Conservation in Music Libraries

Conservation in Music LibrariesAuthor(s): Malcolm TurnerSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 27, No. 3/4 (Juli-Dezember 1980), pp. 183-201Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23505896 .

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Malcolm Turner: Conservation in Music Libraries 183

Ausblick

Der Gedanke einer EDV-gestützten zentralen Katalogisierung von Industrietonträgern wurde in den Schallarchiven der Rundfunkanstalten aus der Notwendigkeit heraus ent

wickelt, eine stark angeschwollene Flut von massenhaft produziertem Sendematerial ord

nungsgemäß zu verwalten, für Programmzwecke zu erschließen und abzurechnen, ohne

daß dafür mehr Personal zur Verfügung gestellt werden kann. Die Einführung der elektro

nischen Datenverarbeitung in den Archiven der Rundfunkanstalten bedeutet aber darüber

hinaus, daß damit eine Fülle mechanischer Arbeitsgänge vom Menschen an die Maschine

delegiert wird und dadurch die Köpfe der Archivare für solche Aufgaben frei gehalten

werden, die die Maschine ihnen nicht abnehmen kann: die tiefgehende Erschließung der

in den Rundfunkanstalten verwahrten Quellen und ihre Bewertung nach historischen, wissenschaftlichen und künstlerischen Kriterien.

«L'usage d'ordinateurs pour le catalogage de musique chez Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv» renseigne sur la construction d'un poste central pour l'enregistrement de données bibliographiques de disques à l'aide du système EDP. Les conditions utiles au développement du système, la participation de

l'industrie phonographique, le mélangeur, ainsi que la tâche des rédacteurs sont expliquées de façon claire. Les possibilités et l'ampleur du système EDP sont décrits, ainsi que certaines formes de recou

vrement des données. Sont également montrés certains aspects d'usage décentralisé de connées emma

gasinées par voie électronique dans divers offices de radio.

"The usage of computers to catalogue music in the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv" reports about the

construction of a central institution which registrates bibliographic datas of disks supported by EDP.

Here the prepositions, responsible for the development of the system, the participation of record in

dustries, "Mengengerüst", and the task of the editorship are explained explicitly. Possibilities and

volume of the EDP-system and certain forms of data output are described. Also there are shown cer

tain aspects of decentral usage of such data, which are stored electronically at different radio cor

porations.

Conservation in Music Libraries

Malcolm Turner (London)

This paper arose out of a discussion that took place at a meeting of the IAML Research

Libraries Commission during the 1976 IAML conference in Bergen. As a result of this dis

cussion a small committee on conservation in music libraries was formed. It was composed

of Barbara Henry (Library of Congress), Don Roberts (Northwestern University, Evans

ton), Günter Birkner (Zentralbibliothek, Zürich) and myself, and thus represented inter

national libraries in the Old and New Worlds, major university libraries and major public

libraries. The committee was asked to produce a short (and hence not too technical) re

port on general problems of conservation in music libraries, especially those brought

about by the increasingly heavy demand for microfilming and electrostatic ("Xerox")

copying; to indicate ways in which various libraries coped with these problems; and per

haps also to mention any conservation methods of which librarians should be particularly

wary. A letter was subsequently sent to all those present at the original discussion, asking for

views and information. Few bothered to reply - an omission with which the committee

members, all busy librarians themselves, felt some sympathy - but those who did, in



184 Malcolm Turner: Conservation in Music Libraries

some cases at considerable length, made a number of interesting points, and the commit

tee is grateful to them for their trouble.

The original version of the paper, which inevitably drew heavily on my own experi ences at the British Library, was written by me, approved by the other members of the

committee, and presented as a joint report to the Research Libraries Commission at the

11th Congress of IAML in Mainz, 1977. 1 subsequently received a number of helpful comments from colleagues in other libraries (in particular a long and detailed letter from

Simone Wallon and Catherine Massip of the Bibliothèque nationale) for which I am most

grateful and which I have attempted to incorporate in this published version of the paper. I have also tried to bring the paper a little more up to date and to remove some of the

worst errors into which I, an interested but completely untrained layman in the field of

conservation, had fallen. I owe a particular debt of gratitude in this connection to Judith

Segal, of the Conservation Unit at the Bodleian Library. It is only fair to her to say that

any errors that remain are definitely my own.

Problems

It was not the committee's intention to produce a mere digest of existing technical handbooks on conservation.1 All but the simplest of present-day conservation techniques call for training, experience and equipment beyond the reach of the average music librari an. However, as with most ills, prevention is not only better than cure but in many ways is a good deal simpler; so that the non-expert can more justifiably hope to do something about it, especially if he has some understanding of the processes involved. It seemed sen sible accordingly to discuss briefly some of the ways in which the deterioration of books and paper is brought about.

They can be divided into four groups: environmental factors, factors relating to the intrinsic properties of the materials used, mechanical factors (general wear and tear) and

biological factors (attack by fungi, insects and so on).

ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

The main chemical processes by which paper deteriorates depend on the presence of

heat, moisture, light, and atmospheric pollution. Consequently the importance of the environment in which books are stored can easily be appreciated. It is at once the single most important factor in the deterioration of books and the one that can most closely be controlled by the librarian — at least, in theory.

Heat

Chemical reactions depend on heat - the higher the temperature the faster the reac tion — and the reactions involved in the breakdown of paper fibres are no exceptions to this rule. Theoretically the lower the storage temperature the greater the prolongation of life of the material so stored, though it would in fact be harmful to books to be brought from very cold storage into a much warmer reading area. In practice therefore a com

monly recommended temperature for book storage ist 10-12.5 °C (50-55 °F). Even this will be too cold for areas where staff and public circulate, and as a compromise one often

1 Nor, it should be made clear, does the report attempt to cover: the conservation of non-book mate

rials; the special problems posed by unusual papers, such as plastic papers, onion skin papers, dyeline papers, and so on; disasters by fire, flood, earthquake, etc. The committee were not able to identify any conservation problems specific to music libraries. The often quoted example of the wear and tear on copies used for performance caused by turning over pages rapidly and folding over corners of pages is, for instance, only an extreme form of the problem posed by all use of library materials; it leads to the same kinds of damage and calls for the same remedies. However the committee did not feel that this vitiated the report, since music librarians so often seem to live in a relatively isolated world of their own even if they are nominally attached to a parent library; and it was clear from discussions in Ber gen that many librarians felt the need for some kind of help and guidance in matters of conservation in general. I would incidentally be very glad to hear from any librarian who had identified a conservation problem that was genuinely specific to music.



Malcolm Turner: Conservation in Music Libraries ] 85

finds a temperature of about 20 °C (70 °F) recommended. B.S. 5454 (see Bibliography No. 7) recommends 60-65 °F. However, one should constantly have in mind the startling fact that an increase in temperature of 5 °C more than doubles the rate of deterioration -

or, put another way, shortens the life of a book by more than half.

