Resistance of Digitally and Traditionally Printed Materials to Bleed, Delamination, Gloss Change, and Planar Distortion During Flood

Abstract

It is imperative that cultural heritage institutions with digitally printed materials in their collections understand the sensitivities of these objects to water exposure during flood. Anecdotal evidence from institutions and the general public suggest that some digital print processes are extremely sensitive to water exposure. Understanding this vulnerability will be critical for institutions in modernizing their disaster response plans to include digital prints; inappropriate response could lead to loss of material due to its inherent sensitivity to water or due to contamination of adjacent collection materials through bleeding of the image-forming colorants. A variety of digital print types were immersed in water for 24 hours and then evaluated by measuring changes in color and gloss, and inspecting text readability, delamination, and or planar distortion. As expected, most prints experienced at least slight planar distortion; some, however, suffered extreme forms of damage including colorant bleed or complete delamination or dissolution of the image/text layer. Because the digital prints were often more sensitive than traditional prints to flood damage, results indicate that new flood response strategies should be developed for collections that contain these materials.