According to Raymond Craig Sanders:
>
>         We recently received a donation of mineral and
> rock specimens in which the labels and notes that accompanied
> the material are even more problematical than usual. Some of
...........................overgrown with mildew and quite fragile.
> The information on the notes varies from the terse and obvious
> ("pyrite") to the utterly inscrutable, with a certain amount
> of perfectly good, useful documentation along the way.
>         I am wondering what to do with these badly compromised
> bits of paper.
 
Refer to a paper in Collection Forum entitled, "Archival
storage of disintegrating labels from fluid-preserved
specimens" by Carla H. Kishinami (1989, Vol. 5 No.1 pp.1-4).
The principles are similar - the original labels are
disintegrating, are dried, then stored in mylar sleeves
separately from the specimens.  Reprints might be available
from the author (Bishop Museum in Honolulu) if Collection Forum
is not in your library.
 
------
Paisley S. Cato, Ph.D.                          e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Curator of Collections                          phone:  703-666-8634
Virginia Museum of Natural History              fax:    703-632-6487
1001 Douglas Ave., Martinsville, VA 24112