Archive Pestilence Hazards

[Hood]

Looks like Kew has found a new way to hide its secret files... shredding by pests!

Poor Chris Gibson was looking up a file for me when he came face to face with this!

 

[aim9xray]

Pest == Researcher?

 

[Michel Van]

Pest == Spy?

 

[Arjen]

Pest == Researcher?

I am reminded of a saying among from the IT-world: to system admins, the best system is one that can only be turned on or off by its users.
Researchers are a grave threat to the smooth operation of libraries.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Pest == Spy?

Pest = Bookworms

 

[Archibald]

I've once worked for a year in the archives of a big city. We had to cleanup and preserves kilometers of shelves for the coming move (11 km cumulated, of documents on shelves, we did 3 km in a year, took 7 years for the whole thing).
We opened boxes never opened since 1935. Inside, we found grey dust, not unlike volcanic ash. I kid you not. It was a bit like Interstellar blight or dust storms.

I also remember at some point we ran into the "street names changes" archives.
One of the long gone streets was called "rue des trois canards" - which exactly translates as "Three ducks street".
And so we cleaned a crapload of such documents during an entire afternoon. And we ended blowing a fuse about the goddam three ducks. I distinctly remember going bonkers, Daffy Duck style: voice included. Try saying "Three duck street" with Daffy Duck voice impersonation.
Qwack qwack qwaaaack !

Another time I landed a summer job related to tax sheets: cleaning them and classifying them according to people names.

With my colleague we ended so bored to death, we started a contest over the silliest names we could find on the tax sheets.

It is truly fascinating, the numbers of (french ?) people named after animals.
We ended with a lot of Chevreuils (deers) one Lapin (rabbit) a ton of Renards (fox) - and on and on.

And for the life of me, I found a poor guy with the name of William Saurin - which is a french brand of canned food.

WILLIAM SAURIN

www.french-corner-shop.com

 

[Foo Fighter]

Well, my (Family) name goes back to the water carrier in markets of the middle east (Different names for different times) an crossed europe to the UK via France. They were among the Normans who visited Alfred the cake burner (Welsh cakes).

 

[Michel Van]

We opened boxes never opened since 1935. Inside, we found grey dust, not unlike volcanic ash. I kid you not. It was a bit like Interstellar blight or dust storms.

Some thing similar had British Tank museum
they got allot prototypes model made from cheap plastic in 1930s to 1950s
as they open the boxes to see model they found green sheet of plastic not a model
fact was that over the decades the plastic follow law of gravity like a liquid...

 

[Archibald]

I never knew if the dust was concrete dust from the antiquated archive depot itself; or ordinary dust, or... something else (rat dust ? paper dust ?) I'm lucky not to have ended with silicosis or something worse. Bleh.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Some thing similar had British Tank museum
they got allot prototypes model made from cheap plastic in 1930s to 1950s
as they open the boxes to see model they found green sheet of plastic not a model
fact was that over the decades the plastic follow law of gravity like a liquid...

That's be a weird plastic. Perhaps it was some form of wax that melted at some point?

 

[Michel Van]

That's be a weird plastic. Perhaps it was some form of wax that melted at some point?

my guess that some kind of early thermoplastics or high density polyethylene

jump to 18:00 minute on case

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt-tqsdXZPw

 

[CJGibson]

It wasn't quite Baldrick's trousers inside that box and the file was in better nick than another file I got that appeared to have been used to line a cat's litter tray.

Chris

 

[TsrJoe]

The problem described was with early Airfix tank kits where the silver coloured soft plastic (vinyl ?) used for the tracks softened the adjacent styrene over years of storage, best case an imprint of the track on an inconspicuous part, worst case a bag of miss formed goo where a reaction had taken place (plasticiser migration ?) It was a noted issue at the time, painting was recomended as a barrier between the tracks and the vehicle, the issue being solved by use of an alternate black soft (polythene ?) material for the tracks

 

[CJGibson]

Ah... So that's why they changed from silver to black. I remember that.

Chris

 

[robunos]

This is still a problem, particularly with some of the eastern european kits . . . I try to avoid kits with vinyl tracks and tyres wherever possible.

cheers,
Robin.