This blog post title is a tribute to a new conserv-o-blog on the block. Welcome The Vespiary, a great blog with an ever clever schema for post titles.

I’ll be spending a lot of time over the next few months in the same building as the UVa surplus property center and will undoubtably be posting some photos of soon-to-be-auctioned-off gems here at Do I Really. I just might have to rename this blog Don’t I Really Want to Buy That and Stick It In My Living Room? Here’s the kick-off: a cryogenic preservation system. Per the wikipedia entry, cryogenics is “branch of physics and engineering that involves the study of very low temperatures, how to produce them, and how materials behave at those temperatures.” As I snapped some photos, I was thinking (hyperglycemic-ally so, I should note) … what would happen if I tossed a time-capsule of 19th-21st century library collections materials in there? A couple books in various types of bindings, some documents representing everything from rag paper to western union telegrams, some CDs, 16mm b/w film with mag sound, some color photos and their negatives, and perhaps a few artifacts and paintings for good measure? Just how well “preserved” would these materials be when immersed in liquid nitrogen or helium?


I think the answer is fairly obvious: the liquid cryogens plus the organic materials and media would probably not interact well, thermal shock (mentioned in the wikipedia article) aside. But it was fun to think about snapping this beauty up and reserving a place for it in my new lab, just in case the next “phase” of conservation is cryogenics.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)