AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

The objective of this paper was the preservation of a document with a measure of 7.5 meters (295.2 ") wide by 0.7 meters (27.5”) long. It belongs to the Benemérita y Centenaria Escuela Normal del Estado de San Luis Potosí, (Meritorious and Centennial Normal School of San Luis Potosi, México), and has as title "Carta sincronológica de Historia Universal". It is a long strip conformed by 14 individual panels attached together and printed with a chromolithographic technique in four inks (black, red, blue and yellow). The document with the assistance of illustrations and texts, represents the history of humanity through multiple timelines, starting from the biblical creation of Adam and Eve (year 4000 a., according to the chart) to the year of 1884. This chart is a Spanish edition, printed in Guadalajara, Mexico, translated by Francisco J. Zavala, from the famous work in English of Sebastian. C. Adams the "Chronological Chart of Ancient, Modern and Biblical History", 1871. The graphic document was in a roll format and with has an auxiliary support made with fabric in the back. Apart from the damages caused by dust, moisture stains and microorganisms, the paper had serious structural problems that made impossible to manipulate or consult it without causing more physical damage to the support. The paper was separating in layers, generating losses in the form of flakes from the top layer of paper, which contains the printed information of the work. The conservation proposal was somewhat controversial, despite the fact that it were an essential part of the work, maintaining the original format of the roll, was detrimental to the preservation of the support, as the weakening and flakes losses was caused by the action of winding and unwinding of the roll. Preserve the roll format after a support´s consolidation, limits and restricts the use and study of the document. Considering that the work belongs to the library of a school in Mexico, its main value is to transmit the information contained within, and the possibility of generate more data from future study. After several discussions, it was decided to alter the original roll format to maintain plain the support paper, so the auxiliary fabric was removed, and changed for a Japanese paper lining and a structure of a folding screen was implemented, with separators added between the panels to make the folds in these separators without affecting the paper. This new format maintains the support paper plain, facilitates the consultation of individual panels, like the leaves of a book, at the same time that enables extend the document completely, which allows maintaining the notion of a work of great format.