Poison and Pixels: The Role of Digitizing Collections in Hazardous Objects Preservation

• Lily Hearn, Art Conservation, University of Delaware

• Melissa Tedone, Art Conservation, University of Delaware

Material culture collections management, combined with digital asset management, is critical for balancing public access with occupational safety when managing hazardous museum and library objects. At Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware, an ongoing research initiative, known as the Poison Book Project, focuses on analyzing the infamous emerald green (copper acetoarsenite) pigmented bookcloth of Euro-American Victorian-era mass produced books for arsenic and other toxic heavy metals in their pigments, such as lead, chromium, and mercury. Since the toxic heavy metals may present a danger for many libraries, cultural institutions, and individual book collectors who could be unknowingly putting themselves at a significant risk when handling these mid-nineteenth century books, the project aims to provide accessible yet safe solutions to managing this collection. To avoid risks, the Poison Book Project assesses and documents books from the period in their Arsenical Book Database, using conservation grade, non-destructive analysis techniques such as X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Raman spectroscopy, and Visible and Near-Infrared spectroscopy (Vis-NIR) which are used to identify and confirm the presence of arsenic and other toxic heavy metals. In order to mitigate hazards and to optimize digital asset management, as well as to ensure adequate public accessibility, PastPerfect Museum Software Web Edition is being implemented to meet these needs. Through datamapping, the computational process that defines the relationships and equivalencies between disparate schemas, like the Arsenical Book Database and PastPerfect Museum Software’s established framework, a foundation was created for connecting the research, digital assets and their metadata. Methods such as pairing the previously established data fields to their exact new system destination in the new software, creating a project-specific user manual which includes instructions for formatting data, and developing procedures which ensure backward compatibility and long term usage of the software have all enabled this mechanism of the project to materialize. This development eliminates direct exposure risks, preserves the physical integrity of these museum objects, and facilitates accessible data commons for the public, researchers, and museum and library stakeholders.