I believe Mr. Aikens's basic question has been answered.  All (or nearly all)
collection artifacts should be treated equally in the sense that some basic
level of security, care, and safety should be accorded to all of them--but
some deserve higher levels on top of that.  As far as "redundancy" is
concerned, however, we should recognize that redundancy is not necessarily a
negative concept or a pejorative term.  In the museum world (and probably
many others), redundancy is sometimes good.  We've been reading about
redundancy in keeping multiple copies of Deeds of Gift in separate locations,
for example.  This is positive redundancy--redundancy in the interest of
security for documents.  One might also call this not putting all your eggs
in one basket.  Some collection objects demand multiple layers of security,
and this also is positive redundancy.

But I don't think the other part of Mr. Aikens's question has been answered
adequately yet.  Although a safe might be good for providing an extra layer
of security, might the micro-climate of a safe be harmful to certain kinds of
objects?  Could it speed deterioration?  I think the answer is yes, some
objects might not be safe in a safe.  It would be interesting if someone
could provide some discussion, based on either theoretical principles or
empirical observation, of objects which would not fare well in a safe.

David Haberstich

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