Transcripts

Don Williams:
Really the best thing that can be done for them is to put them into the deep freeze. Once you put photographic film into a deep freeze their life span is really an uncounted number of years.

Don Williams, Senior Conservator of the Smithsonian Institution and author of the book Saving Stuff says old video and audiotapes are doomed. They will start to degrade after twenty years and you have to transfer them to some digital medium before it's too late.

My own specialty is furniture and wooden objects and one of the things that really comes up is the whole notion of oiling and feeding your furniture. Well, furniture is dead and wood is dead and you don't need to oil it or feed it. So, just keep it clean and maybe put a coat of paste wax on it every ten years but the whole notion of actively maintaining it by slathering ointment, those are just a catastrophe waiting to happen.

And old clothing like a wedding dress or a military uniform you'd like to preserve…

Make sure you get it clean because the contamination from food and use and body sweat and oils and things like that are a buffet to a lot of insects. Make sure that you pack it with either acid-free tissue paper or polyester batting so that there are no creases. Because if you have creases in textiles that's a real place for damage to begin. And then if you can keep it in an archival acid-free box you're good to go for a long, long time.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.