Why We Are Here: Defining the Roles of the Conservator
Avery Bazemore
3 December 2014
Conservation of Books and Library Materials
1800 words
The role of the conservator does not necessarily cover everyone who does the work of
conservation. It is easy enough to allow the accreditation committees at AIC or ICON
decide what makes a conservator, but it is a subject worth exploring. Conservators take
responsibility for the objects under their care, and in some cases, of the collections under
their care. The ways those collections might be used range from heavily-used circulating
collections in public libraries to heavily-regulated private reading rooms, but a conservator is
responsible for their maintenance and well-being. A conservator should have the freedom
and resources to carry out appropriate treatments on the objects and the collections for
which they are responsible. A conservator’s opinions should be trusted and respected, and
must be worthy of trust and respect. Responsibility draws the line between what is and what
is not conservation.
The National Archives is a large government-funded library with free public access. It
contains essentially everything ever published that pertains to the government. The stacks
are extensive and organized with the most frequently-used items nearest to hand. The
conservation department is divided into preventive and interventive conservation, with an
additional branch for preparing items for digital preservation. Interventive conservation is
the standard benchwork side, fixing books when they are broken, while preventative
conservation is about making sure as few books get to that point as possible. Preventive
conservation does experiments and tests new methods for collections care. They leave glass
slides in the stacks to collect dust, and pepper the area with temperature and humidity
sensors to detect fluctuations and microclimates. The library benefits from the freedom
given to the preventative conservation department. Their research led the library to shut off
its HVAC systems for two days a week, with no appreciable change other than on the energy
bill. The group that prepares items for digital preservation exists in a transitional space
between commercial and government-funded work. Most digital preservation is done by
private contractors, who bring their own machines and image items according to the order in
which they are requested or the order their companies think would be most lucrative. The
digital preservation conservation team works to tighter deadlines, working only to stabilize
items so they can be photographed. The interventive conservation department does the bulk
of the work on the collections, and while they bring their most exciting projects out for
visitors, they likely spend most of their time reattaching boards like every other conservation
lab. Sometimes treatments are subsidized by other institutions, when they have been
requested for exhibition. For example, there is a large map of an island in Canada, which was
subjected to treatment in the seventies. A Canadian museum requested it, and raised the
funds to have it stabilized before it is shipped. Their conservation staff is large, highlyqualified, and trusted to make decisions in line with the collections’ best interests.
Some libraries have less elaborate conservation programs. The New England Historic
Genealogical Society is a modestly-sized nonprofit specialty library in downtown Boston. It
does not employ an accredited conservator, but it does have a conservation lab to maintain
its collections. It is run on paid memberships, private donations, and grants. The collections
consist mostly of genealogies along with town, church, and military records. There is a rare
books collection, with essentially the same content in more valuable bindings. The patrons
are mainly older people looking for their ancestry, with or without the aid of paid researchers
employed by the library. Genealogical researchers are only really interested in the content of
the books. Many people only buy day passes to the library, and are in a rush to do as much
research as possible within the allotted time, and so they do not handle books with as much
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care as they otherwise might. The paid researchers are on tight deadlines, and may not have
been trained on how to handle books correctly. People crush the spines on copy machines.
One patron frequently ate crackers over the books but no one wanted to step in because he
was such a large donor. In short, the collections are worked hard. However, the conservation
department is relatively new. Since the library was incorporated in 1845, there is quite a
backlog. There are a lot of taped hinges and slapdash rebacks to contend with from the years
the only maintenance of the collections was done by librarians and part-time volunteers.
They do not employ a conservator, but they hired a conservation technician a few years ago.