Moisture

Excessive moisture in the air can affect books and paper in a variety of ways. At the

simplest level, changes in the relative humidity2 cause books to absorb or give out mois

ture and hence to change their size and shape, which can lead to permanent distortion or

splitting, while very high levels of humidity will encourage the growth of moulds and may

damage bindings by softening adhesives. Much more serious than these effects in most

libraries is the fact that excess moisture helps to spread damaging impurities through a

volume and also actually plays a part in the chemical reactions that lead to the decompo

sition of paper, such as the formation of sulphuric acid from sulphur dioxide in the atmo

sphere (see the section on Atmospheric pollution below). Generally speaking, as with

temperature, the lower the relative humidity can be kept the better, but too low a rela

tive humidity — a fairly common problem in USA libraries, though happily not in Euro

pean libraries — can cause paper to dry out and become brittle. The normally recom

mended relative humidity for book storage ist 50%; anything lower would be uncomfort

able for those working in the library. B.S. 5454 (Bibliography No. 7) recommends a rather

higher relative humidity of 60—65% for parchment and for older material with leather or

vellum bindings. Of course, most librarians have less control than they would like over the temperature

and relative humidity of their book storage areas. But the importance of constantly bear

ing in mind these recommended storage figures (50% RH at 50—55 °F), and in particular

of doing everything possible to keep down the temperature, even by such simple means as

turning off radiators and drawing blinds over sunny windows, is demonstrated by the

following table.3 For instance, taking the column for an average RH of 50%, it can be

seen that by lowering the storage temperature from 25 °C to 10 °C (77 °F to 50 °F) the

life of the book is prolonged fifteenfold.4

Average annual storage temperature Average annual storage RH

°F °C 70% 60% 50% 40%

77 25 0.74 0.85 1.00 1.22

68 20 1.76 2.02 2.38 2.90

59 15 4.30 4.94 5.81 7.08

50 10 11.1 12.7 15.00 18.3

Light

The effect of light in bleaching the dyes used in bindings and certain inks is familiar to

everyone. Potentially more damaging however is the decomposition of paper brought

about by the chemical reaction which takes place between the cellulose of the paper and

atmospheric oxygen in the presence of light, and which can continue for some time even

2 The amount of moisture in the air depends on temperature: the warmer the air, the more moisture

it can hold. The quantity of moisture actually held in air at any given temperature, expressed as a per

centage of the maximum amount of moisture that could theoretically be held by air at that tempera

ture, is called the relative humidity (RH). 3

Simplified from R.D. Smith, The nonaqueous deacidification of paper and books (Bibliography No.

26). The numbers in the table are absolute numbers related to the unit life of a book stored at

25 °C and 50% RH. 4 It should also be stressed however that stability in the environment is of the utmost importance.

Collections subjected to severe fluctuations of temperature and relative humidity can suffer grave

damage. Thus it would be quite wrong to bring a book into a very warm reading area from a very cold

storage area without an acclimatisation period of some hours in an intermediate environment.




when the source of light has been removed. The most powerful effect is produced by ultra-violet light, emitted by the sun and by unfiltered fluorescent lighting, but even visi

ble light can be harmful if sufficiently bright. Like other chemical reactions, this photo oxidative decomposition is aggravated by high temperatures and high relative humidity levels. Fortunately the remedy is obvious, except for material on lengthy or permanent exhibition. For such material, consideration should be given to glazing the exhibition case

with one of the special glasses, available commercially, which filter out ultra-violet light. For valuable documents on permanent exhibition one possibility being considered by the

British Library is that of replacing the air in the exhibition case by a chemically inert gas such as neon or argon — not as complicated or expensive a solution as it sounds — while in

the Bibliothèque nationale it is forbidden to keep valuable documents on permanent

display.

Atmospheric pollution

All forms of pollution in the atmosphere are potentially harmful — for instance, damage has been observed in the British Library by the penetration into books of greasy dust

from the London atmosphere - but the most harmful are the acidic gases, sulphur diox

ide and nitrogen dioxide. The more important, and the one whose effects have been stud

ied in greatest detail, is sulphur dioxide. This is produced by the burning of fossil fuels —

gas lighting was a particularly notorious offender - and levels of sulphur dioxide in the

atmosphere have therefore fallen in recent years with, for instance, the decline in the use of coal for domestic heating. On the other hand the level in the atmosphere of nitrogen

dioxide, which is derived from the exhaust gases of car engines, is increasing. The effect

of both is similar: they are absorbed by the paper and binding materials in proportion to the relative humidity of the environment, and react with the water content of the books to form, respectively, sulphuric acid and nitric acid. In a closed book on the shelf the

immediate damage is to the exposed parts, the spine and edges of the pages, but once the

acid has formed it gradually permeates the whole book, especially if the moisture content is high because of high relative humidity. Furthermore the acid of course continues to attack the paper even if the book is removed to a clean atmosphere.

It has been noted5 that a limited degree of protection seems to have been afforded to books kept in areas of limited air circulation, such as cases and storage cupboards. On the whole however, acidification is unfortunately one of the conservation problems about which the librarian lacking fairly elaborate and expensive facilities can do least. Even normal air conditioning systems, which can control the temperature and relative humidity and remove dust from the air, may not be adequate to remove the acidic gases unless they incorporate a scrubbing device.

INTRINSIC FACTORS

Paper is essentially made from cellulose fibres, and deterioration of the paper may be

brought about by the presence in the paper of substances other than cellulose which either

remain from the preparation of the pulp or are added at a later stage of manufacture to

improve the finish and feel of the paper. There are three basic types of paper: rag paper, which is almost entirely cellulose;

chemical wood paper, in which the wood is chemically digested, and substances other

than cellulose are largely removed; and mechanical wood paper, which contains a relative

ly high proportion of substances other than cellulose, notably lignin. All these papers deteriorate in adverse storage conditions, but the mechanical wood paper, which was first

introduced into England in the 1860s and 1870s and is still used in a modified form to

day, poses a particular problem because of its lignin content, which is highly unstable.

The deterioration process of this paper is not fully understood, and there is even disagree ment as to whether it would not prove relatively permanent given good storage conditions

or whether it is inherently unstable unless stored in an inert atmosphere in the dark. What

N.J. Seeley, Conservation in the British Library Reference Division (Bibliography No. 25).




is certain is that in normal circumstances it deteriorates rapidly, sometimes even within

days of manufacture, and its conservation requires costly lamination to improve the

mechanical strength of the paper. There is as yet no known preventive or curative treat

ment for the deterioration of such material; deacidification appears to be of doubtful

effectiveness at best.

Of the various additives used as part of the paper manufacturing process the most

harmful is alum, a weak acid salt used since the 17th century (and still used today) as part of the sizing process.6 It leads to the formation in the paper of sulphuric acid. Further

causes of acidity in some early papers (though not in modern papers manufactured under

more carefully controlled conditions) are the chemicals left behind by the failure to re

move all the chlorine used for bleaching or all the chemicals used to digest the wood in

the preparation of chemical wood pulp. Some manuscripts also contain local concentra

tions of acid from the ink.

MECHANICAL FACTORS

Handling by readers and staff

The most obvious cause of damage to books by wear and tear is use by readers. Al

though this can hardly be eliminated it can be ameliorated. Some libraries (Bodleian Libra

ry, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) insist that in the case of certain fragile and valuable items

readers interested primarily in the content rather than the form must use a microfilm

copy, use of the originals only being authorised for bibliographical research or similar pur

poses; the British Library is gradually introducing a similar rule. With the growth of the

reprint and facsimile industry, some libraries are considering the use of these copies in

place of originals. At a humbler level librarians can usefully be vigilant, even with readers

who ought to know better, about the failure to observe the three basic rules prohibiting

placing a book on top of another open volume, writing on paper which is resting on an

open book, and eating and drinking while using library books. Newly bound books should

ideally not be issued to readers until they have first been opened page by page alternately from the front and back, to relax the binding progressively; otherwise the reader may

open the book in the middle and can well split the spine. It ought in theory to be possible, through training, to eliminate damage to books by

staff, but some causes of damage not entirely unknown in the British Library, and doubt

less in other libraries, are (apart from the three basic rules mentioned above): incorrect

removal of volumes from the shelf, causing damage to headbands; careless re-shelving of

books; careless loading of barrows, causing books to fall off or strike doors; wedging doors

open with books; and leaving books in use in sunlight or near a radiator.

Storage

Most librarians have to put up with whatever storage they can find and be thankful to

have any at all. But one can at least bear in mind that shelves should not have any sharp

projections, such as screw heads; that books shelved too loosely will fall over or warp, and

will be more likely to accumulate dust between their pages; that too tight shelving leads

to damage when books are taken out or replaced; and that a careful eye should be kept

on the activities of any workmen near the book stacks to ensure that they do not inadver

tently damage the books through dust and water. All these points may seem to be so

much matters of commonsense as not to be worth mentioning; but all in fact have caused

damage to books quite recently in the British Library.

