Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 39. (1986)
Archive Buildings and the Conservation of Archival Material. An Expert Meeting, held in Vienna, Austria October 30 - November 1, 1985 - STEWART, William J.: Summary of Discussions
Summary of Discussions 273 response is, promote the quality of those materials. Certain Chinese documents have been preserved for centuries. The rice paper deserves the credit. De Silva: How best can we preserve archival materials? Should repositories have windows or not? Is an air conditioning system vital to preservation? Does the value of air conditioning to some degree depend on location? I do not believe we have sufficient information to respond to these queries. Therefore, I propose that a worldwide study be undertaken, a survey that includes not only the temperate zones but the tropics as well, including the more remote areas of the tropics, such as Sri Lanka, southern India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Bali. Let us learn firsthand the actual conditions that exist and not rely on geographical and climatological publications. It would be a job performed in the field not at a desk. Observations and findings and other data would gathered at the scene. Only then would we be prepared to deal with these questions resolutely. Perhaps sufficient data has been collected in Europe but in the rest of the world that is not so. When you speak of archive buildings in China, what are the climatic conditions? China is vast, are you speaking of the tropical China or China in the temperate zones? Ms Kamba: We all probably concur with those ideas. I told Mr Thomas that I circulated his paper among several of my senior staff, all of whom were impressed with it but were moved to remark that it was not applicable to our climatic conditions. Our part of Africa is not hot and humid. In climatic terms, east and south Africa are quite different. So I concur that the type of survey proposed by Mr de Silva would be most useful. De Silva: I hope this can be considered by the Resolutions Committee. Ms Kamba: We are agreed on that, I think. Auer: Some of the problems we were discussing may depend upon the extent to which the areas of the stacks are used for archival work. It has been stated that normally they are only used for removing and returning documents. This may differ from country to country according to policy and staffing. In some instances, probably, the stack area is used for additional work. For example, it might be conceivable if you remove documents for copying, rather than move ten to twenty boxes to the copying machine, it might be easier to pull the documents while in the stacks. Or, if you are searching for specific items to answer an inquiry, it might be simpler to do this in the stacks. So staff may have reason to be in the stacks for more time-consuming activities than removing and returning material. If you have an archives in the design phase this information should have some bearing on your plans for the document storage area. De Silva: In the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, which several of us visited last week, the stacks are practically in the same room as the staff. Mitteilungen, Band 39 18
