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Most people have heard the terms vellum and parchment, but few know that these writing surfaces were originally made of animal skin. Parchment was originally any animal skin that had been readied for writing, while vellum referred specifically to “paper” made from calfskin. (Calf in Latin is vitulus.) Just as calfskin leather is categorized as a superior form of leather, vellum is the highest quality of parchment. Some steps in leather and parchment/vellum preparation are the same (removing hair, for instance), while others are unique. Leather is tanned and limed, while parchment is just limed. This means parchment often reacts to changes in humidity and is not waterproof. Business disaster recovery companies must be cognizant of these properties when providing parchment and vellum document restoration, as explained below.

In an age of technology, where “print” is now proliferated online via websites, eBooks, and blogs, it’s a wonder the significance that paper still holds in the day-to-day. Technology continues to grow at an increasingly rapid rate, archived books will remain a vitally important aspect of our history and our future.

You can cut company costs by storing all of your company’s important documents digitally through a process known as document imaging. Document imaging – a term commonly interchanged with document scanning – involves making digital copies of your documents and storing them on a hard drive or server. Whether your company is large or small, it can benefit from document imaging. In a business world where printing costs are on the rise, digitizing important documents not only saves storage pace, but it helps protect your key files from disaster and provides additional accessibility that cannot be achieved using the hard copy form.

The process of restoring water-damaged books can be complicated, time-consuming, and costly, so it is no wonder that institutions such as museums, libraries, and schools are constantly looking for new and effective ways to prevent water damage as well as plans of action if such damage does occur. Rare book rooms are common in most major libraries and bookstores in the country, and some museums and organizations are home to the most valuable, important pieces of literary history. The American Bible Society’s Rare Book Collection contains the first edition of the King James Bible, the Rare Book & Special Collections division of the Library of Congress houses hundreds of first-edition books from throughout American history, and even most colleges and universities have very important rare book collections. When these collections are damaged by water or mold, the institutions that house them not only face a significant financial loss, the world loses a vital part of its history as well.