A preservationist is engaged in a never ending battle to thwart the destructive action of the agents of time. Heat and cold. Light and darkness. Humidity and aridity. Mold and mildew and mice and moisture and the thousand other ills that paper and other materials are heir to.
Nothing is exempt.
From family photos to the county records to a first folio edition of Hamlet. The objects and documents you care for and care about are not, after all, mere material. The paper and wood and glue and all are the forms people have long used to define ourselves, to create our culture, and to preserve it in our memory. The challenge is to retain the treasure of the lives and the learning, the grand achievements and dead ends discovered, by the generations who have come before us, for the generations who will follow. Their efforts, the words they wrote and the things they made have helped to make us who we are.