Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is seeking technical expertise to restore and preserve 20,000 rare and archival documents. The archival records are in the form of printed books and bound volumes and there are no handwritten manuscripts.  

"There are approximately 20,000 folios (both sides) which require scientific preservation treatment. Standard norms for conservation regarding tissue paper, paste and Archival binding need to be followed," RBI said while inviting expression of interest from agencies having experience in preservation and conservation of old library documents.  

"The documents identified for preservation are old, delicate, fragile and brittle which need sophisticated handling techniques," the bid document said. The service provider, the RBI said, "must undertake" the preservation an conservation of the documents in the Bank's premises only.  

The work involves scientific repairing, removing "all the enemies" from the documents (such as iron pins, needles, cello and brown tapes), removing all stains from the documents, de-acidification and ink fixing. The RBI was established on April 1, 1935 and its Central Office was initially established in Calcutta but was permanently moved to Mumbai in 1937.  

The Central Office is where the Governor sits and policies are formulated. Though originally privately owned, since nationalisation in 1949, the Reserve Bank is fully owned by the Government of India. PTI