How To Remove Post It Note Stain

Even in the conservation lab of the Smithsonian Institution Athenaeum, land of acid-free bookmarks and conservation-grade adhesives, I recently found myself looking high and depression for a practical Post-it note. It was the perfect way to temporarily label a jar of adhesive for one twenty-four hours's use, instead of cutting out a small piece of paper and taping information technology to the jar. So much extra work! Created around 1960 by Fine art Fry and Silvery Spencer (legend has information technology that they were trying to create a strong, durable adhesive but kept making this weak low-tack adhesive by blow), the apprehensive Post-it note is at present a fixture of office culture. So simple and easy to use, what is there not to beloved about them?!

Visitors' doodle images of spacesuits and astronauts at the Columbia Memorial Space Museum, Downey,

Well…unfortunately, this bright and useful invention has a darker side for librarians and archivists around the globe. Not too long ago, conservation scientists at the National Archives and Records Administration conducted a battery of tests on Post-it notes and their competitors (future referred to as a sticky note), and ended that all sticky notes leave backside a harmful balance adhesive that attracts dirt and sticks to other papers or objects, no thing if yous remove information technology immediately or leave it on for years, and the dyes in some sticky notes volition run if moisture. Additionally, removing a viscid note from a fragile volume tin hands lift ink and tear pages, and the notes are ofttimes made of poor quality, acidic paper which will cause harm over time. Although the original Mail-information technology note developed for the 3M Visitor uses an acrylic adhesive which will not stain paper, other pasty notes are often made with a butyrate agglutinative that will discolor paper over time, then users beware! Consequently, near libraries and archives enforce a strict "NO Mail-It NOTES" rule.

Cordelia Rose Scroll: Treatment in progress - Left side after treatment, middle and right side befor

So, if yous will, imagine my joy tinged with horror when an unusual document, bearing some seventeen anxiety worth of sticky notes neatly tacked onto a seemingly endless scroll, came into the lab to exist conserved!

Cordelia Rose, former registrar of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, created this lengthy bluish, pink, green and yellowish flow nautical chart to describe how the registrar process worked in 1986-1987 and to explicate the database system they were using at the time. Merely every bit you tin can see, the pasty notes had become most ill-fated! Having already come loose and been readhered with a deteriorating double-sided record, they were stained, attracting dirt, curling at the edges and get-go to autumn off, leaving a disordered sticky mess.

Cordelia Rose Scroll: Detail of a post-it note. Most post-it notes had been re-adhered with a deter

Cordelia Rose Scroll: Back of post-it note showing double sided tape and adhesive residue, June 25,

After discussion with my colleagues, it was decided to readhere the notes in-situ, making it safety for digitization and for researchers to use. To do so, each note was carefully discrete with a heated scalpel, while whatsoever residue agglutinative was removed with a crepe eraser and methyl cellulose crumbs. Once the surface areas were make clean, the glutinous notes were carefully reattached in the same position with pocket-sized drops of Lascaux 360HV, a permanent yet reversible agglutinative. The Lascaux 360HV remains slightly tacky at room temperature, which allows the sticky notes to remain slightly flexible equally the scroll is rolled and unrolled. Finally, a custom whorl box was made following instructions from our good friends at the Freer-Sackler, who handle scrolls far more often than we do at the Archives.

Cordelia Rose Scroll: Applying methyl cellulose crumbs to diminish the adhesive residue caused by th

Stay tuned for a follow-upwards mail service by my colleague, archivist Jennifer Wright, who volition explain why we are preserving and archiving the sticky notation thoughts of Cordelia Rose! [UPDATE: linked below]

Related Resources

"Scrolling" through Museum History, Jennifer Wright, The Bigger Motion picture
Suited for Space exhibition, guest notes on what they would bring to infinite sketched on sticky notes, Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service
Art Fry: Mail service-it Note Inventor, podcast, Lemelson Center