ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 37. (ZAGREB, 1994.)

Strana - 81

T. Mušnjak, The protection of archival material in war conditions, Arh. vjesn., god. 37 (1994) str. 79-86 INSTRUCTIONS FOR SAVING OF HUGE AMOUNTS OF SOAKED MATERIAL Archival material can get soaked in the process of extinguishing of the fire in repository by water, or by cracking of water-pipes and sewers, or by cracking of central heating installations and so on. The occurrence of mould on papers, parchment and photo documents is inevitable consequence of soaking after 5 to 15 days. In such cases it is necessary to undertake following actions: 1. Material have to be evacuated from the repository to the dry and airy place but protected from sunlight. The evacuation should be operated according to the plan made earlier. In this plan priority of evacuation has to be clearly stated. It is desirable that the curator of the repository is present at the operation. 2. At the first stage one should put together material in bigger heaps in order to drain off needless water under its own weight. We recommend putting every heap on the palette to prevent sedimentation of water at the bottom of material. 3. As soon as water is drained, material should be examined and classified: - a part of material will dry naturally at places which are shady and roofed or indoors at draught (clean basements, sport halls etc.), - a part of material will be subject to the artificial drying in different types of kilns at raised temperatures and certain relative humidity of air (kilns of meat, tobacco, wood etc.); the temperature at 40-60°C and relative humidity of air at 30-35% are recommended; archives which have laminators can use them for drying and leveling of documents on papers; other archives can use fan heaters, dryers and so on, and - a part of material will be subject to the deep freezing since so big amounts of wet materials cannot be dried in 5 to 15 days; adequate temperatures for freezing are -7 to -10°C, but we should accomodate to the set regime of freezing chambers bearing in mind that no materials can be freezed below -40°C. Kilns and freezing chambers should be settled in advance. One should find out their capacities well, in order to know amount of material which we can treat there, namely to locate. Lorries for the transportation of material have to be assured by arrangement with authorized crisis headquarters. 81