The Goals and Objectives of Collections Conservation

The Goals and Objectives of Collections Conservation

by BRIAN J. BAIRD

Principles

Collections conservation has a vital role to play in the modern research library. Library administrators recognize the need for library preservation, and they

recognize that eflicient book repair practices that rely on archival materials and nondamaging techniques are essential to maintaining the collection for as long as it is needed. Unfortunately, many collections conservators have failed to recognize how they lit into the library organization.

People have always collected information. In preliterate cultures the role of librarian was filled by the bards and poets who passed on information in the form of oral traditions. When a culture becomes literate it begins to store its information in the form of documents and books. Our culture has become very reliant on books:

Life without books, even lor one day, is inconceivable. I [have] come to the conclusion thai books are the companions, the tools, and the furniture we are accustomed to and cannot live without.1

Books are the tools used for storing most of the information in our culture. When books are lost, the information they store becomes inaccessible, and providing access to information is the business of libraries. Therefore, the value of any organizational unit of a library can, in a real sense, be measured against how well it supports the library's mission of providing access to information. Preservation has the responsibility of retaining the information the library has in books and other material through repair, proper storage or reformatting. Proper preservation insures that the information in the library will continue to be accessible to users.

Ross Atkinson2 summed up the essence of how preservation and librarianship should work together:

We must strive to provide to the future generations the same opportunities of access that we aspire to provide 10 our current clientele, namely the opportunity lo provide texts with meanings and to interpret for themselves the broader significance of those meanings.

Though speaking of preservation in general, the above statement applies equal-ly as well to the more specific .subject of collections conservation. Taking Atkinson's sentence as a mission statement for collections conservation, this article presents specific goals and objectives that will help collections conservation meet his challenge of providing access to information today and lor future generations.

Collections conservation has to begin by recognizing itself as part of the library. This means that the primary goals of the library and of collections conservation must be the same. The. primary goal of the library is to store and provide access to information; this primary goal should be reflected in the goals that govern the activities of collections conservation as well. In order for ihe library to meet its goals it must function as a weil-integrated organization, an objective that can only be achieved through effective communication. Effective communication requires that all parties involved in the communication process take an active part in making sure that everyone understands one another. Collections conservation needs to take, an active role in fostering effective communication between itself and the rest of the library and effective communications within the library as a whole.

Alter collections conservation understands the basic goals it shares with the rest of the library, it can establish its own goals that will help the library reach its primary goal of archiving and providing access to information. Collections conservation should set five major goals and concomitant objectives to help focus its activities: increase access to the library's material, perform high-quality conservation treatments, establish a high level of treatment production, establish the visibility of collections conservation within the library and establish the visibility of collections conservation at the national and international levels.

Increase Access to the Library's Material

Increasing access to the library's material is one of the primary goals of the library and part of the previously determined mission statement and should, therefore, be the primary goal of collections conservation. Six objectives will help collections conservation reach this goal.

Arrange the collections conservation unit's work around the particular access problems of the library

Every library and every public service area within a library has different access problems. Collections conservation should arrange its treatment patterns to

conform to the use patterns of the library's various access points. Course reserves have items that gel high use, are in high demand and, consequently, must be treated as quickly as possible. Reference areas also have high-use items that need to remain constantly accessible. Circulation policies, use patterns and differing access privileges are all variables affecting access to information. Collections conservation should arrange its work in ways that will help solve the access problems of the various library units.

Treat library material in a timely manner so it can return quickly to the library's access points

Collections conservation has the task of providing conservationafly sound treatment to items in a timely manner. By so doing the items arc placed back on the shelves, making them accessible to users. It is important thai collections conservation not keep books .sitting in the conservation lab for an inordinate amount of time. Treatment backlogs are common in collections conservation but they are not acceptable. By decreasing the amount of time thai library material is queued for treatment, collections conservation will develop a good reputation as a use-oriented department within the library. This will increase library staff confidence in collections conservation and they will be more willing to send library material for treatment because they will know the material will not be gone long. It is important to establish time standards for treatment turn-around and to communicate these standards to the rest of the library. Such turn-around standards as 48 hours for important rush jobs, seven days for normal rush jobs and 30 days for normal treatment turn around are reasonable.

