Ephemera
Caring for printed ephemera
Catalogues, forms and leaflets were made to be thrown away. Keeping them in usable condition mostly means removing the causes of damage rather than treating it.
Ephemera is printed on the cheapest paper that will do the job, which is precisely the paper that ages worst. Most catalogue stock from the era when catalogues were thickest carries residual acidity and breaks down on its own without any help from its surroundings. The aim of sensible care is not to reverse that, which is specialist work, but to avoid accelerating it.
The four causes worth removing
- Light, especially daylight, which fades ink and yellows paper and does so cumulatively and irreversibly.
- Heat and swings in humidity, which drive chemical change and make paper cockle and split along folds.
- Acidic neighbours: newsprint, cardboard boxes, old envelopes and mounting boards migrate acidity into whatever they touch.
- Metal and adhesive: paperclips, staples, rubber bands and any pressure-sensitive tape, all of which stain and eventually tear.
Enclosures
Flat storage in a buffered folder inside a rigid box handles the great majority of loose material. Sleeves of an inert plastic are useful for items handled frequently, but they trap moisture and should not be used on anything damp or flaking. Nothing should be stored under pressure that it cannot be removed from without flexing, and folders should be filled enough that their contents do not slump.
Folds and flattening
Folded leaflets have already been weakened along the fold, and repeated opening is what finally separates them. If an item is to be consulted often, a copy is a better answer than flattening the original. Where flattening is genuinely wanted, it is done slowly under even weight with interleaving, never with heat and never in one go.
Handling
Clean dry hands are better than most gloves for paper, because gloves reduce grip and cause the tears they were meant to prevent. Support a large sheet from underneath with both hands or a piece of board. Turn thick catalogue pages from the outer edge near the middle of the page height, where the paper is strongest, rather than from the corner.
Repair, and when not to
The instinct to mend a tear immediately is the single most damaging impulse in amateur care. Ordinary adhesive tape discolours, hardens and takes the printed surface with it when it eventually fails, and removing it later is far harder than the original tear ever was. A torn item stored flat in a folder is stable; a taped one is deteriorating. Where repair is genuinely necessary, it is a job for reversible materials and, for anything valued, for someone trained to do it.
Recording what you have
Ephemera loses meaning faster than it loses legibility, because the context that explained it is not printed on it. A short note kept with an item, saying what it is, where it came from and anything known about its date, costs a minute and preserves most of what makes the item worth keeping at all.