6 Unsized paper is like blotting paper. Various kinds of size have been used, but they are all essential

ly gelatinous or gluey liquids which fill up the spaces between the paper fibres. They strengthen the

sheet, make the surface smooth, improve the feel of the paper and increase its resistance to the absorp

tion of moisture. 7 1 omit a catalogue of other outrages perpetrated by readers, for which librarians must be on their

guard. Indeed, the Bibliothèque nationale has suggested that it would be instructive to compile a list of

depredations committed by library users, with a view to drawing up a "(iood Readers Guide". Any

contributions to such a list will be gratefully received by the present writer.




Photography and Electrostatic copying

Given careful handling of the material by trained staff using modern techniques, photo

graphy, including the microfilming of whole volumes, appears to be a relatively safe pro

cess, and certainly much to be preferred to electrostatic copying. Nevertheless several

libraries sensibly make a point of ensuring as far as possible that valuable items at least are

not photographed more than once, and doubtless the rule could usefully be extended to

cover the less valuable but often more fragile 19th and 20th century items if only time

and money permitted. A much bigger problem is posed by electrostatic copying ("Xerox"

copying). It is not yet known whether exposure to the heat and intense light of an electro

static copier causes significant deterioration of the paper or fading of the ink; in the

absence of knowledge it seems best to assume that it does, at least when valuable materials

are in question. But the real danger stems from the nature of the process, whereby a book

(frequently large or heavy, especially in the case of music) must be turned upside down

and back again for every opening copied, and must often be flattened against the ma

chine with pressure to obtain the best result. Even where the book does not have to be

opened flat it is all too easy for pages to be creased, or torn by being carelessly turned.

For these reasons many libraries have restrictions on the copying of, typically, manu

scripts and pre-1800 printed books. (See also the sections on photocopying under SELF

HELP, below; and Bibliography No. 11.)

BIOLOGICAL FACTORS

Too high a relative humidity will encourage the growth of moulds and fungi, while dust

and dirt will foster the presence of insects and even of rats and mice. Fortunately all these

are relatively rare in modern library conditions, especially where there is steel shelving,

and the preventive measures needed are obvious. If an attack does occur there are well

established and uncontroversial fumigation treatments available, but they may need to be

carried out on a large scale, and in any case they involve the use of poisonous substances.

They should not be tackled by the amateur (except perhaps for the thymol treatment

outlined below in the section on fumigation under SELF HELP).

Remedies

Passing reference has already been made to various remedies in the first section of this

report, and in some other cases the action needed is self-evident. In this section of the

report I begin by setting out the standards to which any conservation method should ide

ally measure up (none in fact does). After a necessarily brief and incomplete look at some

of the major conservation techniques, such as deacidification, the report goes on to con

sider some ways in which the individual librarian can help conserve his library materials at

the do-it-yourself level. Finally it mentions one or two long-term considerations.

CRITERIA

All repair and conservation work entails some risk of damage, and this risk can only be

justified by the hope of preventing or at least staving off the progress of processes leading

to even worse damage. It is useful therefore to keep in mind certain principles that can be

applied to conservation techniques and certain ideal criteria by which those techniques

and the materials used in them can be measured. These are:

a) The item to be treated should not be altered or tampered with more than is necessary

for its preservation. The aim is simply to arrest deterioration, not to restore the item

to an ideal state.

b) All work done should be fully documented, and any fragments of the original removed

in the process should be carefully preserved.

c) Repairs or conservation methods should be fully reversible, so that they can be re

moved or undone without further damage to the object.



Malcolm Turner: Conservation in Music Libraries ] S9

d) Conservation materials should be stable, permanent and durable; obviously only time

will tell which materials meet this criterion, and so far it is prudent to consider the

only safe materials as being the traditional ones; parchment, vellum, good rag paper,

linen, and (with some reservations) silk.

e) The materials should be compatible in their physical characteristics with the items to

which they are applied - they should not shrink or stretch at different rates, for in

stance, and should have a similar appearance and feel.

f) Wherever possible it is preferable to repair like with like - paper with paper, for in

stance.

g) When new methods or materials are used they should always be considered as on trial,

and regarded with a healthy scepticism.

h) Materials should not affect the legibility of the document.

i) Repairs must be visible, but neat and unobtrusive.

j) The repair should not increase the weight or thickness of the item too much,

k) The ideal method should as far as possible be quick, convenient, simple, cheap.

This is a daunting list, and it is not surprising that no conservation method at present

meets all of them. In practice the cardinal principles, to which all conservators would

probably subscribe, are the first four. By and large modern conservation methods abide

by these criteria, and materials or techniques which prove in time to fall short of them are

eventually discredited and discarded.

DE ACIDIFICATION AND LAMINATION

The two most commonly employed techniques of conservation are deacidification, to

neutralize the acid present in the paper and to prevent further attack in future, and lami

nation, to strengthen paper weakened by chemical deterioration or damaged by tearing.

Nevertheless present day methods in both fields are far from perfect, and there is consid

erable controversy about the merits (and demerits) of the various processes in use. In the

main they require elaborate and expensive equipment, and should only be undertaken by

trained staff under expert supervision.

Deacidification

The aim of deacidification is not only to neutralize the acid - a relatively simple task -

but to impregnate the paper with a substance which will act as a buffer, to prevent for as

long as possible the formation of further acid. Without this second element deacidification

can only be a temporary palliative.

Aqueous methods

A well-tried and successful method of deacidification, devised by the Barrow Labora

tory in the late 1940s, involves immersing the paper in an aqueous solution of calcium

hydroxide for 20 minutes, followed by a further 20-minute immersion in a calcium bicar

bonate solution. A development of this, usually referred to as the "Barrow one shot meth

od", uses a single 30-minute immersion in a solution of magnesium bicarbonate, and is in

use in the Bodleian Library and the British Library. Apart from the obvious limitation that

aqueous methods cannot be used for material containing water soluble inks, the big disad

vantage of both these methods is that they are slow and expensive; they are costly in

terms of both materials and, especially, staff, and can only be carried out with single

sheets, which means that books so treated must be disbound and subsequently rebound.

It also requires care in handling the wet sheets, to avoid damage, and the sheets generally

need re-sizing after treatment. Most libraries therefore will only be able to contemplate

their use for particularly valuable items.

Attempts to overcome these disadvantages by spraying the solutions on to opened

books have not yet proved successful owing to the difficulty of ensuring evenness of ap

plication and preventing cockling.




Non-aqueous methods

Most of the disadvantages could in theory be overcome by using non-aqueous solutions, which would dry more quickly, might avoid the necessity for re-sizing, and might allow

whole volumes to be treated without being disbound. A non-aqueous solution in which

whole volumes could actually be immersed without damage to the binding has not yet been developed, but promising experiments have been made by the British Museum Re

search Laboratory in the spraying of complete volumes with a solution of barium hydrox ide in methyl alcohol, and by R.D. Smith (Bibliography No. 26) using a solution of mag nesium methoxide in methyl alcohol. A development of the latter using Freon (trichloro

trifluoroethane) as a base has recently been marketed commercially as "Wei T'o spray" (after a Chinese god said to protect books). Although expensive, this is probably the near

est approach to a do-it-yourself method of deacidification available at present. It should

be emphasized that these methods must still be considered experimental, and that they

require great care in use because some of the solvents used are poisonous or inflammable, though the Freon used in Wei T'o spray is reasonably inert.

Gaseous diffusion

The exposure of complete volumes to a gaseous deacidifying agent in a sealed cabinet

could theoretically prove to be the ideal method, but experiments (which are still con

tinuing at the Library of Congress) have so far been only partially successful, mainly because of the impermanence of the effect due to the volatile nature of the deacidifying agent.

