The
Preservation of Books
 Valerie:
… general question, you said “This beautiful book partly
was preserved because it was in the bottom of a trunk for sixty
years". What should people do with precious books and documents?
John
Townsend: Well, material like this is very sensitive to
light. See the colours, all the colours, they lose all their brilliancy
if they get around sunlight. So the best thing to do is what he’s
done here, if you want to take a look at what happened, what preserved
this book is he’s, it’s in its own cloth…
 Valerie:
Container.
John Townsend:
Case. And that keeps it dry. Keeps the moisture, you can take the
moisture out of it and place it in a drawer somewhere where it’s
not going to get too dry, too wet – it’ll last forever.
Absolutely last forever.
 Valerie:
But it must kill you to see the number of things that are just so
precious or rare and they’re just wrecked because people didn’t
have a clue, they handled them, left them out, they got wet.
John Townsend:
And they put scotch tape on them and they dropped them and rolled
them…
Valerie: Scotch
taped it!
 John
Townsend: We saw some scotch tape here just a minute ago.
They put scotch tape, it’s…
Valerie: What
happens when you see scotch tape, you start to scream?
John Townsend:
Yeah, that’s right…
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