Feel free to print this out for your archives or send a copy to every journalist you know. Click through for a high-res version.
Will you be handling photographs? You might need to wear gloves. Are you a bandleader, performing a medical procedures, or Mickey Mouse? You are already wearing gloves. Otherwise? Go crazy with those naked fingers (but not too crazy, you’re in an archives!)
Tags: white gloves
Derangement and Description 
January 13, 2014 at 10:25 am |
I might send this to the idiot professor who supervised me at my internship. She was appalled when I told her that I didn’t use gloves to handle paper. I was appalled when she didn’t realize that I’d be more likely to break crumbling paper that way.
January 13, 2014 at 4:06 pm |
I wear gloves (and anyone who works for me) for two reasons, yourself and the materials. You know where you have been but you don’t know where the materials has been. If you wash your hands or use hand santizer you are getting a chemical on the materials.
I don’t intend to put my bare hands (or anyone elses who works for me) on roach droppings, blood, chemicals or God only knows what.
Let me also say I been wearing gloves for years; cotton and “medical” and I (and the people that work for me) haven’t “broken” anything in a very long time.
January 13, 2014 at 4:39 pm |
I wear gloves when I can, handling nonfragile paper, partly to protect my hands. Paper sops up all the natural oils, leaving one’s hands dry. I’ve suffered so much cracking and even bleeding from this dryness that gloves are my usual solution. There’s also paper cuts to consider. And the fact that the paper sopping up oils is more likely to collect dirt where the oils are (although we’re talking really small amounts here). I used to illustrate that for workshops by taking a bit of cooking oil and dripping it onto paper, then putting some dirt onto the paper. The dirt stuck where the oil had been dripped, of course.
January 14, 2014 at 4:34 am |
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/08/white-gloves-or-not-white-gloves.html
January 14, 2014 at 10:38 am |
http://raglinen.com/2012/04/02/the-white-glove-myth/
January 14, 2014 at 6:57 pm |
Reblogged this on Adventures in Librarying.
January 17, 2014 at 6:38 am |
Reblogged this on Behind the Spines and commented:
To glove or not to glove… Although this funny chart comes from an archives blog, it touches upon a contentious issue in the world of historic and special collections libraries as well: the use of the “white glove”. For an article on common misperceptions about the use of these gloves, see http://archive.ifla.org/VI/4/news/ipnn37.pdf
January 18, 2014 at 2:49 pm |
Tweeted this; why not Twitter button on your blog?
January 19, 2014 at 5:47 pm |
I’ve handled hundreds of 16th-century MSS & prints and a smaller number of parchment MSS without gloves — they and I seem to be fine. But now I’m a faculty member at a public research university, and the librarian puts recently published facsimiles in a locked cabinet, and requires that we use gloves to handle a modern paper facsimile, which is consulted maybe a few times a year. I’ve never been in a library that required gloves for a modern facsimile on acid-free paper.
January 22, 2014 at 10:01 am |
[…] Handy Flowchart (Derangement and Description) […]
February 7, 2014 at 8:43 am |
[…] Derangement and Description is the best source for archival humor (as if we had more than one). The best one last month was the helpful infographic, Do I Need to Wear Gloves in the Archives? […]
May 21, 2014 at 12:45 pm |
[…] of my favorite graphics, created by Rebecca Goldman and on her blog “Derangement and Description“, is a flow chart about using gloves. It is hanging by my computer. The first question is […]
March 20, 2016 at 8:30 pm |
[…] https://derangementanddescription.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/do-i-need-to-wear-gloves-in-the-archives-… […]
July 27, 2016 at 5:25 am |
[…] need gloves to handle paper records. The wonderful Rebecca Goldman (@derangedescribe) even did a handy (pun intended) flow chart – […]
December 21, 2017 at 8:03 am |
[…] (https://derangementanddescription.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/do-i-need-to-wear-gloves-in-the-archives-…/) From Derangement and Description, Click on the link for a hi-res version. […]
March 27, 2020 at 2:01 pm |
[…] Do I need to wear gloves in the archives? A helpful flow chart […]