Vapour phase methods

A related method involves the exposure of complete volumes to the vapour given off

by some suitable chemical. This would have similar advantages in that large numbers of books could be treated reasonably quickly. The problem is to find the right chemical. W.H. Langwell, who introduced this method, used CHC (cyclohexylamine carbonate — a derivative of ammonia) but this has been shown to be short-lived in its effect. As it also causes yellowing of paper, is destructive of rosin sizing (used in paper since the 19th cen

tury — before that gelatinous sizes were used) and can give rise to sickness and skin irrita

tion, its use is not recommended (see Bibliography No. 13). The technique itself remains a promising one, and its use with different chemicals is under investigation by the Library of Congress.

Lamination

Paper which has been deacidified often requires strengthening, as does paper which has

been badly torn, or affected by acid inks. The variety of techniques that may be used for

strengthening paper is even more bewildering than those for deacidification, and perhaps even more unsatisfactory. All available methods have serious disadvantages, and all but

one must be considered still experimental, and unsuitable for use with valuable material.

Traditional methods

The classic method of repairing and strengthening paper was to attach a sheet of fine

silk fabric to the document using as an adhesive freshly prepared wheat flour paste. Be

cause the silk is expensive and has been found to deteriorate with time, becoming yellow and brittle after some 30 years, it is now more usual to use a fine quality tissue paper. There are three types in common use: long fibred Japanese paper (the long fibres make it

stronger); alpha cellulose tissues (of which the finest quality is known as "lens tissue", whose relative weakness makes it more suitable for small repairs than for strengthening whole pages); and tissues sized with viscose, familiar to everyone from their use in making

tea-bags (as these are a fairly recent introduction they should perhaps be viewed more

cautiously, but they have the advantages that they remain strong when wet and that they can be laid dry on the document and have the paste applied through them). The advan



Malcolm Turner: Conservation in Music Libraries ] 91

tages of the use of tissue and wheat flour paste are that the method is conservative; is fair

ly easily and safely reversible; repairs like with like; does not involve heat; and only pro duces minimal thickening of the paper and change in its appearance and feel. Its disadvan

tages are that it involves damping the paper, and must therefore be used cautiously where

water-soluble or dubious inks are involved ; and that it is a long process requiring consider

able skill. Nevertheless it remains the preferred method in most of the great collections;

for instance it is always used for manuscript material by the Bodleian Library, the Brit

ish Library and the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in West Berlin.

Heat sealing methods

Searching for a quicker and more permanent method of lamination, the Barrow Labo

ratory has developed the now standard method of sandwiching the sheet of paper between

two sheets of alpha cellulose tissue and this in turn between two sheets of cellulose aceta

te. The resulting five-layer sandwich is passed through a special heated press in which it is

subjected to a pressure of 25-40 kg/sq. cm at 140-160 °C for 20 seconds; this dissolves

the cellulose acetate film and allows it to permeate the paper. Tests by the British Museum

Research Laboratory indicate that paper so treated can be delaminated without damage;

and accelerated ageing studies, coupled with the fact that the earliest laminates are now

more than 30 years old and show no sign of deterioration, suggest that the process pro duces reasonably permanent results. However, it has three grave disadvantages: firstly, no

librarian can feel happy at subjecting valuable material to such temperatures; secondly, because of the great heat, it can only be carried out on paper that has been thoroughly

deacidified by the process described above of immersion in an aqueous solution; and

thirdly, it results in a very much thicker sheet, which no longer resembles paper. Experi ments to lessen these defects by using other kinds of laminating film, such as polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene, have not been very successful. Polyvinyl chloride seems to be

unstable and can lead to the formation of hydrochloric acid in the paper, while polyethy

lene laminates are not easily reversible. Research is still continuing, though it is difficult

to see how the disadvantages mentioned above can ever be fully overcome, since they are

inherent in the process.

Solvent lamination with cellulose acetate

This modification of the heat sealing process has been developed by Y. Kathpalia of

the Indian National Archives. It uses the same five-layer sandwich as in the heat sealing

method, but dissolves the cellulose acetate film by swabbing with acetone instead of by

applying heat under pressure. It thus dispenses with both the elaborate equipment and

the high temperatures of the heat sealing method. However, great skill is needed to ensure

a perfect bond, and the acetone must be handled with great care as its fumes are harmful.

Further disadvantages are that some inks are soluble in acetone, and that the whole pro

cess is very slow. A machine has recently been developed in France to carry out the pro

cess, but this of course takes away one of the main advantages of the method, that it does

not call for expensive machinery.

Dry mounting

Dry mounting is a process by which a plastic film or sheet of thin tissue paper coated

with a pressure sensitised adhesive is attached to the paper sheet using moderate pressure

at a relatively low temperature. It has the advantages over the heat sealing method of pro

ducing a thinner sheet, more closely resembling the original paper, and of needing less

elaborate equipment - often an ordinary photographic dry mounting press is sufficient.

The main disadvantage is that until much more experience has been gained there must be

doubts about the permanence of the adhesive and its effects on the paper itself.

Of the various commercial films available (some of polyvinyl chloride and therefore

not recommended - see above), perhaps the three most widely available are Lamatec

(Bibliography No. 8), Crompton tissue (both these are manufactured by Ademco Ltd. of

High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England), and Postlip Duplex tissue, developed by




W.H. Langwell (Bibliography Nos. 19, 20). Of these Crompton tissue appears to be the

most satisfactory, easily applied and readily reversible in methanol. Lamatec has been ex

tensively tested by the British Museum Research Laboratory and by the India Office Li

brary, London, where it has been used for strengthening the many books printed on me

chanical wood paper that are received from Indian publishers. It was originally claimed

that paper so treated could be delaminated by steeping in cold water for five minutes; un

fortunately experience has shown that Lamatec is in fact very hard to reverse fully, espe

cially from soft paper — the tissue is removed, but not the PVA adhesive. The Bibliothèque

nationale reports that, after experimentation, the Centre de Recherche sur la Conserva

tion des Documents Graphiques has advised against the use of Lamatec. The Postlip Du

plex Lamination Process is similar except that the PVA adhesive is impregnated with an

acid neutralising salt, such as magnesium acetate. It therefore claims to deacidify the pa

per as well as strengthen it, but these claims are very questionable and in any case magne sium acetate has been shown to be harmful to paper.

Paper casting

A relatively newly developed method of repairing paper may conveniently be men

tioned here, though it is not strictly speaking a form of lamination. This is the technique of paper casting, or leaf casting (in German, Anfaserungstechnik) by which new paper is

created to fill holes in a damaged sheet. A tray consisting of the damaged sheet, thoroughly

wetted, resting on a fine silk gauze which in turn rests on a fine metal sieve, is securely

supported in a sink containing water up to the level of the tray. Above the tray is placed a

frame which can be made watertight around the sides, and into this is poured a mixture

of water and paper pulp. A pump extracts the water through the base of the sink. The

water and pulp mixture in the upper part of the sink can only escape through the holes in

the damaged sheet, and as it is sucked through it deposits the paper pulp on the silk gauze,

filling the holes with new paper. The actual process is of course a good deal more compli cated than this; the proportion of pulp to water and the type of pulp used must be care

fully calculated to match the type, colour and thickness of the paper to be repaired. The

method has certain disadvantages — there is at present a limit to the size of leaf that can

be handled, and there are obvious difficulties about material involving water soluble inks — but its advantages especially for repairing a leaf with numerous holes are equally obvi

ous, and the apparatus is gradually being introduced into libraries of sufficient size and

resources. A few members of IAML attending the 1979 Conference in Salzburg were pri

vileged to see a paper caster in use at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich; the Brit

ish Library has acquired the apparatus but has nowhere suitable to house it at present! A

sample sheet repaired in this way will be found as an illustration to the article by Stella

Alkalaj (Bibliography No. 1 ; see also Bibliography No. 22).

SELF HELP

A number of remedies open to the librarian have already been suggested in the first

section of this report, when discussing the problems, while in some other cases the reme

dy is sufficiently obvious, even if it cannot always be applied. The purpose of this section

of the report is to suggest ways in which librarians can instigate conservation measures in

their own libraries, either actively by using simple conservation techniques, or passively

by, for instance, imposing restrictive regulations about photocopying, and by their general

management of the library.