Use treatments that promote ease of use by the patron

Items need to be given treatments that arc appropriately durable and remain nondamaging over time. For example, an ideally treated book will lay open flat, the cover will be made of strong material that will withstand wear and use and the text block will be securely fastened into its case.

Treating library material so that it becomes more accessible means that, whenever possible, items should be repaired, rather than boxed, or photocopied rather that microfilmed. There is a time and place for both boxing and microfilming, but these treatment options generally leave material less accessible to the user. An item that is boxed in lieu of treatment is fussy to deal with, and though the item is protected while it is in the box, once it is removed from the box the patron may damage the item a great deal just trying to use

it in a dilapidated state. Similarly, microfilm limits access in terms of circulation and by limiting where a person does research. A user does not want to have his or her hooks and notes all spread oul on a table only to have to move to a microfilm reader to continue research. Treatment options that limit access arc viable as last-ditch attempts lo prolong an item's usefulness or to contribute the information to the national preservation effort, but at present, on-site access will always be enhanced by providing users with access lo information in usable book form. Library patrons are used to using books, they like books and they will be less satisfied with information in any other medium.

Collections conservation staff should think of their work in terms of access

Approaching treatments in terms ol access will affect many of the treatment decisions that collections conservation staff need to make, such as what, kind of treatment an item is to be given, whaf kind of material to use in the treatment and how soon the item needs to receive treatment. It will also affect how the work flow is organized. When collections conservation staff are trained to think ol their work in terms of access, they organize their work so that items move through the lab more quickly, making them accessible sooner.

Keep good records of the library material that isin the collections conservation unit so that any item can he found quickly and made available to the user

Collections conservation units arc often thought of as black holes where items go in but never come back out. When the collections conservation unit is focusing on access, it must keep good records of where individual items arc in the treatment process so that any item can be made available to a user on demand. Sometimes items may not be in good enough condition to be given to a user, or the item may be in the middle of receiving treatment. Most users understand this and arc willing to wait until the item is treated, but turning a user away without a clear answer as to where the item is and how long it will be before they can have it reinforces the mistaken notion that collections conservation is insensitive to the goals of the library.

Stress the commitment of the, collections conservation unit to access in communication with other library staff

Collections conservation has the responsibility of physically maintaining the material in the library's general collections. Selectors and bibliographers must be made aware that the collections conservation unit has a commitment to

keeping t his material accessible to users. Once library stafl come to recognize the collections conservation unit's commitment to access, they will recognize the unit's usefulness in helping them achieve their own objectives. They will then be more eager to work with collections conservation, which will aid the unit in physically maintaining the libraries collection.

Perform High-qUaLIty Conservation Treatments

This goal impacts the first goal, because high-quality treatments lend themselves to access and hold up longer under heavy use. However, quality should also be a concern for it own sake. Three essential objectives will help collections conservation reach the goal of high quality.

Collections conservation staff need to make decisions based on sound conservation principles and practices

Thecollections conservator must set quality standards, but unless the conservation stall is trained to make specific treatment decisions with quality and conservation in mind, the standards are of little use. For example, collections conservation staff must not simply know how to mend paper in a conscr-vationally sound way that meets the standards in the lab; they must know when and how to apply or vary techniques to achieve conservationally sound results. This does not necessarily mean that the staff need all be conservators, but it does mean that, during the training process, the staff must be taught the reasoning behind the treatments they are learning, and everything must be taught within a context of quality.

