Living in the County Archive: Licking County Children's Home Visitor Log
We return to records from the Licking County Children’s Home for April’s “Living in the County Archive”. This month we are looking at one of our more fragile books from 1889-1901, “Licking County Children’s Home Visitor Log”. Many records from the 19 th and 20 th century were made with wood-pulp paper, a highly acidic material, which is likely to deteriorate more rapidly over time unless handled properly. Acids tend to break down in the presence of heat, light, and moisture in the air. Combine that with years of oils from the different hands that wrote in the pages in the record, and the general wear-and-tear of being used more frequently, this record requires a little more care than some of the Archive’s other materials. Keeping the record in our archive, which is temperature controlled and maintained by a dehumidification system, helps to keep this record from further decline. However, due to this book’s already fragile state it is kept in an archival box designed to fit the re