N o 54 - IFLA

42
International Preservation News • No. 54 August 2011
The course in the undergraduate level started in the second half
of the year 2000 when a private university, University Estacio
de Sa, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, initiated the first
undergraduate course in the technology of conservation and
restoration of cultural heritage assets.
In the following years, various federal universities launched
equivalent courses: the Federal University of Minas Gerais-
UFMG in the state of Minas Gerais, then the Federal University
of Pelotas-FPEL, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, and finally,
the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro-UFRJ, in the city of Rio
de Janeiro in 2005. Before that, various private institutes initiated
postgraduation courses in conservation of cultural heritage.
The concentration of the training courses in conservation in the
south and south-west region of the country led to a lack of
specialized professionals in the north, north-east and centrewest.
Consequently, a lot of institutions which are in charge of
the preservation of cultural heritage in these regions still lack
qualified professionals to take care and ensure the collections
are stored in appropriate conditions.
Policy of Conservation of Archival Documents
in the City of Rio de Janeiro in the past 40 years
The conservation of paper-based materials in the city of Rio can
be divided into three distinct periods, the first one covering the
decades of 1970 and 1980. In this period, the materials used in
conservation and restoration of the archives were inadequate
since they were adapted from the existing national products.
In this period, few procedures and products used in Europe or
North America were known. Few imported products reached
Rio and were very expensive, which restricted their use in the
conservation of cultural heritage documents.
In this period, the principal paper used in Brazil for archives
lamination to strengthen the deteriorated paper was the paper
Mimo of 25 g/m2, manufactured by the Industrial Company
of papers Piray. This paper was manufactured to be used as
carbon paper, as paper for copying or typing machines and for
casing the filters of cigarettes.
This type of paper was used up to the mid 90´s in foliates of
manuscripts with iron gall ink that presented advanced degree
of degradation, in attempts to reduce the loss of information
of these documents. The same type of paper was employed in
the lamination of acid paper that was embrittled.
Regarding the conditioning of the archival documents, alkaline
paper was still not available. This explained why these archives
were conditioned with acid papers. The alkaline paper only arrived
around the beginning of 2000.
In 1970, the institutions of Rio de Janeiro that preserve the archives,
such as the Arquivo Nacional do Brazil, FCRB, received
the visit of the European curator Françoise Friedler. From this
period onwards, the conservation procedures used in the city
was modified due to the transmission of the techniques used
in Europe, such as the use of Japanese paper and adhesives
derived from cellulose (for example, methyl-cellulose) in the
documents lamination. Furthermore, there were advances in
the clearing and deacidification of papers.
In the 90´s, the National archives of Brazil, located in Rio de
Janeiro, received the visit of Helmut Banza, director of Bundesarchiv
of Germany. Again, some new procedures of document
restoration were transmitted. Particularly, we were studying the
technology of dying cellulose fibers to be used in the reconstitution
of the missing area in the documents.
Dr. Helmut observed that we were already very advanced and
sooner or later, we would find this methodology ourselves.
From this visit, we have developed and used the technology
in reconstitution of missing areas of archival documents, substituting
the fillings from manual grafting by mechanical reintegration.
This resulted in more agility in the operations of
conservation and increased the amount of archives conserved.
In addition, theses techniques solved the problem of having to
obtain tons of microfilms of documents.
Policy of Preventive Conservation
in the Archival Institutions and Libraries
in the City of Rio de Janeiro
From the end of the 90´s, the world policy in massive restoration
developed in various countries was replaced by the policy
of preventive conservation, launched by the curators of United
States of America. The advantage of this methodology relies
on the prevention of deterioration of the entire collection. This
gives greater visible results than the restoration of isolated
items.
The great problem in implementing preventive conservation in
countries with tropical climates consists in the lack of methods
to handle the deteriorated documents. The handling described
in this methodology concerned paper based materials stored
in locations where the environmental conditions are appropriate.
Furthermore, the policy of preventive conservation does
not foresee restoring items that are in advanced state of deterioration.
In particular, in Brazil, the archival documents of various institutions
located near the equatorial region are in an advanced
state of deterioration. Principally, the states of the region North
and North-East experience this problem and unfortunately, as
we described it previously, lack curators with experience.
These states have high temperature and relative humidity. Their
archives also keep a lot of documents that are constituted
mainly of manuscripts from XVIII and XIX centuries, written
with iron gall ink.
About three years ago, a study group in preventive conservation
was formed by Dr Milagros Vaillante, in the city of Rio de
Janeiro, under the name of “Carioca Project”. The objective of
this project is to study conditions to reduce bio-deterioration of
documents in the city of Rio. Professionals that made up this
group are from: Arquivo nacional do Brasil; Museu de Astronomia
e Ciências Afins- MAST; Arquivo Público do estado do
Rio de Janeiro- APERJ; Arquivo Histórico do Exército Brasileiro;
Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa-FCRB; Fundação Bilioteca Nacional
do Brasil; Fundação do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz-FIOCRUZ;
Centro de Conservação e Preservação de Fotografia e Centro
de Documentação da Fundação Nacional de Artes-FUNART.
Last year, another study group was set up gathering curators
of the National Archives of Brazil and of Netherlands to examine
models of containers for conditioning document archives in
tropical countries.