Pimp My Atlas? I think not.

7 November 2010 - The damage assessment is being done - page by page, volume by volume. For now, Judith Geerts has taken over from Jean-Marieke Poot and is charting the damages by putting them in a database. This is necessary to get an idea of the amount of time and money needed for restoration.

Once the Atlas has been digitized in its entirety, the actual volumes will be stored under ideal conditions. In the future only someone with very good reasons for wanting to see the real thing will have access to these volumes. The maps can be studied in digital form.
Because of this, restoration will be done conservatively in both senses of the word: to conserve, but not extensively. This is not a case of Pimp my Atlas; these are old books, and they may look like old books. What needs to be done is what helps preserve the books. Not make them look like new.

One of the things that will be done, is undoing some previous restorations. In the nineteenseventies filmoplast. It was the successor of adhesive tape like sellotape - a panacea for repairing tears. Better than sellotape, that discolors, loosens and leaves traces of glue. Sellotape was replaced by the almost colorless filmoplast.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, so it seems now. Restorers now shake their heads when the see filmoplast in an old book. Because it does discolor, and it does leave traces of glue, which corrodes the original paper. So off it has to come. If a tear needs repairing, there are more reliable ways. Like grandmother's starch to glue thin Japanese paper over the tear.