Document Preservation

REMEMBER when comic books were considered too juvenile to be read? Now it appears that they have become too valuable to be touched. A company in Sarasota, Fla., has created a sensation among collectors by taking their comic books, both rare vintage issues and brand-new ones, and encasing them in plastic slabs that make them both unreadable and instantly more valuable. The Captain Marvel and Donald Duck comic books that arrive at the offices of the Certified Guaranty Co.

Martina Metzler peers at the piles of paper strips spread across four desks in her office. Seeing two jagged edges that match, her eyes light up and she tapes them together. "Another join, another small success," she says with a wry smile -- even though at least two-thirds of the sheet is still missing. Metzler, 45, is a "puzzler," one of a team of eight government workers that has attempted for the last 14 years to manually restore documents hurriedly shredded by East Germany's secret police, or Stasi, in the dying days of one of the Soviet bloc's most repressive regimes.

In Chinatown's Central Plaza, elderly men sit on benches sipping milk tea, old women nosily shuffle mah-jongg tiles and cooks clack metal spatulas against their woks, filling the air with the pungent aroma of ginger and garlic. Overlooking this scene is a white, three-story building guarded by a pair of stone lions. Venturing up the building's darkened stairway to the top floor is like entering a time capsule that tells the history of Chinatown and the community that grew from it.

Fifteen years ago, nearly 52,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses began sharing their stories with a group that would come to be known as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. The testimonies, averaging about two hours each, were documented on videotape, a format whose quality deteriorates over time.

From pollution problems of global proportions to regional concern with crumbling adobe, from the effects of tourism on ancient monuments to the ravages of sunlight on contemporary murals, a high-level forum on art conservation, held Monday at the County Museum of Art, hammered away on threats to the world's cultural heritage.

Historical government files that chronicle the lives of immigrants in the U.S. will become part of the National Archives instead of being destroyed, officials announced Wednesday. The files could reveal the untold stories of millions of immigrants, including scores of Jews who fled Europe after World War II and Chinese who came to the U.S. as part of the diaspora.

Culminating a lengthy legal battle, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office has agreed to preserve indefinitely all files dealing with death penalty cases or cases that result in life sentences, according to settlement documents obtained Wednesday by The Times. Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley also agreed to preserve all felony files for at least 25 years and all misdemeanor files for five years.

Hoping to preserve fading and fragile architectural diagrams, the Irvine Co. has launched an ambitious effort to digitally scan and archive all hand-drawn maps of its many commercial properties. The project is designed to help the Irvine Co.'s property managers work more efficiently--and help the company sign leasing deals more quickly, staff said.

More than 22,000 ancient manuscripts from the archives of a Greek Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos in Thessaloniki, Greece, will be digitally copied by the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center at Claremont Graduate University. The center, which said it pioneered the use of digital imaging technologies on the deteriorated Dead Sea Scrolls, reached agreement with the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Greece to undertake the project.

A first-of-its-kind modernization plan to place property records, birth certificates and a host of other county documents onto compact discs won enthusiastic approval Tuesday from the Board of Supervisors. The effort will likely make the county clerk-recorder's office one of the first government agencies nationwide to fully computerize the documents it records, saving the county--as well as record-seeking members of the public--both time and money.

Martina Metzler peers at the piles of paper strips spread across four desks in her office. Seeing two jagged edges that match, her eyes light up and she tapes them together. "Another join, another small success," she says with a wry smile -- even though at least two-thirds of the sheet is still missing. Metzler, 45, is a "puzzler," one of a team of eight government workers that has attempted for the last 14 years to manually restore documents hurriedly shredded by East Germany's secret police, or Stasi, in the dying days of one of the Soviet bloc's most repressive regimes.

Historical government files that chronicle the lives of immigrants in the U.S. will become part of the National Archives instead of being destroyed, officials announced Wednesday. The files could reveal the untold stories of millions of immigrants, including scores of Jews who fled Europe after World War II and Chinese who came to the U.S. as part of the diaspora.

Fifteen years ago, nearly 52,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses began sharing their stories with a group that would come to be known as the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. The testimonies, averaging about two hours each, were documented on videotape, a format whose quality deteriorates over time.

REMEMBER when comic books were considered too juvenile to be read? Now it appears that they have become too valuable to be touched. A company in Sarasota, Fla., has created a sensation among collectors by taking their comic books, both rare vintage issues and brand-new ones, and encasing them in plastic slabs that make them both unreadable and instantly more valuable. The Captain Marvel and Donald Duck comic books that arrive at the offices of the Certified Guaranty Co.

In Chinatown's Central Plaza, elderly men sit on benches sipping milk tea, old women nosily shuffle mah-jongg tiles and cooks clack metal spatulas against their woks, filling the air with the pungent aroma of ginger and garlic. Overlooking this scene is a white, three-story building guarded by a pair of stone lions. Venturing up the building's darkened stairway to the top floor is like entering a time capsule that tells the history of Chinatown and the community that grew from it.

It all comes down to touch. David and Marsha Karpeles sift through their collection of yellowing documents and think about the people who first handled them and about the faded but still vibrant words they wrote. There's Pope Lucius III as he gave instructions to his knights on the eve of the Third Crusade. Thomas Jefferson as he gave voice to a young nation's dreams for itself. Abraham Lincoln as he ended legal slavery in the midst of the Civil War.

Culminating a lengthy legal battle, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office has agreed to preserve indefinitely all files dealing with death penalty cases or cases that result in life sentences, according to settlement documents obtained Wednesday by The Times. Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley also agreed to preserve all felony files for at least 25 years and all misdemeanor files for five years.

Guillermo Sheridan had a bitter smile as he scrolled down the list of acquisitions by Princeton University: The papers of Carlos Fuentes, Miguel Angel Asturias, Julio Cortazar, Elena Garro--even a lesser known Mexican poet named Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano. "We Mexicans always sell our raw materials," he remarked acidly, stopping at Ortiz's name on his computer screen. "Coffee, copper--and this."

In an Ethiopian mountaintop monastery. In a stable on the island of Malta. In the ancestral castle of a German prince. In every remnant of our medieval past, the manuscripts are sought. They are wrinkled, some of them, and smudged--page after ancient page of parchment scribbled in a cramped and crabby script. Others are gorgeous, afire with art, shimmering with golden ink. They may tell of St. George slaying the dragon. Or relate a recipe for stew. They may tote up a carouser's debt.

More than 22,000 ancient manuscripts from the archives of a Greek Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos in Thessaloniki, Greece, will be digitally copied by the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center at Claremont Graduate University. The center, which said it pioneered the use of digital imaging technologies on the deteriorated Dead Sea Scrolls, reached agreement with the Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies in Greece to undertake the project.