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Miriam Meislik wrote the ARCLIST ________________ Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 8:14 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Thinner CD-R cases?; Archiving Temperatures?;CD-RCaseLabelling? There is a hub label for CDs that is available. They are also available in an acid free/foil backed version from University Products. I have tried a couple and they seem to work well. This is what I intend to use to label our CDs and the DVDs that we will be creating for an ongoing digitization project. For us this appears to be the best labeling solution. Miriam ___________ University Products has a line of archival supplies, correct? What claims do they make for the long term safety and efficacy of these foil labels? They could be appropriate. Metal foil may have advantages over paper as regards concerns about dust, acid and manufacturing chemicals as well as being thinner. If thin enough, they might hairline tear rather than force a disc to curl if any sort of shrinkage or expansion were occurring. A lighter more plastic friendly adhesive might also be on them (something to check but foil is different then paper and a superior as well as thinner adhesive system was perhaps available). I concur with an earlier comment to this thread: the original Jewel boxes are not very inspiring. I have had hinges break all the time. The cases are brittle. Whatever plastic they are made with there is probably plasticizers or other additives or manufacturing chemical leftovers that are not something one would feel good about. Pressing the discs onto the hubs seems to take appreciable force (some models) as well as puling the discs off of the hubs. The special features of the slim cases previous mentioned sound good. Archival appropriate sleeves for photographs or photographic negatives might also be okay to use on the discs (must be checked out though). If the sleeved discs are packed into appropriate sized archival boxes (on edge, single row, not tight) what would be the problem? If these discs really do sag with age that would be a huge problem. Phonograph records are stored on edge with out center support (using sleeves inside of original jackets (where appropriate and available)--all of that placed into specially designed archival boxes that hold several, are they not? Are there problems with doing that? Are CD and DVD discs less robust in this respect then phonograph records? So far as I know original phonographic labels are left on the archived originals. This is probably a case of "if it is not broken don't fix it" plus the labels are an important part of the archival artifact being stored. I have raised a few possibilities here to coax responses from those on this list who know more about these matters. None of my questions are rhetorical. Ralph Bradley Family Voices, family archive services Maryville, Tennessee