Preservation of Reference Materials Owned by the Elementary School attached to Nara Womenʼs University

Abstract

This paper introduces a document preservation project at the Elementary School attached to Nara Womenʼs University as an initiative undertaken to safeguard school archives. Documents from the time of the inception of the school in 1911 are stored at the premises. However, many records were printed on acid paper, and thus, are deteriorating with time. A document preservation project, primarily by universities, was launched in 2014 to address such problems. It is generally believed that acid paper has a life of 100 years, and many documents at the school are already difficult to decipher because of the deterioration of the paper on which they were written.

Thus far, the central issue in the preservation of school documents has been the retention of archived material. However, even if these records are protected from loss or disposal, they will be difficult to use for reference or research if the deterioration of the paper affects their legibility.

In other words, an important future consideration is the preservation of the contents of the documents along with the records themselves, both at the Elementary School attached to Nara Womenʼs University and at other schools housing such archived records.