Conservation techniques

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that conservation in general calls for the skilled

application of techniques that require training and experience; expert advice should al

ways be sought where valuable or particularly delicate items are to be treated. However, there are some ways in which a librarian with a reasonable degree of manual dexterity and

exercising reasonable caution can contribute to the prolongation of the life of the material




in his care. In this context a useful, short and nontechnical book is Carolyn Horton's

Cleaning and preserving bindings and related materials (see Bibliography No. 15).

Recording

It is important that a record should be kept of any conservation work attempted. Ide

ally a card should be made out for each book, identifying the book, indicating its condi

tion, giving exact details of any treatment, and recording the level of acidity both before

and after treatment.

Fumigation

A damp or mildewed book should first be thoroughly air dried (that is, without the

application of artificial heat) by leaving it opened in a warm dry room. It can then be

brushed in the open air with a soft brush to remove mildew spores as far as possible. The

greatest care must be taken to avoid inhaling the dried spores and to avoid any possibi

lity of their contaminating other library material.

There are various methods of fumigating the volume after this treatment, but the sim

plest, and therefore most suitable in the present context, is to interleave the volume with

sheets of tissue or blotting paper impregnated with thymol; these can be made by dipping the sheets in a 10% solution of thymol and allowing them to dry. Alternatively, and a lit

tle more elaborately, the affected volumes can be treated in a thymol cabinet. Instructions

for making this are given in Plenderleith (see Bibliography No. 21).

A word of warning here, which is applicable to all conservation operations, especially

those involving chemicals: one must always keep a watch for undesirable side effects which

may cause so much damage that the last state is worse than the first. In the case of thy

mol for instance, a relatively safe substance, the vapour softens gelatine and can therefore

attack the glue of bindings and make vellum book covers sticky. A book should never be

left under treatment without regular inspection at fairly short intervals, and in particular

inks or colours must always be carefully tested for fastness before any damp or liquid

materials are used.

Cleaning

Dirt and dust should be removed — especially if the volume is later to be damped for

repairing - by brushing with a soft brush. Probably all that will be required is to brush

the top and fore-edge and a few openings at the beginning and end of the volume. It is

perhaps wiser not to attempt anything more elaborate than this, especially the removal of

stains by bleaching.

Deacidification

The exact determination of the level of acidity in paper is a difficult and fairly compli

cated operation, but the amateur can obtain a rough and ready indication by making a

spot test in an unobtrusive place using the "Archivist" pen (available from Russell Book

crafts, Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England), a felt-tipped pen impregnated with a dye, brom

cresol green, which is blue-green in neutral conditions but changes to yellow-green, yellow,

and orange with increasing levels of acidity. The only feasible technique of deacidification

open to the amateur is the use of Wei T'o spray, which is expensive.

Sizing and fixing inks

Sizing can restore some strength to the paper, and re-sizing is generally needed after

deacidification. The best size, made from gelatine, involves wetting, drying and pressing

the paper, and is therefore not a practical possibility in the present context. As a second

best the amateur can spray on a quick drying spirit size made of 10 parts surgical spirit or

methylated spirit to 1 part of polyvinyl acetate or of soluble nylon (see Bibliography

No. 21).




The same spirit solutions in a weaker strength (2—5%) can be used to fix fugitive inks

before damping the paper for repair. It should however be mentioned that at the Biblio

thèque nationale no attempt is made at present to fix fugitive inks; none of the available

methods is considered satisfactory, since they all carry the risk of staining the paper.

Repair

The amateur is not likely to feel capable of attempting the lamination of whole sheets, let alone whole volumes, but with a little practice he can produce acceptable repairs to

torn pages instead of using self-adhesive transparent tape or gummed brown paper tape, which are definitely not recommended (see the section below on TECHNIQUES TO BE

AVOIDED). It is a comparatively simple job to make a suitable mend using any of the

tissue papers already mentioned (see the section above on "Traditional methods" of

lamination) and either wheat flour paste, for which the recipe is given in Plenderleith

Bibliography No. 21) or carboxy methyl cellulose paste, now widely sold under a variety of trade names for hanging wallpaper. The latter is not quite as strong as wheat flour

paste but is more easily prepared and is adequate for minor repairs. An even simpler re

pair as far as the technique is concerned, though calling for slightly more specialized

equipment, can be made by using Crompton tissue, made by Ademco. This is coated with

a heat sensitive adhesive and can be simply applied with a heated tacking iron, also sup plied by Ademco; it is readily reversible in methanol. In either case, the essentials are to

avoid straight-line repairs, which can lead to cracking and further tearing along the line of

the join, and to feather the edges of the new patch so that the join is not unduly thick

ened. We should perhaps here repeat our earlier warning (under Conservation tech

niques) that valuable items should be left to the expert.

Bindings

Like paper, leather bookbindings are subject to deterioration arising from chemical

and mechanical causes. Chemical deterioration, again as with paper, is chiefly the result of

the action of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere. Unfortunately there is no satisfactory treatment to arrest this process at present. The standard treatment consists in sponging the leather with a solution of potassium lactate. It is not complicated and is described in

Plenderleith and Werner (Bibliography No. 21), but it appears to offer at best only tem

porary protection; at least, it does no harm. Mechanical deterioration is caused by drying out of the leather's natural oils, leading to brittleness and loss of flexibility, which causes

the joints to crack. When the joints have once gone the book must be re-bound, but be

fore this stage is reached the life of the binding can be considerably prolonged by the

application of a dressing such as British Museum Leather Dressing (the recipe and names

of suppliers are given in Plenderleith and Werner, and in England the dressing is now avail

able from some large branches of Boots Chemists).

General library management

Furbishing

A rotating programme for the routine furbishing of books - that is, minor and rela

tively unskilled cleaning and repairs - is considered by the British Library to be "one of the most valuable single contributions to the conservation of the collections ".8 The ideal interval between furbishings is thought to be 3-5 years, but even volumes furbished at 10 or 12-year intervals are in significantly better condition than volumes not furbished at all

(only certain select categories of books can be furbished because of shortage of staff). The full range of operations carried out by the British Library furbishers is as follows:

1. Collect volumes from shelves. 2. Check shelfmarks and enter into notebook. 3. Register missing volumes.

N.J. Seeley, op. cit.



Malcolm Turner: Conservation in Music Libraries J 95

4. Dust head and fore-edge. 5. Wash and apply lactate solution.

6. Knock down and paste corners.

7. Check for loose pages and boards.

8. Clean out with brush first and last sections.

9. Attach loose boards with linen or cloth joints.

10. Tip in loose pages where required. 11. Paste down loose spines and lettering pieces.

12. Paste down loose leather where required. 13. Colour leather where scuffed.

14. Apply leather dressing. 15. Minor repairs (plates, maps, bookplates, etc.).

16. Re-endpaper if required. 17. Books requiring more than the above to be returned to the Library official.

Some of these operations should perhaps be classed as semi-skilled, but a more limited

and genuinely unskilled furbishing operation, perhaps including items 1-8, 11, 12 and 14,

and perhaps confined as in the British Library to select classes of material, could be set up

in most libraries relatively cheaply and simply and with considerable benefit to the life of

the collections. A very comprehensive and non-technical description of these furbishing

operations is given in Horton (see Bibliography No. 15).

Storage

Not many librarians, except perhaps those in modern purpose-built accommodation,

will be able to come very close to the ideal levels of temperature and relative humidity

recommended above, but it may be possible to rearrange existing accommodation so that

the most valuable and most fragile items (not necessarily the same thing by any means)

are taken out of the normal storage areas and especially out of areas in regular use by staff

and public — and therefore needing to be warm and well-lit — and moved to storage where

environmental conditions, if not perfect, can be at least ameliorated by excluding strong

light and turning off radiators for example. For the purpose of selecting such storage it

might be worthwhile investing in a good thermometer and hair hygrometer and compiling

records of the temperature and relative humidity in various areas. In any case, some long

term monitoring of temperature and relative humidity would at least provide useful statis

tics with which to argue a case for improvements in storage conditions.

