Sylvia,

The answer is the classic "it depends". See Greene and Meissner's "More
Product, Less Process" for a good discussion on staples in 20th Century
archival collections.

http://ahc.uwyo.edu/documents/faculty/greene/papers/Greene-Meissner.pdf

Robert
NPS Archivist



                                                                           
             Sylvia Bruner                                                 
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in the past at my museum our policy has been to remove metal staples from
documents that have been accepted into our archives.  The main reasons are
to prevent further staining of the paper by the metal rusting,to prevent
the papers from being torn and to place acid free interleaving papers
between each piece.

Recently though, we acquired an original manuscript of a locally written
book.  In the last section, there are multiple pages with small colored
paper slips stapled on both sides to the letter-sized page.  A question of
integrity arose at the collections meeting - if we remove all of those
staples and separate all of the paper slips by interleaving them with acid
free paper, are we disturbing the original intent of the author who put it
together?   And, if they are fairly modern staples and therefore stainless
steel and shouldn't rust, do we need to remove them in the first place?  Of
course, this still leaves the multiple slips of paper touching the
"backing" page - none of which would appear to be acid free.

Suggestions appreciated!

Sylvia

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