Photo credit: Cheryl Fraser 

Welcome to a yucky edition of The Ounce, an occasional missive from Preservation Services about preventing damage to Harvard Library collections. We’ve tried to temper the unpleasant parts with comforting words like “puppy,” “fluffy,” and “dainty ruffle.”  

It has come to our attention that in the past two months, there have been two “accidents” involving what some politely call “rain catchers,” while others prefer “absorbent pads,” “puppy pads,” or “book diapers.” The incidents involved dirty diapers that were put into transport bins with clean ones or with library collections.  The dirty diapers contaminated their neighbors and saddled the receiving staff with a surprise mess to clean up.   

Managers, please share the following information with your student workers who pack or unpack bins! We’re not blaming them or anyone, but students might not see these HLComms messages. 

        
Photo credits: Rob Steere 

Please throw away rain catchers that are dirty, smelly, wet, torn, or contaminated with mysterious clear gel that resembles a whole pot of petroleum jelly (yup, that happened).  Save the clean ones, fold them up neatly, and then either reuse them or send a box or binful back to Harvard Depository for reuse. The rain catchers are paid for by Preservation Services, so don’t worry about being charged for throwing out dirty ones. 

Preservation Services has a webpage and also a video with bin-packing instructions that show how to correctly place clean rain catchers in hinged-lid bins.  We recommend using rain catchers all the time. As they say, if you don’t like the weather in Boston, just wait 15 minutes and it will change.   

Pro Tip: place the white fluffy absorbent side facing up and spread it to cover the whole opening of the bin, sides tucked slightly around the perimeter with the edges of the rain catcher sticking up like a dainty ruffle. 

Photo credit: Preservation Services