures, similar to PET films. In the three year oven test, PP films performed very well.

PS – Polystyrene films are relatively rigid and very clear. However, at elevated temperatures, they tend to shrink and buckle.
STAMP HINGES
All stamp hinges manufactured in the United States tested very acidic. If we use hinges, we have to test each new package on inexpensive stamps. When the applied hinge is thoroughly dry, you remove the stamp and note the peelability of the hinge and whether or not a residue is left on the stamp after the hinge has been removed. Some hinges will leave a residue on the stamp when peeled off, while others will actually thin the stamp when removed. The Arthur Salm Foundation of Chicago has tested philatelic paper products for their archival qualities, and stamp hinges found some interesting results, C.M.C., Western Stamp, and La Mor all had a 0% chance of leaving a residue, but their pH varried between 4.79 and 5.29, this is an acceptable range, but the ideal (neutral) is 7. The closest found was Novofold at 7.11 with a ‘poor’ percentage chance of leaving a residue.
STOCK SHEETS
The following test results by the Salm Foundation indicate that most stock sheets have a pH of less than 7. All are in the acceptable range.
Stockbook by Lighthouse     pH 5.78
Black Sheets by Hanger     pH 6.56
White 8419 by Davo     pH 6.69
White Sheets by Hagner     pH 6.72
Manilla sheets by Master     pH 7.88
White manilla strips by Harco     pH 8.23
Only three album page interleaves were tested. All proved satisfactory for conservation purposes:
#3311 by Stanley Gibbons     pH 5.26
#322 by Stanley Gibbons     pH 5.35
interleaves by Harco     pH 5.88
CORNER MOUNTS AND STAMP MOUNTS
With clear mounting corners used on a cover on an exhibition or album page, no part of the item is obscure. The use of corner mounts is very pleasing aesthetically, but mounting corners can easily place too much stress on a relatively small portion of the mounted item, stress which could cause the item to tear. Corner mounts for covers do provide a completely reversible mounting system.

Now that you know how most people would narrow down ways to archive/store stamps, you have to consider the time and funds you have to do this. I was able to separate…about 80% of free floating stamps from one another, but some of Powell’s collection was already stuck to paper, then mounted, or just flat out stuck so hard together, it would require a chemical solution to even think about prying them apart. This requires money and knowledge out of my range, so I did my best, separated what I could, and stored it as I would a photo, hoping that the less acidic paper and controlled humidity/temperature of the Collections room would keep the glue on the back of the stamps from activating and sticking to the paper of the storage sleeve. Alas, sometimes you have to wait on the technical details or higher-ups taking a look at a collection and its historical value.

It’s all in a day’s work!

Finished stamp collection.
Finished stamp collection.
Castillo-Rivera Professional Headshot

Jessika Castillo-Rivera '14

Major: History and Classical Studies. Hometown:Munster, Indiana.