This is such a wonderful idea!
Some years ago Glamorgan Archives acquired a vacuum press, which has been put to good use recently to package degrading cellulose nitrate and acetate negatives for safe handling before freezing. Conservation staff were just wondering what else the press could be used for when the November issue of the ICON Journal appeared. It featured an article by Hiromi Tanimura on squelch drying books damaged by tsunami water. The squelch method had been developed by Stuart Welch, and was first used to great effect in 2002 when dealing with the aftermath of the Prague floods at the National Library of the Czech Republic.
Squelch sounded like fun! So we decided to research the method further and try it out ourselves. Initial trials were on two modern hard back volumes, library deaccessions. They were put into a bucket which was filled with water and left overnight. The pages of the volumes had…
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