http://hdl.handle.net/2142/445 Allerton Park Institute Proceedings (no. 27, 1981); Edited by Katherine Luther Henderson and William T. Henderson http://hdl.handle.net/2142/462 Conservation: What we should do until the conservator and the twenty-first century arrive Patterson, Robert H. To paraphrase Dickens, these are the best and the worst of times. We certainly are confronted by a serious economic situation nationally and internationally, and the support libraries enjoyed only a few years ago (relatively speaking) is diminishing. With the exception of a few fortunate institutions, largely in the Sun Belt, funds for staffing, new services and programs, and acquisitions are diminishing. Americans are historically optimistic, I believe, and we all look to things getting better. Perhaps they will, but many of us believe that they will get worse before that occurs. On the other hand, what I believe to be great advances and opportunities are taking place in preservation now and in the future. Conservation must be put in a broad perspective. Library materials --Conservation and restoration --Congresses http://hdl.handle.net/2142/461 Role of commercial services in conservation and preservation Orr, James Anthony, William T. Kettell, Leedom Werling, Anita I am here to represent library binders, a business that I have been in for over thirty-five years. Our industry is a small industry as industries go. It is about a 50-million-dollar industry which means that there are probably about 12 million or so volumes bound yearly and there are roughly twentyfive to thirty binders throughout the country. Basically, our job is to handle current materials such as magazines, books, theses, and more recently, paperbacks. In this group there is quite a conglomeration of material. Here the concern is durability. We also handle semi-rare materials where the need is for mending, folding, hinging, laminating, and encapsulating. Recently, we have made a concerted effort to look at deacidification, but my hopes were somewhat dampened yesterday when I asked how many of you would be willing to move ahead with it and sign a release for responsibility of the results. I didn't get much enthusiastic response from that request. Asa complete library binder, our firm must be ready to take care of all of these categories of material and engage in all these processes. Preservation of materials Library materials--Conservation and restoration http://hdl.handle.net/2142/460 National preservation planning and regional cooperative conservation efforts Morrow, Carolyn Clark I would like to present a chronology of national preservation planning, describe some notable developments in the area of regional cooperative conservation efforts, and suggest the types of activities that are feasible on a cooperative basis. Preservation of materials Library materials--Conservation and restoration Library cooperation http://hdl.handle.net/2142/459 Preservation of paper based materials: Present and future research and developments in the paper industry Lundeen, Gerald W. While we still have much to learn, and there is room for further progress, it is not only possible, but it is in the papermaker's own economic interests to produce permanent/durable paper. Such paper can reasonably be expected to last several hundred years instead of the twenty-five to fifty years for modern acidic book paper. There is thus no excuse for producing books and other publications of lasting importance on anything other than paper meeting existing standards for permanence and durability. There is reason to hope that this will finally happen. It is up to every librarian, publisher and paper consumer to insist that it does and to use whatever influence we have to speed this process. Preservation of materials http://hdl.handle.net/2142/458 Decisions in conservation and preservation in the conservation laboratory Kuflik, Louise The decision to conserve has already been made when a book is brought to a conservation studio. It means that the material has been found to have some intrinsic or artifactual value. What to conserve is the decision of the librarian, the archivist, or the bibliophile. How to conserve it is fundamentally the decision of the conservator, often made in conjunction with the custodian of the material or at least with his/her consent. All decisions are made after a careful examination and testing of the material and a thoughtful assessment of the techniques available. Unfortunately, the question of cost must enter into the discussion because book and paper conservation is a craft almost entirely executed by hand. Conservators employ timehonored techniques, sometimes supplemented by modern technological advances, but always guided by the principle of reversibility in deference to the historical, cultural or aesthetic importance of the materials with which they deal and with an awareness of the possibility that some better technique or material may come along later in this developing field. Conservation Preservation http://hdl.handle.net/2142/457 Kepler and his custody: Scholarship and conservation policy Krummel, Donald W. Johannes Kepler ends the preface to his Harmonice mundi of 1619 with these sentiments: "The die is cast; my book is written, to be read either now or posterity, I don't care. It may wait a century for a reader, much as God has waited six thousand years for an audience." This moving statement of faith epitomizes the conservator's cause before the world of scholarship. Its sentiments are worth remembering; for if our libraries are to survive, their cause will need to be supported by the modern Keplers who use them, and who expect them to keep their work around for readers a century from now. What really can be expected from our scholarly researchers, thousands of them strong, spread across a Babel of disciplines and inquiries around the world, each of them preoccupied with the importance of their efforts and their centrality to learning and to the human condition? The researcher's first contribution is to the dialogue on policy; and it is problematical insofar as it is ideological and political. The second involves practices of handling library materials; and it is basically so self-obvious as to be insulting. The third involves the prospect of better control over access and use; and it is painful to consider. All three involve commitments by scholars that