Choice of storage materials

It should be borne in mind that the processes causing deterioration of books are at

work equally on storage materials, and that envelopes and boxes for storing unbound or

especially valuable items, and the materials of exhibition cases, especially for items on

long-term exhibition, can contaminate the very items they are designed to protect. Care

should be taken therefore that they are made of the best modern acid-free papers and

cardboards in the first place, and that they are periodically tested for acidity and discard

ed if necessary. The same considerations apply to leather and paper used for bindings and

endpapers. It is particularly recommended that unbound items should not be stored in plastic

envelopes (see the section below on TECHNIQUES TO BE AVOIDED).

Regulations

It has already been pointed out that some libraries restrict the issue to readers of valu

able or fragile material, and instead offer microfilms or facsimiles, unless the reader genu

inely needs to study the original physical entity.

The other main area in which restrictions are very common is photography and electro

static copying. Many libraries have commented not only on the general growth in photo

copying but on the particular boost to requests for photocopies of early music given by




the publication of RISM and the consequent dissemination of information about library

holdings.

Photography. As already mentioned, many libraries try to ensure that early or valu

able or fragile books, at least, are not photographed more than once. The usual procedure is what whenever a request for photocopies of the whole or part of such a volume is re

ceived the opportunity is taken of deciding whether it would be worthwhile preparing a

master negative microfilm. From the letters received by the committee it appears that

such a master microfilm is virtually always made for manuscript material, and almost al

ways for music printed before 1800. Future requests for photographs are then satisfied

by offering positive microfilm, enlargements or electrostatic prints taken from the nega tive master microfilm. A slight complication is that when an item has been bound in a

volume with several others it appears to be usual for the whole volume to be microfilmed; or sometimes several volumes will be put on the same film (for instance in the case of a

set of parts of a collection of string quartets bound up in four separate volumes for the

individual instruments). In such cases an enquirer wanting only part of the volume or

volumes will have to pay for the whole microfilm, since it appears to be technically

impossible to copy only a section of a master microfilm. Fortunately this difficulty is

apparently universal and, perhaps for this reason, gives rise to few complaints. Electrostatic copying. The rising tide of demands for electrostatic copies is a more

serious problem than photography because there is no way of avoiding items being copied more than once and because the risk of damage from handling is much greater than with

photography. Many libraries, and by no means only the largest, have some kind of regula tion to restrict electrostatic copying. Commonly, the copying of manuscripts is entirely forbidden and also the copying of books printed before 1800 (the Bodleian Library is a

notable exception in allowing the copying of books printed after 1640) and most libraries

naturally reserve the right to veto the copying of a particularly fragile volume or one

whose binding is too tight. The Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz in West Berlin

goes even further by banning in addition the copying of first editions printed after 1800, while the British Library includes in its ban all "case books"9 of whatever period. (But see Bibliography No. 11.)

Several libraries commented on the fact that much greater damage results from allowing readers to do their own copying. Restricting the actual copying to members of staff would

therefore be one way of obtaining maximum benefit for minimum inconvenience — and

might even make some readers think twice about whether their copying was really neces

sary. In this connection one library mentioned that their copying demands were probably kept down because their particular circumstances resulted in unavoidably high costs and

long delays, and certainly the delays in the British Library photographic service deter some potential orders. This is not seriously recommended as a method of control however. It should also be mentioned that one library made the valid point that freer photocopying might well help to reduce the theft and mutilation of books.

TECHNIQUES TO BE AVOIDED

It was suggested in Bergen that the committee might be able to say something about

conservation techniques that had been found to be undesirable. This turned out to be

rather difficult in practice. There seemed little point giving details of genuinely outmoded

techniques. On the other hand the ideal conservation technique simply does not exist. All

those in use at present have disadvantages, all have their supporters and detractors, all

may be appropriate in the right circumstances. We do not feel able therefore to do more

than point to one or two practices which are probably better avoided.

Wetting of paper

Paper should never be wetted or dampened unless it is also going to be deacidified, since water activates acid.

9 Certain categories of rare, fragile or valuable books, limited editions, books in special collections

(such as the Royal Music Library) and the like; normally kept in locked cases.




Silk lamination

Although this is the classic method of strengthening paper, and silk is indeed stronger than tissue paper, it appears to have disadvantages pointed out elsewhere (see the section above on "Traditional methods" of lamination), and replies from libraries large enough to have separate conservation sections indicate that most repair and strengthening is now done with various forms of tissue paper — which also have the advantage of being cheaper than silk.

Paperclips

Although temptingly convenient, paperclips can cause considerable tearing when re

moved, even if the item being handled is sandwiched between sheets of scrap paper. They can also quickly cause staining through rust. This may seem self-evident, and therefore not worth pointing out, but several libraries have in fact mentioned that paperclips are in

use or that their use has only recently been discontinued.

Self - adhesive tape

This is another tempting convenience whose use is definitely not recommended even for temporary repair, except perhaps in very special cases such as instrumental parts that are very quickly going to be worn out by student use and can easily be replaced. In the

vast majority of cases a simple repair with Crompton tissue or tissue paper and paste is

vastly preferable and need not take very much longer. The disadvantages of self-adhesive

tape are: firstly, that there is a tendency for the adhesive to exude beyond the edges of

the plastic tape, at best picking up dirt, at worst causing damage by sticking to adjoining sheets; secondly, that the tape itself fairly quickly discolours and in some cases becomes

detached as the adhesive dries out, leaving the original damage plus a more-or-less sticky area around it; and thirdly, that it is much stronger than the paper it is used to repair and

forms a straight-edge join, both of which factors may easily lead to further creasing and

tearing along the line of the join. Gummed brown paper tape is also open to this last ob

jection, and its use is similarly not recommended.

Plastic envelopes

In the British Library plastic envelopes made of plasticised PVC have been used for

storing some unbound material and fragile items awaiting treatment and binding. The

British Museum Research Laboratory has pointed out that the use of such envelopes is undesirable because of the instability of the plastic, leading to contamination of the con tents of the bags by the transfer of plasticiser and the liberation of hydrochloric acid.

Furthermore, the build up of static electricity within the envelopes led to fibres and small

sections of paper being detached whenever they were handled. This latter objection would

apply to envelopes even of stable plastic. Altogether, it seems safer to use stout acid-free

paper envelopes for such storage instead of plastic envelopes of whatever type.

The Future

The purpose of this short section is not to give a résumé of current research and future

possibilities in conservation techniques, a task beyond the scope of this short report, but

to mention one or two long-term considerations that librarians might profitably bear in

mind.

STORAGE OF DETERIORATED MATERIAL

An almost insoluble conservation problem is posed by certain types of badly deteriorat

ed material of relatively low value, such as some 19th and 20th century items printed on

mechanical wood papers. The techniques available for treating and strengthening such

items are of limited efficacy, and their cost is usually out of all proportion to the com




mercial, artistic or scholarly value of the items concerned. Consequently they come at the

bottom of the queue for the limited resources available to most libraries. Yet it goes

against the grain simply to let them fall to pieces or to destroy them (unless they are true

duplicates), even if a photographic record has been made (which itself has a life-span of

unknown duration). The original is always preferable to a copy, however good; and there

is always the possibility that a suitable treatment may become available in the near future.

It has therefore been suggested that "consideration should be given to the housing of such

material in cheap storage but possibly at a low temperature and with the exclusion of

oxygen until such time as it can be conserved or needs, in special circumstances, to be

examined. "10

Apart from considerations of cost and availability, not many libraries will

have sufficient quantities of such material to make special storage feasible, but it is no

bad thing to bear the possibility in mind, and some modification of it, such as the storage of smaller quantities of books in sealed containers in, say, a cool basement might not be

beyond the bounds of possibility.

