A Matter of Preservation : History: Conservators at the National Archives function as artists and chemists to restore delicate documents.

Alan Puglia looked up proudly as he put the finishing touches on an old brown sheet of paper covered with handwritten names of soldiers.

He had spent days repairing holes and tears in the muster roll from the Massachusetts 54th Regiment--the black Civil War unit made famous by the movie “Glory.”

“Usually when we got them, they were all tri-folded and they had all been taped, extremely taped, with an animal adhesive and very wide cloth tape all over the documents. Any one document we figured had upward of 30 feet of tape on it,” said Puglia, a conservator at the National Archives.

The muster roll was one of about 1,800 pages in 14 bound volumes that were recently repaired at the archives due to heightened reference interest caused by the movie.

The tape was removed using a methyl cellulose poultice, Puglia said. The documents then were humidified and flattened, with many so large they had to be manhandled into polyester sleeves.

Working in a room that’s a cross between art studio and chemistry lab, Puglia is one of 25 employees who run a daily race against time, temperature, light and humidity.

Dressed in white coats and cotton gloves, conservators of the nation’s most important federal documents patch holes, mend tears, kill mold and strip acid from papers and photographs. They also rebind books, repair photographs and prepare some documents to be microfilmed and taken out of general circulation.

Their tools are both ancient and modern, from tiny strips of fine Japanese paper and wheat paste to humidifiers, de-ionizers and chemical baths.

Around them are work tables strewn with plastic sheets topped by tent-shaped signs warning: “Caution!! Object Below.”

On a recent day, those “objects” included a House-Senate resolution signed in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln; some medieval Hebrew manuscripts that came to the archives through the State Department in the 1930s; and the first U.S. Senate Journal, dated March 4, 1789.

The humans are trying to keep a step ahead of the destructive elements, supervisory conservator Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler said. “I’m certain that we’re winning the battle, but the battle is gigantic, ever-growing.”

The National Archives and Records Administration, on Pennsylvania Avenue, is the federal filing cabinet. It contains 4 billion pages of texts, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; 11,000 reels of motion picture film dating to William McKinley’s presidential inauguration in 1897; 1.5 million maps and charts; and 160,000 sound recordings.

In fiscal 1988, the archives spent more than $6 million to conserve all types of records. A total of 121,700 cubic feet of records received some kind of maintenance that year, according to the archives’ annual report.

Preserving these records is the work of four labs, although the archives plans to expand the conservation staff and consolidate it in a new lab to be built in suburban College Park, Md.

Paper records present some unique problems. For one thing, paper has changed over the years, and not necessarily for the better.

Early in U.S. history, paper was made primarily from cotton and linen rags. But by the mid-19th Century, demand for paper outstripped the supply of rags, so papermakers began using ground wood pulp, bleaches and sizing. The result was more acidic paper, which is more prone to self-destruct, as well as to stain other sheets of paper that contact it.

The archives would like to see all government agencies use durable alkaline paper for everything from faxes to index cards, not just printed pages, said Don W. Wilson, archivist of the United States.

But John Chambers, a spokesman for Congress’ Joint Committee on Printing, said that’s not practical. The federal government buys 486,000 tons of paper a year, accounting for about 2.5% of U.S. paper industry sales, Chamber said.

“If you’re putting out the Senate phone book for this year, you don’t look to archival paper,” he said. On the other hand, the bound version of the daily Congressional Record is printed on archival paper.

Librarians have for years complained that books printed on acidic paper are disintegrating, and the awareness of the market for longer-lasting alkaline paper is increasing, Chambers said. He predicted the paper industry would move out of acid paper in the next four or five years.