Poor housekeeping allows dust to collect on and around materials, abrading surfaces, and providing a living and breeding environment for destructive insects. Many people aren't aware that using improperly sealed wood shelving in storage areas damages their collections. Gases escaping from the wood destroy paper products and photographic materials. Silverfish are extremely destructive to paper records. Paper Box Label Eaten by Silverfish Wooden cabinet fragment showing extent of termite damage.
Upper picture shows outside.
Lower shows wood broken open. Mixing and Contaminating Bag Contents Paper Records, Photographic Prints, and Packing Materials with high acid content is an on-going and very serious preservation problem. The paper has an extremely high acid content which causes the paper to deteriorate over the course of a very few years. It appears that sweat and body oils accellerate the deterioration. This book is from a project conducted in 1979.