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Preservation

To keep and preserve its extensive and valuable heritage, BN develops activities of conservation, restoration, digitation and microfilming. All the actions aimed at security and preservation of the set of works, are carried out from the Risk Management Plan – Safeguard and Emergency. Learn more.
Modelos de acondicionamento primário para documentos planos (envelope de poliéster)
Modelos de acondicionamento secundário para documentos planos (caixa telescópica)
Procedimento de encadernação
Procedimento de encadernação
Exemplo de reestruturação do suporte da capa de um livro.
Modelos de acondicionamento para livros (caixa em cruz).
Modelos de acondicionamento para livros (invólucro de preservação)
Modelos de acondicionamento para livros (caixa portifólio)
Procedimentos de higienização de livros
Procedimento de higienização de mapa com pó de borracha.
Manuscrito em restauração na Biblioteca Nacional
Restauração de um manuscrito
Manuscrito em restauração na Biblioteca Nacional

The maintenance and preservation of Brazilian National Library’s (BN) cultural assets are under the library’s responsibility, including the extensive and valuable heritage, as well as the construction that shelters it.

All the actions aimed at BN building and heritage’s security and preservation are taken through the Risk Management Plan – Safeguard and Emergency. It is important to detach the performance of a civil fire brigade, responsible for the heritage’s monitoring 24 hours a day in the Headquarters, Gustavo Capanema, the Annex and the Reading House.

The Preservation encompasses activities as conservation, restoration, digitization and microfilming. 

Heritage Conservation

The actions of conservation have the purpose to improve the support’s physical state and to promote its long-term preservation in order to hold its heritage in trust for future generations.

Preventive Conservation

Encompasses all Brazilian National Library’s collection, regardless its state of conservation, and includes measures and actions with the intention of minimizing future deteriorations or losses. Examples: necessary procedures for handling and support, sanitation, storage, preservation, packaging and transport, security, environment control (light, humidity, atmospheric pollution and pests control), emergency plans and staff training.

Restorative Conservation

It is characterized by the actions directly applied on the heritage, with the purpose to stop harmful processes or to strengthen its structure. It is desirable to be taken in a relatively short time so that the heritage returns to its storage place, providing public access. Examples: recovery of damaged bindings, torn pages repair, grafts in missing parts of the internal layout or the cover, and planning of documents.

Brazilian National Library Conservation Actions

  • Diagnosis of the heritage state of conservation.
  • Heritage’s on-site sanitation, which means, done on sanitation tables in its own areas, as an action of the preventive conservation program.
  • Heritage’s sanitation in the Center of Conservation and Binding (CCE) as a restorative conservation first step.
  • Restorative Conservation, which covers all the institution’s heritage storage areas.
  • Packaging to reduce deterioration processes and to prevent new damages.
  • Binding of general and periodical heritage, as a support damage and loss prevention and recovery of special heritage’s bindings.
  • Brazilian National Library ‘s Assembly of expositions.
  •  Follow-up and control of the expositions assembly, in case of institution’s heritage loan, with the production of conservation technical reports.
  • Accomplishment of technical inspection with the production of heritage’s conservation technical assessments.
  • Participation in courses and lectures.
  • Trainees Training in CCE.
  • Draw up of climatological reports and their respective diagnosis in order to oversee the acclimatization of some BN key areas, including collections’ storage places, vault room, Center of Conservation and the laboratories: of Restoration, of Digitization and Microfilming.
Restoration

The Brazilian National Library has a Restoration Laboratory that treats, primarily, works that most suffered for the action of time in the heritage of Rare Works, Manuscripts, Cartography, Iconography and Music and Sound Archives. With high technical qualification, its professionals also act as instructors, researchers and consultants in trainings and projects in the segment of heritage restoration.

Steps of the restoration process:

  • Entrance (arrival of documents and photographic register)
  • Diagnosis (form fulfilling containing information about the work)
  • Sanitation
  • Numeration
  • Disassembly of the work (in case of books)
  • Sanitation with rubber powder
  • Tests for observation of pigments solubility
  • Baths (cleansing and deacidification)
  • Central reinforcement with Japanese paper/ methylcellulose
  • MOP – Leaf casting machine (refibering of the losses/gaps)
  • Revision
  • Microfilming
  • Digitation
  • Binding / packaging
Digitation

The heritage’s digitation plays basic role in original documents preservation, since it allows the access to its content, avoiding unnecessary handling. For the capture of digital archives, standards and norms are adopted which will guarantee its preservation for a long term, as well as the quality of the access through the derived images produced for transmission on the Internet.

The capture is made from the original document or microfilm in a modern and well-equipped Digitation Laboratory, endowed with planetary scanners, that do not cause damages to the collection, digital backs, scanner for large size material and scanners for microfilm. The wide range of equipment meet the diverse types of materials specificity present in the Brazilian National Library’s collection.

For the safely storage of digital archives, allowing its use by future generations, a data processing center was created, sheltering the institutional database, as well as the archives produced by BN Digital and by the digitation projects.

The criteria for digitation are:

  • Need of security for technical reserve creation;
  • To be in Public Domain or to have authorized reproduction by the rights holder;
  • Rarity, uniqueness, chronology, deterioration or fragility;
  • Demand of users;
  • Use in editions, expositions, institutional researches and other national or international events;
  • To be restored or microfilmed;

To complement or to be complemented by digital collections of other institutions.

Microfilming

From the year 1944, the Brazilian National Library adopted the microfilming process as an important way of documentary preservation due to its characteristics of durability, longevity and allegiance to the original contents. The microfilm is a steady support, it has definite techniques and standards and the greatest characteristic that defines it, as means of preservation is its life expectancy, which can reach to 500 years.

The microfilming in BN was initiated with titles edited in the 21st century, many collections highly consulted, incomplete, spoiled and existing only in private heritage. In 1978 the National Plan of Brazilian Periodicals Microfilming was created with the general purpose of locating, recovering and preserving the serial collections of Brazil.