Preventive conservation is the creation of an environment in which the factors detrimental to the archival materials cannot exist. The control of proper environment, shelving and handling practices etc. are the basic requirements that are needed as preventive conservation measures of archival materials.
As per the Public Record, Act & the P.R. Rules the record of various Ministries/Departments etc of Government of India and, the permanent records are shifted to National Archives of India after a period of 25 years. The documents are cleaned using an Air compressor attached to an Air cleaning Unit to remove the dust. Thereafter, the fumigation of the records is carried out with the help of a vacuum fumigation chamber using carbon-di-oxide to get rid of any insects that might be present in the records. The documents are shifted to the Repositories after undertaking these two processes. Fumigation of the records is also carried out using portable fumigation chambers with the help of chemicals such as Thymol and Para di chloro benzene etc. The Preservation Division of National Archives of India thus ensures the removal of dust and pests as a preliminary step before the records are shifted to the Stack areas.