PERMANENT PAPERS

It is useful to distinguish between "permanent" and "durable" papers. Durable papers are simply those able to withstand wear and tear; so that even papers of low durability

may be relatively permanent and pose no particular conservation problem if they receive

relatively little handling. Permanent papers on the other hand are those able to retain

their qualities of strength and durability over a long period of time even when not han

dled at all. Permanence is thus a quality vital to the survival of the paper. Clearly for library

purposes paper needs to be both permanent and durable. It used to be thought that per manent and durable papers could only be made from pure rag fibres and were conse

quently too expensive for general book production. Research within the past 20 years

however, notably by the Barrow Laboratory and based on the examination of papers in

old books still in excellent condition, has not only established useful criteria by which the

relative permanence and durability of papers can be measured but has also shown that

with modern conditions of manufacture a satisfactory chemical wood paper could be

made relatively inexpensively. The Barrow Laboratory did in fact develop two commer

cial book papers with an expected life of at least 400 years, and other papers are in course

of development. Unfortunately these papers, although in the medium price range, are

still slightly more expensive than other papers of the same printing quality, largely be

cause they are produced only in small quantities. Low production; therefore higher cost; therefore reluctance on the part of publishers to use such paper; therefore little demand; therefore low production. It seems that only a vigorous championing of the cause of per manent papers will break this circle; and where will this come from if not from librari

ans? It is depressing in this context that the Director of Libraries of the New England

Conservatory of Music commented in her letter: "In a MIC meeting in Bergen I expressed concern about the poor physical quality of many contemporary music scores. It proved not to be a subject of great interest.

"

To close this section on a more positive note, it has been pointed out that "the habit

of many English publishers during the early 19th century, and French publishers since

that time, of issuing some copies of an edition on large or fine paper, has resulted in the

survival of some copies of certain works in excellent condition, while the ordinary paper

copies have largely deteriorated or disappeared. Should it be possible to encourage pub lishers to issue a number of copies of each work on archivally permanent paper, and possi

bly in a library quality binding, it is felt that many libraries and even private individuals

might prefer to purchase these even at a slightly higher price. At present much material

deposited is less permanent than the copyright it is designed to protect, and an introduc

tion into the Copyright Act of a requirement to deposit archivally permanent copies would be of the utmost benefit to the National Libraries without necessarily becoming an

additional burden on the publishers. In this context it is interesting to note that the Copy





right Act 54 Geo. III, c. 156 specified that a copy of a work on the 'best paper' should be

deposited. "n

(British copyright law is at present under review.)

CO-OPERATIVE PRESERVATION PROGRAMMES

Concern was expressed by the Music Department of the Bibliothèque nationale that

of the sum allocated to binding and conservation only a small proportion is used for con

servation. In the British Library too, the routine repair of damaged bindings and the bind

ing of periodicals and paperbacks, in however cheap and temporary a form, uses up a large

proportion of the resources — in time and manpower, as well as cash — allocated to bind

ing and conservation as a whole. Similarly, the music librarians of both the Bodleian and

the New England Conservatory of Music commented that the really insuperable conserva

tion problem was lack of resources — time, money, storage, trained staff. Alas, the com

mittee has no proposals for overcoming this difficulty. However, insofar as it can be over

come the best hope seems to lie — as in so many library fields today — in national or in

ternational co-operation at both a practical and a theoretical level.

A conference specifically concerned with the organisational and administrative aspects of international co-operation in the field of book preservation was held in Florence in

1970, sponsored by the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in co-operation with UNESCO and

the Italian Ministry for Education (Bibliography No. 10). It resulted in a proposal for an

international centre to promote co-operation in and correlation of research. An Organis

ing Committee was set up to further the project, and subsequently a provisional board

was established with the Danish Royal Library in Copenhagen as its headquarters, though little more has come from these moves yet.

Meanwhile a movement for a national programme has been growing in the USA, and in

December 1976 a Planning Conference for a National Preservation Program was held at

the Library of Congress (Bibliography No. 23). At the end of the Conference Mr. F.G.

Poole, Assistant Director for Preservation, Library of Congress Administrative Depart

ment, announced that the Library of Congress proposed to move ahead with a national

preservation programme and would begin with the formation of an action committee. In

February 1977 Mr. Poole was named as Director of the National Preservation and Restora

tion Program of the Library of Congress. Moreover the Reference Division of the British

Library has recently created a new post of Head of Conservation, to which Mr. Nicolas

Barker has been appointed. Finally, the members of the Standing Committee of the

IFLA Section on Conservation have just promulgated an internationally agreed statement

of principles for the conservation and restoration of library materials (Bibliography No.

16). A hopeful note on which to end this report.


Bibliography

This very short bibliography is intended only to list items mentioned in the text of the report, and

to draw attention to a few standard works as a starting point for further reading. 1. Stella Alkalaj, The Chemical Laboratory for Hygiene, Conservation and Restoration of Damaged Written Materials in the National Library 'Cyril and Methodius', Sofia, in: Restaurator vol. 1 no. 2

(1969), p. 87-91. (Describes the paper caster, and includes a sample of damaged paper repaired by

this method. See also below, No. 22.) 2. John P. Baker & Marguerite C. Sorora, eds., Library conservation: preservation in perspective

(Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, Stroudsburg, Penn., 1979). (A useful compendium of reprinted key

articles or extracts from books, chosen for the librarian, not the trained conservator, and dealing pri

marily "with the philosophical and epistemological aspects of conservation . .. why materials must be

preserved; why they deteriorate; what should be preserved; who should do the work . . . how workers

from different disciplines must organise and collaborate if conservation objectives are to be realised. ")

3. Paul N. Banks, Paper cleaning, in: Restaurator vol. 1 no. 1 (1969), p. 52-66. (Discusses simple dry

methods of cleaning, as well as more complicated wet methods and bleaching.)




4. Paul N. Banks, A selective bibliography on the conservation of research library materials (The New

berry Library, Chicago 1978). 5. W.J. Barrow, Permanence / durability of the book. 1-7 (W.J. Barrow Research Laboratory, Rich

mond, Virginia, 1963-74). (Good for reference. The Barrow Research Laboratory was closed because of lack of funds in 1977. Its place has largely been taken by the Preservation Research and Testing Office of the Library of Congress, which was established in 1970.) 6. A.D. Baynes-Cope, The non-aqueous deacidification of documents, in: Restaurator vol. 1 no. 1

(1969), p. 1-9. 7. British Standards Institute, Repair and allied processes for the conservation of documents. B.S. 4971 : Pt. 1, 1973; Storage and exhibition of archival documents. B.S. 5454, 1977. 8. Chapman, Lamatec archival tissue investigation. Her Majesty's Stationery Office Laboratory re

port no. 7 (April 1973). 9. Verner W. Clapp, The story of permanent / durable book-paper, 1115-1970 (= Restaurator. Sup plement no. 3.) (Restaurator Press, Copenhagen 1972). (Includes a useful description of the history of

paper making and its ingredients. Non-technical.) 10. Conference on international co-operation for the preservation of the book, Proceedings, in: Bollet tino d'Istituto di Patologia del Libro vol. 29 pt. 1-4 (1970). 11. Conservation et reproduction des manuscrits et imprimés anciens. Colloque international organisé par la Bibliothèque Vaticane . . . 21-24 octobre 1975 (= Studi e testi [délia] Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana no. 276.) (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 1976). (Contains a report on

p. 100-103 by Don Alfonso Stickler, Prefetto of the Vatican Library, and Charles G. LaHood, Chief of the Photoduplication Service, Library of Congress, on the experimental modification of Xerox machines to avoid having to press books flat.) 12. G.M. Cunha and D.G. Cunha, Conservation of library materials, 2nd edition, 2 vols. (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen [N.J.J 1971-72). 13. R.N. Dupuis, et al., Evaluation of Vapour Phase Deacidification Processes, in: Restaurator vol. 1 no. 3 (1970), p. 149-64. 14. Betty M. Haines, Deterioration in leather bookbindings: our present state of knowledge, in: British Library Journal vol. 3 no. 1 (Spring 1977), p. 59-70. 15. Carolyn Horton, Cleaning and preserving bindings and related materials (= Conservation of library materials. LTP Publications, no. 12.) 2nd ed. (Library Technology Program, American Library Associ

