Connecting to Collections Care Online Community

Wall maps

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    • #135043
      Ellen Paul
      Participant

      We just received 3 large wall maps of our town which were drawn by a former town clerk in the 1960’s. The information on them is invaluable, but the maps themselves are in poor to fair condition. The maps have either been framed behind plexiglass or mounted on fiberboard with glue (yikes!) and then framed.
      We really want to conserve these maps or, at the very least, capture the information on them. Our museum is in Litchfield County, CT. Can anyone refer a resource for us?
      Thank you.

    • #135046
      Marianne Kelsey
      Participant

      I recommend looking on the American Institute for Conservation’s website & using their Find a Conservator search engine. The website is:
      http://www.conservation-us.org/

      And you can find a hyperlink to the Find a Conservator tool on the left of the homepage. Select Book and Paper for specialty, and see who is nearby. There is a high concentration of qualified professionals in the northeast. Good luck!

    • #135048
      Ellen Paul
      Participant

      Thank you. That’s just what I will do.

    • #135050
      Rebecca Gridley
      Participant

      Hi Ellen,

      I would also recommend using AIC’s Find A Conservator tool if you are interested in having the maps treated by a professional conservator.

      Given that the primary goal is to archive the information held in the maps rather than display them, digitization may be good alternative or additional option. There are larger regional labs that offer both conservation and digitization services. The Northeast Document Conservation Center outside of Boston comes to mind, for example. Scanning the maps ‘as-is’ to capture the information in them, and then archiving these scans may be a good option (but be sure they are in more stable digital file format like a DNG or TIFF, not a JPEG). If you are ever interested in displaying reproductions of the maps down the road, you could later pursue a “digital restoration” of the scans to reduce the appearance of any disfiguring damages. But it’s important to keep in mind that the maps will have to be unframed and possibly stabilized prior to digitization, which may require intervention by a conservator.

      Rebecca

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