Putting It Into Practice

Evaluating Your Collections

Newsprint

Acidic and brittle newspaper issues and news clippings are often encountered in collections.

Newsprint is generally found in several formats within cultural collections: newspaper clippings within general document files, bound newspapers, loose newspapers, and newspaper clipping scrapbooks. Newsprint is almost uniformly made from poor quality paper and is usually very brittle, fragile, and darkened. Recent news clippings may still be in good condition, but they will ultimately be subject to the same deterioration processes. Clippings in scrapbooks may be further deteriorated due to the use of poor quality adhesives.