ation, Chicago 1969). (Excellent for the non-professional conservator.) 16. IFLA, Principles of conservation and restauration in libraries. Compiled by members of the Stand

ing Committee of the IFLA Section on Conservation, in: IFLA Journal vol. 5 no. 4 (1979), p. 292 300. ("The intent of this paper is to encourage those responsible for the care of library collections to admit to the consequences of neglect and, together with scientific and technical experts, to formulate a positive policy on the future of their collections. General observations on conservation are presented. Discussed are temperature and humidity, light, handling of library materials, biological damage and chemical damage. The development of policies for the restoration of a damaged item are enumerated. Considered are expense, materials for restoration work, the type and degree of restoration that is nec

essary, and the documentation on the restoration. ") 17. Institute of Paper Conservation (P.O.Box 17, London WC1, England), publishes an annual journal, The Paper Conservator and a newsletter, Paper Conservation News, appearing 3 times a year and con

taining topical news, short reports on techniques and equipment, and sources of supply of conserva tion materials.

18. Rex Lancefield & Nick Robbins, Suppliers list for archive conservation (Society of Archivists, Conservation Group Committee, London 1978). (List of suppliers, mainly in UK, with an index of conservation materials.)

19. W.H. Langwell, The Postlip Duplex Lamination processes, in: Journal of the Society of Archivists vol. 2 no. 10 (1964), p. 471-76.

20. W.H. Langwell, Recent developments in Postlip Lamination, in: Journal of the Society of Archi

vists vol. 3 no. 7 (1968), p. 360-61.

21. J.H. Plenderleith and A.E.A. Werner, The conservation of antiquities and works of art: treatment,

repair, and restoration, second edition (Oxford University Press, London 1971). (For long a standard

work, and references to it will still be found in the literature, though as far as library materials go it

has been superseded by Cunha & Cunha - see No. 12 above. The preface says: "In the following chap ters simple instructions are given for cleaning and preservation, and the collector with a practical turn

of mind who desires to carry out for himself the methods described can do so without any special technical training.

" It would be a bold — and a rich - collector who embarked on some of the tech

niques described, but there is a useful set of appendixes on, for instance, dangerous chemicals, the cal

culation of strengths of solutions, preparation of flour paste, the treatment of leather with potassium




lactate solution and British Museum leather dressing, and the preparation of spirit size. Each chapter includes a bibliography, and there is a list of suppliers of materials.) 22. Brigitte Poschmann, ed., Massenrestaurierung. Protokoll einer Arbeitstagung im Staatsarchiv

Bückeburg vom 17.-18. Februar 1970 (= Veröffentlichungen der Niedersächsischen Archivverwaltung, Heft 30) (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1971). (Describes in some detail, p. 22, how a paper caster works. See also above, No. 1.) 23. A report on a planning conference for a national preservation program, Washington D.C., Decem ber 16-17, 1976, in: Library of Congress Information Bulletin Appendix 1 (February 18 1977),

p. 129-131. 24. Restaurator, International journal for the preservation of library and archival material. Vol. 1, no. 1 (1969- . Restaurator Press, Copenhagen.) From Vol. 3 published by Munksgaard Interna

tional Publishers, Copenhagen. (Published irregularly. Most of the not-too-technical articles are listed

separately in this bibliography, but they by no means exhaust the interest of this periodical. For in

stance, if you are looking for unusual pets, how about the article by Z.P. Baryshnikova in Vol. 1, no. 3, on Some observations of the development and nutrition ofbooklice? - apparently they prefer wheat flour and dried meat.) 25. N.J. Seeley, Conservation in the British Library Reference Division: a report. . . presented to the

British Library Board (1975). (A private report to the British Library Board, not available to the pu blic.) 26. R.D. Smith, Nonaqueous deacidiflcation of books (PhD Thesis, University of Chicago, Graduate

School of Library Science, 1970). (Available only on microfilm. Interesting, but very technical.) 27. Otto Wächter, Restaurierung und Erhaltung von Büchern, Archivalien und Graphiken (= Studien

zu Denkmalschutz und Denkmalpflege IX.) (Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., Wien 1975). (A handbook spec

ifically intended for trained restorers who have not specialised in paper and book conservation. Daunt

ing to the amateur because of the amount of detail, but very comprehensive and useful for reference.) 28. Howard W. Winger & R.D. Smith, eds., Deterioration and preservation of library materials. The

34th annual conference of the Graduate Library School, 4-6 August 1969 (University of Chicago

Press, Chicago 1970). (Not too technical for librarians who are not professional conservators.)

Lois de la Conférence AIBM de Bergen, en 1976, la Research Libraries Commission a institué un

sous-comité sur la Conservation dans les Bibliothèques Musicales. Il n'a pu identifier aucun problème

portant spécifiquement sur la musique, mais les bibliothécaires musicaux sont souvent relativement

isolés, même lorsqu'ils font partie nominalement d'une bibliothèque mère, et beaucoup d'entre eux

ressentaient manifestement le besoin d'un guide en termes simples de la conservation en général. Cette version revue du rapport du Sous-Comité expose brièvement les causes de la détérioration des

livres: les facteurs de l'environnement, les facteurs ayant rapport aux propriétés intrinsèques des

matières employées dans la fabrication du papier et du livre, la dégradation, et les facteurs biologiques. Elle esquisse les techniques principales de la désacidifïcation et du doublage, en indiquant les avantages

et les désavantages des méthodes actuellement disponibles, et à un niveau moins ambitieux elle traite

des moyens dont les bibliothécaires non formés dans la conservation peuvent, avec le minimum de

matériel, ou simplement par une direction efficace de leur bibliothèque, arrêter ou retarder la détério

ration de leurs collections. Une section brève mais importante mentionne les pratiques à éviter. Le

rapport se termine par un regard sur les possibilités d'avenir et les signes encourageants d'une consci

ence internationale des problèmes de la conservation.

Während der IVMß-Tagung 1976 in Bergen gründete die Research Libraries Commission eine Ar

beitsgruppe für Restauration in Musikbibliotheken. Diese konnte keine ausschließlich auf Noten

material bezüglichen Probleme feststellen, aber Musikbibliothekare sind oft verhältnismäßig isoliert,

auch wenn sie dem Namen nach einer größeren Bibliothek angehören, und viele Teilnehmer wünschten

deutlich eine einfach gehaltene Anleitung für die allgemeine Restaurierung. Der hier in bearbeiteter

Fassung gebotene Bericht der Arbeitsgruppe enthält eine kurze Erklärung der Ursachen für den Verfall

von Büchern: einiges ist umweltbedingt, einiges liegt an der Beschaffenheit und Eigenart der zur Papier

und Buchherstellung angewandten Grundstoffe, es entstehen biologische Schäden wie auch solche

durch die Benutzung. Es folgt eine Übersicht über die ersten Schritte in Neutralisierungs- und Folien

anwendungsmethoden, wobei auf Vor- und Nachteile der augenblicklich zur Verfügung stehenden Mit

tel hingewiesen wird. Auf einem nicht so ehrgeizigen Niveau werden Bibliothekare ohne Restaurations

ausbildung angeleitet, mit wenigen Hilfsmitteln oder auch nur mittels guter Bibliotheksverwaltung dem

Verfall ihrer Sammlung Einhalt gebieten zu können oder ihn zu reduzieren. Ein kurzer aber wichtiger

Abschnitt behandelt Angewohnheiten, die vermieden werden müssen. Der Bericht schließt mit einem

Blick auf künftige Möglichkeiten und auf die ermutigenden Beweise internationalen Bewußtseins von

Restaurierungsproblemen.



Conservation in Music Libraries

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