Studying pests to preserve memories
Research into insects may be key to finding out how to maintain heritage items at home
Have you ever found valuable old letters at home covered with mould or gnawed at by pests? Are you getting a headache trying to preserve fading photos of your great-grandparents?
A team of experts who have placed hundreds of traps to catch pests and insects in selected buildings in Hong Kong might have the solution.
By studying how the local subtropical climate affects indoor heritage collections, they hope not only to help museums, libraries and archives, but also to publish a set of guidelines that will be useful for people to preserve valuable objects at home.
"Unlike in museums, home collections cannot be kept under air-conditioning 24 hours a day. But there are still steps that everyone can take. Keeping good ventilation in the room where the materials are placed, putting them into storage boxes, for example, can help prevent damage," said Jody Beenk, of the University of Hong Kong Libraries.
Beenk is part of a research team that is pooling together knowledge from library and archives management, heritage conservation and atmospheric chemistry to identify the "heritage climatology" for collections in Hong Kong.
Beenk and colleague Christopher Mattison, from the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery, presented their study to an international audience of experts at the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works in September.