[Nhcoll-l] Freezing as preventative pest treatmenet

[Gali Beiner]

Dear Tonya,

We do freezing (at nearly -40 degrees celsius). Of course, everything is
lacked with as little air as possible within heat-sealed bags, plus a
filling of crumpled acid-free tissue as buffer if necessary.

However, I admit I do not see the need to freeze slides as they aren't
normally attractive to pests. What may need freezing is the organic
(usually cardboard) boxes or folders housing the slides. In this case,
freezing glass may be avoided either by putting the slides in a new
housing, or taking them out of the existing one and only freezing it before
returning the slides into it. Would that be possible for you, or is the
slide collection too large for this?

If the answer is "too much bother, large collection / difficult housing"
then I'll say that it is possible to freeze within the housing, which
usually being cardboard would provide much buffer material, but you should
add more (crumpled tissue) both as buffer and padding. I always worry about
freezing glass, due to fears of shattering due to vibration, but I did
freeze some and it came out perfectly fine. Slides held well in their
casing (in our case we had folders where each slide had its own slot) will
probably be ok in terms of glass integrity. Slides stacked freely within
boxes are a case where I'd rather change the box or freeze only the box.

Cheers,

Gali

בתאריך יום ה׳, 15 באפר׳ 2021, 1:59, מאת Haff, Tonya (NCMI, Crace)
‏<Tonya.Haff at csiro.au>:

> Hello all,
>
> I am wondering if any of you have insight into freezing everything in a
> collection before moving in to a new building. Specifically, I am wondering
> about things like slides. Are histology, etc slides safe to be frozen at
> -30 to -40C? Is there anything else that I should be thinking about?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Tonya
>
> Dr Tonya Haff
> Collection Manager
> Australian National Wildlife Collection
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