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Photos available for download
Preservation Education Curriculum Image Library

Images have been provided to assist you in illustrating most of the lessons. This collection should not be considered the definitive source for preservation images. Rather, use it to enhance your presentations and perhaps update some of your existing images. NEDCC is grateful to the many vendors and institutions—libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies—that were willing to share their photographs for this project.

These photographs are available as 72 dpi JPEG files, which can be downloaded for multimedia presentations in the classroom. You can view the caption and copyright notice for each photograph when you view the enlarged image. These images are to be used for educational purposes only and should not be published without permission from the copyright holder.

Click on the classes (left) to view image thumbnails.
Click on a thumbnail to enlarge the image.

Traditional handmade Japanese papers are often the best choice for repairing damaged papers. Here, boiling inocho fibers is the first stage in the manufacture of kozo paper. Japan 2003. The pulp for rag paper was produced by boiling large amounts of rags, shown here in French boilers. Early fourdrinier in a U.S. paper mill, circa 1920s. The mass production of paper reduced the cost but affected the permanence of the product. Hollander beater in a Wisconsin paper mill.
  Japanese paper village: brushing sheets onto boards to dry in the sun, circa 1920s. Today sheets of handmade Japanese papers are still brushed onto boards to dry in the sun. Making paper using a mold and deckle. A treated skin, stretch-dried to produce parchment, on display in the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum. Cutter appears in lower left. Watermark paper mold. Watermarks can provide valuable information to the archivist or paper historian. Contact staining can be problematic, particularly with acidic or poor-quality papers. Iron gall ink has perforated the paper where it was most heavily applied. Detail of red and black inks on 19th-century ruled wood pulp paper. Discoloration from deteriorating pressure-sensitive tape is seen in this scrapbook. 1727 petition to Governor Dummer of Massachusetts, before treatment. A well-meaning but misguided person applied self-adhesive tape to both sides of the document in an attempt to mend tears and stabilize it overall. Self-adhesive tapes should never be applied to materials of lasting value. Detail of parchment leaves damaged by water. Red rot, a degradation process in leather, is usually a result of prolonged exposure to environmental pollution, high temperatures, and low relative humidity. Foxing (small brown spots probably caused by mold or by the presence of tiny metal particles) often occurs when an item is stored in a humid climate.