The Quiet Archive

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READING PASSAGE 1

The Quiet Archive

How an accident in a cold store changed the way libraries think about time

A

In the winter of 1964 a refrigeration fault in a provincial library left a basement of uncatalogued paper at just below freezing for eleven weeks. When the fault was found, the librarian expected ruin. Instead the documents were in markedly better condition than comparable material two floors above. Nobody had set out to test anything, and no one wrote it up for a decade.

B

The first deliberate trials, in the early seventies, were disappointing. Researchers froze and thawed sample volumes repeatedly, reasoning that if cold was good then more cold would be better. Bindings cracked, and the ink of several nineteenth-century ledgers lifted cleanly away from the page. The conclusion drawn at the time was that the basement had simply been lucky.

C

What the early trials missed was stability. It is not low temperature that preserves paper but the absence of change: a collection held steadily at four degrees outlasts one cycled between two and twelve, even though the second is colder on average. Modern facilities therefore spend far more on insulation and monitoring than on cooling itself, and a well-run store may run its compressors for only a few hours a week.

D

The approach has since spread well outside libraries. Seed banks, film archives and one national collection of magnetic tape all use the same principle, and the tape archivists in particular argue that they arrived at it independently. Whether the idea was borrowed or reinvented is still argued over at conferences, usually late in the evening.

E

Critics make a different point, and it has not been answered. A cold store consumes energy for as long as it exists, and an archive is by definition meant to exist indefinitely. Preserving a collection for four centuries means four centuries of electricity bills, and no institution can honestly promise that. The awkward question is not whether the method works, but who will still be paying for it in 2400.

FIXTURE 2Renderer Fixture · Questions 1–12

Read the passage and answer Questions 1-12.

Questions 1-5Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list below.

List of Headings

  • iA discovery nobody was looking for
  • iiThe cost of storing what we already know
  • iiiEarly attempts and why they failed
  • ivDisagreement among the first researchers
  • vHow the method works in practice
  • viUses beyond the original field
  • viiObjections that have not gone away

You may use any option only once.

  • 1Paragraph A
  • 2Paragraph B
  • 3Paragraph C
  • 4Paragraph D
  • 5Paragraph E

Questions 6-9Do the following statements agree with the information given in the passage?

6The 1964 refrigeration fault was part of a planned experiment.
7The early trials damaged some of the material they tested.
8The librarian who found the fault later published the results.
9A steadily cooled collection can outlast a colder but variable one.

Questions 10-12Complete the summary below.

What preserves paper is not cold itself but 10. A well-run store may therefore run its compressors for only a few 11 a week. Critics answer that an archive meant to last for centuries commits itself to centuries of 12 bills.

All Reading question types