One of my volunteers offered us a Foodsaver unit to seal the second layer of packaging around nitrate negative boxes that will be going into our new freezer. She works as an evidence tech for the police, and they use one all the time for preserving important evidence.
I had two concerns: the Foodsaver bag material, and the heat to seal the bag. I checked with Foodsaver and the bags are polyethylened with nylon reinforcement. So sounds like they might be okay. So that leaves the heat around the negatives. It’s a pretty short amount of time, so MAYBE it’s okay?? I don’t know. Other than potentially this, we will be following the methods from the NPS Conserveogram on sealing up packages for freezer storage.
I’m wondering: is anyone using Foodsaver bags and sealers for this or other archives and collections purposes?