Melissa --

If interleaving is necessary, use the thinnest
possible, acid-free paper or mylar.  Bond paper is
thick and would put undue stress on the bindings; it
will warp the boards and bindings over time. Not all
bond-paper is acid-free and such paper is rarely
buffered to prevent acid migration (the normal reason
for interleaving.) 

Be prepared to re-interleave every time someone pages
through an issue.  We were trying to preserve various
hand-bound items in our archives/special collections
area and used mylar sheets to protect each such volume
from its neighbors.  Every couple of weeks someone
from the library staff had to go back to that area and
straighten out the mess.  Museum staff,visiting
researchers and curatorial interns frequently
consulted items like the Director's correspondence
(from the 1880's-1920's). Hardly a person bothered to
place the mylar sheets back between the volumes when
reshelving them.

When were the Fortune magazines published?  Are they
the oversize format (like old Life and Look magazines
used?)  Lay them flat on the shelves.  Unless
temperature fluctuations, high humidity and/or insects
are a problem, putting them flat on open steel shelves
(baked enamel finish) is your best bet.  

If you're concerned about the possibility of mold or
infestation then store them flat in a phase box to
provide a better micro-environment.  Numerous libary
and archival product companies sell phase boxes.  It's
possible to construct them yourself from acid-free or
buffered material -- a group of craft-y volunteers
would be ideal for this.  

What type of paper were they printed on?  Is is glossy
with a plastic coating, or the matte-finish paper (I'm
thinking of the paper that Life magazine used in the
40's and 50's).  

In addition to warping of the bindings and the pages, 
if humidity levels rise too much, or if there is any
situation involving water, the wrong type of
interleaving material can end up stuck to the pages.

Whatever you choose to do is apt to involve trade-offs
and will be costly.  For instance, the weight of the
magazines, plus the weight of the interleaving will
make it more difficult to retrieve and return the
issues to storage, and you may find you need to
reinforce the shelving to handle the extra weight.

Out of curiosity why are you preserving Fortune
magazines?  Did they belong to members of the family
who owned Redcliffe Plantation? are they connected to
some other famous person?

Judith Campbell Turner
Whitefish Bay, WI   (where she could do with a lot
more  warmth and a bit more humidity right about now.)
  


--- Melissa Jolley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> The curator prior to me left a list of priority
> projects. One of these 
> included storage for our collection of Fortune
> magazines. It was suggested 
> to interleave between every page with bond paper,
> but I have not been able 
> to find any information to know if this would be the
> best option for 
> storage. Would interleaving between every page
> stress the binding of the 
> magazine? Also, is it necessary? I would appreciate
> any suggestions for 
> storage.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Melissa Jolley
> Curator, Redcliffe Plantation State Historic Site
> Beech Island, SC
> 
>
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