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| Moomin sweets from a cafe next to the Mori museum in Tokyo Sakura visited after returning back to Japan. People in Japan are crazy about moomins, she says. |
Hyvää päivää! My name is Sakura Tohma, I am Japanese. From 1st November 2018 until
the end of January 2019, I worked at the Turku City Archives Conservation
laboratory as a trainee under the supervision of paper conservator Riikka
Kupias. I would like to share with you a report detailing the exciting project
we began during those three months; ‘Reorganisation of the storage area for 2D collection’.
Among
the collection of the Turku City Archives, 2D objects such as maps,
architectural drawings and other unbound documents are presently stored at a plot
in the main storage facility located in the basement of the Archives either in rolled
or flat state.
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| Oversized objects did not fit in the existing furniture and were piled upon the top of every cabinet. Some areas suffered dust falling from fittings on the ceiling. |
As this storage area is relatively spacious and well
ordered, it seemed that there were no problems. However, in actual fact,
because piles of oversized objects have always ‘temporarily’ been placed on top
of the larger shelves and waiting to be catalogued, this has become an issue as
the current storage condition creates risks and complicates accessibility to
the objects. Although protections and covers were applied for individual objects,
exposed rolls and piles were still at risk of dust, light and mechanical damage
by handling. A fundamental solution for the storage condition was required.
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| The rolled objects were exposed under the lighting. |
The situation at Turku Archives reminded me of a
similar problem I had some experience of when I joined the workshop team of ‘Re-organisation
for museum storage (Re-org)’ in India.
The ‘Re-org’ is a methodology established by ICCROM
(International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of
Cultural Property) for improving the museum storage environments to meet the
world standards. It has been successfully implemented in many part
of the world. To read more, visit https://www.iccrom.org/section/preventive-conservation/re-org.
Although archive collections and museum collections
differ, we thought the method would help our situation here in Turku. It is
basically about ‘tidying up your room’, but often the situation overwhelms us
if you think the budget, time, materials and how many objects there are. The ‘Re-org’
guides us step by step from preparation to completion when achieving the
standards in storage condition with a creative yet safe approach.
The ‘Re-org’ is a methodology established by ICCROM
for improving the museum storage environments
Starting from the preparation phase, we carried out a
series of assessment to understand the current situation of the space,
furniture, collection and non-collection in the storage area.
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| Making floor plans. |
At first, we measured dimensions of the floor and all furniture, and then created four floor plans (floor itself, with fixture, with furniture, and with furniture and occupations). It helps to know the space and create ideas.
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| Floor map with furniture and occupying materials. Green is collection which was placed outside of the furniture. |
Next step was assessing furniture in the storage area (type, number, size, fullness, condition). We went through all the 12 types of 57 unit (457 drawers!) of the furniture. It looked overwhelming at the beginning, however, this is the power of team working: five of us completed the assessments within 2 days!
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| Some drawers were in perfect condition, |
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| others were too packed or stuck! Ooops! |
In
the Re-org method, counting the number of each item and then categorising each
type is essential as we have to know what we are going to organise. However,
due to the mass number of single sheets which is a characteristic of archival
material, we decided to focus on objects which were not in the furniture and
objects in the large size furniture which had possibilities to be stored in the
oversized collection. We also decided to count each protective sleeve as one
object, although there might be more than one single sheet in it.
For
the rest of the furniture, we assessed only fullness and condition. It gave us
concrete ideas of improvement for next opportunity.
The assessment results made things clear for us…..
·
Average fullness of furniture is 101% Not too bad!
·
30% of total surface of the floor (63m2) is occupied by
furniture (18.3m2)
It means there
is space to add extra unit. We are so
lucky!
·
88 objects are not housed in the furniture.
·
Out of the 88, 15 rolled objects were without protection.
·
68 objects can not fit in the existing units.
In
the meantime, we also explored what kind of new furniture would be possible and
most appropriate.
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| A good idea for rolled ones. |
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| The most ideal one for large flatten objects is…… beautiful and massive metal shelve at the Helsinki City Archives! They have just implemented them and under moving the collection. |
Based on the assessment results and our research, we
discussed new layout, and new furniture with Archivists and carpentry team.
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| Thinking of new layout using color papers. |
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| New furniture for rolled objects. |
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| New idea of furniture for rolls and oversized objects. Carpentry team gave us more professional ideas too. |
Proceeding with our re-org, we gradually discovered we
could implement two proposals.
One is to solve current problems with achievable
solutions, utilizing existing material with minimum budget. Another is
implementing ideal furniture, new metal drawers, little by little which would
be long-term plan.
The assessment takes time, however, what we have done
during re-org gave us visible result with precise numbers. Now we are able to
have ideas and achievable plan to present and share with all members of the
Archive team. This time, we only implement temporary solution for wooden
furniture. It is not the best option to store cellulose based objects, however,
the first step has proceeded to achieve the ideal state in future!
The Re-org Turku is still on going.
Both furniture
plans are under way and progressing at the moment.
It was a worthwhile experience for me to face problems
in a public archives storage. I do express the largest thank to Riikka and the
team of the Turku City Archives for helping my work there. I am looking forward
to visiting there again to see the completion of our re-org!
Sakura Tohma