Collections conservation staff need to perform high-quality repairs

Collections conservation is constantly torn between quality and quantity. Sound conservation demands quality, but the sheer volume of material that collections conservation has to treat makes it impossible to ignore quantity. When work starts backing up, it is hard not to take shortcuts in order to get caught up, but the collections conservation staff cannot be allowed to give into this temptation. This is facilitated by the collections conservator setting and documenting high quality standards for each of the treatments performed in the lab. Established standards and review of work removes the temptation to take short cuts because stall know that having to redo a treatment takes more time than doing it correctly the first time.

Also, quality treatments ultimately last longer, which may help cut down

on the time spent later rc-treating material. Conversely, lull treatment of a little-used item may represent an inappropriate allocation of resources. Both ends of the treatment spectrum need to be considered, but collections conservation must not give into the temptation to shortchange the future. Every library has some example of a treatment method thai was performed on material in the past, that was a quick and easy solution at the time but has proven to be a terrible problem now. Collections conservation must learn from past mistakes and not leave a legacy of treated materials that are conservation time bombs for future conservators to struggle with.

Use quality materials in treatments to ensure that the finished products arc chemically stable and physically durable

By the time an item is treated, a great deal of time and cost has been expended. Material costs are a large expense in collections conservation and the collections conservator must look for ways to keep the material costs as low as possible, but cost-cutting should not come at the expense of quality, ft costs just a few cents rnore per item to treat each item with high-quality materials rather than using material of a lesser grade. Using high-quality material costs little up front but saves a great deal of future money, because the item will not have to be re-treated as soon as it would have to be if poorer quality materials were used. Also, a high-quality product is a more pleasing product that invites use and establishes credibility for the collections conservation program.

Establish a High Level of Treatment Production

Production is less important than quality, but it follows as a close second. The large number of volumes that collections conservation is charged to maintain demands that the work be done efficiently in a production setting and batch mode. Five objectives must be met to reach the goal of increased production.

Ensure that all library material that can be properly treated by a commercial vendor is sent to a vendor and not treated in-house

To know what can be treated by a commercial vendor, the collections conservator must know what vendors have to offer. This also means the collections conservator should work closely with the binding librarian and be involved in the decision-making process of what items get treated, how they get treated and how money is allocated for conservation treatments generally. Even though library material is treated commercially, its physical treatment is still a shared

responsibility ol collections conservation. The collections conservator must make sun- that commercial treatments meet high standards of quality. There are national standards that help ensure quality, but these standards and a commercial vendor should not be blindly trusted. The. collections conservator must check to see that items arc treated with high-quality materials, that treatments are conservationally sound and that binding structures do not limit access.

Collections conservation staff should organize their work as productively as possible

The collections conservator is responsible for establishing treatment and batch procedures for the lab so items can be treated as quickly and efficiently as possible. This involves establishing standards for the batch size for each treatment, for limiting unnecessary steps and for organizing work stations. By following these procedures, collections conservation stall will form good habits of working in an organized way to produce large quantities of high-quality treatments.

Batching work is always the fastest way of treating material, but batching work also makes it hard to keep track of how long a particular treatmi nt takes. It is, therefore, important to have the staff time themselves occasionally to see how last they can perform the various treatments. This does two things: it establishes time standards and makes the staff members more aware of which steps in the various treatments take the most time. By identifying the slowest treatment steps, the collections conservator and the stall member can work together on this weak link and thus increase production. It is important to allow and encourage collections conservation stall to have the freedom to experiment with how their work is organized. It is the people on the bench dealing with the problems every day that often develop the most pragmatic techniques for improving production. Once good production habits are formed, maintaining production is easy, but it docs take some time and effort to identify areas where production can be increased without compromising quality.

Maintain good communication with the library or libraries so that material is sent for treatment in a way that does not decrease production

It is important to serve the library and to be conscious of the institution's needs, but it is also important to make library stall aware of production needs of the collections conservation unit. Establishing this understanding between the library and the collections conservation unit will help everyone to work cooperatively to meet the needs of the various library units. This will affect