WDYTYA is fond of showing their featured personalities donning white gloves to handle original materials. It's good television I suppose. But it isn't necessarily good archival practice. That's according to information from the University of Reading and the British Library referenced at http://reclamationandrepresentation.blogspot.ca/2013/09/archives-and-white-gloves-myth.html
Knowing this probably won't help when you encounter a worker bee employee at an archives paid and required to follow the institutions protocol rather than think.
It's not just the BL and Reading University. Did you see this recent post on The National Archives blog? http://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blog/the-gloves-are-off/
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