are essential to the survival of our libraries; and each involves deeply felt attitudes, ingrained as part of the practice of their art, science, or craft. The 1976 Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Detailed Specifications are right in affirming "the fundamental requirement that preservation...be seen as an inseparable part of the broader objective of extending access to recorded information...." The problem is merely one of reconciling diachronous access and synchronous access: in order for Kepler to be accessible tomorrow, what must we do, and ask readers to do, today? Preservation of materials Library materials--Conservation and restoration http://hdl.handle.net/2142/456 Introduction to Conserving and preserving library materials (Papers presented at the Allerton Park Institute November 15-18, 1981) Henderson, Kathryn Luther Henderson, William T. One of the chief concerns in library administration and operations for the 1980s is the conservation and preservation of library materials, an area, which for too long, has been neglected. Faced with rapid deterioration of collections from the ravages of time plus increased widespread use and transportation of materials through networking operations coupled with the rising cost of materials, supplies and staff and other problems associated with inflation, librarians and archivists are finding it increasingly difficult to preserve their collections. A dozen years have passed since a landmark conference at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School brought to the profession's attention the serious problems of deterioration and opened up for the decade of the seventies many solutions which are now being implemented. In choosing the topic for the annual Allerton Park Institute, the faculty of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign thought it appropriate, at this time, to assess the state-of-the-art and to help set the objectives for the 1980s in conserving and preserving library and archival materials. Specifically the objectives of the conference were to make it possible for those in attendance to: note the scope of preservation problems; discover the philosophy of preservation and conservation of library materials; learn new methods and techniques in the field; identify new research needs; discover cooperative approaches and programs; receive current information on developments in paper manufacturing, deacidification, etc.; gather information on preservation of nonpaper materials such as film, recordings, computer records etc.; learn how and when to use the services of binders, restoration specialists and others outside die local library; learn how restoration specialists work; and find ways to implement a conservation/preservation policy in a local library. Preservation of materials Library materials--Conservation and restoration http://hdl.handle.net/2142/455 Index to Conserving and preserving library materials (Papers presented at the Allerton Park Institute November 15-18, 1981) Index http://hdl.handle.net/2142/454 Preservation and conservation decisions in the local library Henderson, William T. For a period of years, I have been aware that the decisions regarding preservation which I have made, which I have shared in making, or which have been made by others have not all been of the same nature. The level or levels within the library's staff hierarchy of the persons involved make some decisions differ from other decisions; however, these levels of involvement are not the heart of the problem. The thing lacking was a clear way to designate other distinctions which seemed necessary in attempting to analyze such problems and decisions. I found little help in my reading or sharing experiences with others in attempting to work in this area. In reading the proceedings of the 1976 conference on A National Preservation Program at the Library of Congress, I was therefore quite interested to discover that Daniel Boorstin in opening the conference suggested a division of the questions comprising the problem of preservation. He characterized two rather distinct types of problems as epistemological and technical. He further described the epistemological questions as being social questions, meaning that they are questions relating to the interests of those who will use, administer, and service the materials comprising the collections. I must admit that the term epistemological sent me to the dictionary because it has been some time since I had studied formal philosophical language. At this point, it becomes necessary to understand Boorstin's exact meaning and intention in interjecting this term into the vocabulary of library preservation. Epistemology is defined as "the study of the methods and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity; broadly: the theory of knowledge." Preservation of materials Library materials--Conservation and restoration http://hdl.handle.net/2142/453 Preservation of Paper Based Materials: Mass Deacidification Methods and Projects Harris, Carolyn When I was first asked to update my 1979 Library Journal paper on mass deacidification processes, I thought it would be simple. I could just write "nothing's happened," and go on my way, or just say "there's not yet a good process" and leave it at that. But I found that there is still a lot of controversy regarding deacidification within the preservation profession. In the first month of research into new developments in mass deacidification, I heard or read "morpholine is the only viable process," "I looked at the Canadian Archives project, it looks great," "diethyl zinc is the only way to go," "VPD is the best method of deacidification." I began quickly to realize that the issue has not been settled and probably won't be for some time. My other thought, that nothing has happened since 1979, 1 found was also not true. There have been several developments; two of the three processes are being tested right now, and information will soon be available on their efficacy and licensing for commercial use. I know that this has been said for years, and it may be several more years before one is commercially available, but no longer because diere is not a viable working process. We are still in a transitional stage, nothing is yet in an actual operational phase. Preservation of materials Library materials--Conservation and restoration Deacidification