Research and Testing Series
This series of reports is the result of research carried out for the Preservation Research & Testing Division, either by its own staff or under contract with other institutions or private vendors. All of the reports listed below are available in print upon request via our online form: Ask a Librarian.
No. 9501: Effect of Some Deacidification
Agents on Copper-Catalyzed Degradation of Paper.
C.J. Shahani & F.H. Hengemihle. November 1995.
No. 9502: Desorption of Residual Ethylene
Oxide from Fumigated Library Materials.
Frank H. Hengemihle, Norman Weberg & Chandru Shahani. November 1995.
No. 9503: Accelerated Aging of Paper: Can
it Really Foretell the Permanence of Paper.
CJ Shahani. November 1995.
No. 9604: Cylinder Audio Recordings:
An Annotated Bibliography
Gibson, Gerald D., with Carole Zimmermann and Terry Erb. 1996
No. 9705: Digitizing Library Collections for Preservation and Archiving:
A Handbook for Curators.
Report submitted under contract to the Preservation Research & Testing
Division of the Library of Congress by William R Nugent,. 1997.
No. 9806: Unified Strategy for the Preservation of Audio and Video
Materials
Report submitted under contract to the Preservation Research & Testing
Division of the Library of Congress by William D. Storm. 1998.
No. 9807: Condition Survey of Motion Picture Holdings in the Library
of Congress: Evaluation of Storage Environments for Motion Picture
Collections
Report submitted under contract to the Preservation Research & Testing
Division of the Library of Congress by James M. Reilly, Douglas W. Nishimura
and Daniel Burge. 1998.
Revised Numbering Scheme
No. 9: Bibliography on the
Preservation of Magnetic Media.
Gibson, Gerald D. February 2002.
Gibson has provided an extensive, annotated bibliography of citations from
monographs, journals, conferences, technical reports, and other sources on
the preservation of magnetic media. The work contains a comprehensive author,
title and subject index.
No. 10: Compact Disc Service Life: An Investigation of the Estimated Service Life of Prerecorded Compact Discs. Chandru J. Shahani, Michele H. Youket, and Norman Weberg. Prepared for the Library of Congress by William P. Murray, Consultant, St. Paul, Minn. Originally published in August 2004; revised 2009. [PDF: 431 KB / 32 p.]
No. 11: The Effects of Laser Engraving on the Estimated Service Life of Prerecorded Compacts Discs (CD-Rom). Chandru J. Shahani, Michele H. Youket, and Norman Weberg. Prepared for the Library of Congress by William P. Murray, Consultant, St. Paul, Minn. Originally published in September 2004; revised 2009. [PDF: 284 KB / 19 p.]
Longevity of CD Media: Research at the Library of Congress. Chandru J. Shahani, Basil Manns and Michelle Youket. December 2005 [PDF: 363 KB / 14 p.]
NIST/Library of Congress Optical Disc Longevity Study: Final Report. Library of Congress and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, September 2007. [PDF: 404 KB / 32 p.]
Digitizing Visual Materials
The following publications were created for the Preservation Directorate of the Library of Congress. They provide technical guidelines and requirements for achieving digital image capture for preservation purposes.
Guidelines for Electronic Preservation of
Visual Materials
Submitted by Picture Elements, Inc. 1995.
Report concludes that the choices to be made for digital image capture are
collection, document, page, or even page-element dependent and that no single
set of universal choices is appropriate. It offers a clear set of guidelines
for making appropriate choices for a given document or collection.
Illustrated Book Study: Digital Conversion Requirements of Printed Illustrations
Submitted by Cornell University Library, Department of Preservation
and Conservation and Picture Elements, Inc. July 1999
Report describes the best means for digitizing book illustrations, focusing
on illustration processes prevalent in 19th and 20th century commercial publications.
Procedures are developed to map different physical content regions to electronic
content types. These mappings differ, based on the illustration type and on
the need to preserve information at the essence, detail, or structure level
of the illustration. A public domain utility which automatically detects the
presence and location of a halftone region is also included.
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