The sole conservation technician’s role is essentially to repair the books she is told to repair
and get them back into circulation as quickly as possible. She has little input into storage or
safe handling. If the climate is controlled or monitored, she does not hear about it, although
the condition of the vellum bindings she was told to work on suggest that the humidity
fluctuates significantly. The conservation department has few resources, financial or
otherwise. Until two years ago, the conservation department was relegated to a cramped
corner cleared in the rare books stacks. There was no running water, so the conservation
technician had to fill trays for paper washing in the bathroom downstairs and tow them up
in the dumbwaiter. She campaigned for years to get her own space, and after years of
fighting with the administration to get it funded and finished, she was finally given a small
area for a new conservation lab. This lab contains a massive sink with a deionization system,
and large table with a built-in lightbox. It represents the only gesture of respect the library
has ever shown her. Bar one, her assistants are retirees looking to pass the time, or history
majors looking for college credit. She cannot entrust these volunteers with work that is too
complex, and the turnover rate is so rapid she has to teach the same thing to someone new
six months later. Books that need rebacking or resewing have been piling up for years. It is
difficult to find a place for any sense of ethics in such a workmanlike environment. The
extent of documentation is a spreadsheet wherein each item is an entry with a row of
tickboxes representing broad treatments like “hinge tighten”, “reback”, and “rebind”. The
conservation department is also expected to function as a digital preservation department,
with one camera, one small copystand, and one scanner, which is decades out of date. A
good bit of the collection is on brittle paper from the turn of the century, and many books
whose entire textblocks had separated into leaves are digitized, reprinted on less acidic paper,
and sewn into unattractive but sturdy pamphlet bindings. Most digitization is done by
volunteers who have less than an hour of training, and work out their own convoluted
methods through guesswork. The originals are generally deaccessioned and sold if buyers
could be found. The conservation technician is routinely chastised for trying to rescue books
that the Technical Services Assistant decided would be better off as reproductions. She does
not get to spend much time doing practical benchwork, because she is nearly always out of
the lab catering to superiors who do not respect her time. When they want pictures framed
and hung in their offices, they have her do it. The marketing department had her photograph
and digitally restore a family tree so they could sell prints made with the lab’s materials. She
spends a lot of time doing things that are profoundly not what she is paid to do, and the
manager of technical services spends a lot of time in unnecessary meetings asking her why
she cannot keep up with the amount of work she is given. Some of the conservation
technician’s limited role may be related to her lack of credentials. She was trained as a
bookbinder rather than a conservator, and received little conservation-specific training. She
feels underqualified to call herself a “conservator”. Even so, the library would benefit if she
were allowed to focus on treatment, and if her input into a larger view of collections care
were considered.
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There are independent conservation laboratories that take contracts to work on objects from
individual or institutional collections. Northeast Document Conservation Center maintains a
massive, well-ordered space in North Andover. They conserve books, works on paper,
photographs, films, and audio recordings. They are the best-equipped lab in the area, with a
lot of specialist equipment, and so they receive items from individuals, as well as libraries and
other institutions, even when they have small conservation labs of their own. They have a
leaf caster with a Hollander beater, and an enormous light bleaching table. Their digital
preservation area is equipped to safely photograph books and objects several meters wide,
and their editing room is painted in the approved color-correction grey. The NEDCC accept
objects individually or in small groups, although they are sometimes consulted on larger
collections and for disaster recovery. They charge a minimum fee of five hundred dollars,
and an initial consultation costs one hundred eighty dollars. Their contract fee both forces
and allows them to work in compliance with the code of ethics published by the American
Institute for Conservation. They must write a full treatment report on all objects or groups
of similar objects, with photographic documentation. They may outline alternative
treatments that are more cost-effective or more aesthetic, but the most ethical treatment
must be explained first. The staff at the NEDCC have no direct sway over storage
conditions, but their suggestions are taken seriously. They are not responsible for any one
collection in particular, but they keep the collections’ best interests in mind when working
out treatments and proposals for future care. Because the NEDCC relies on contract work,
it must keep its edge honed. The open plan of the conservation lab encourages
collaboration, so they reap the benefit of multiple viewpoints and ideas. Outside the
NEDCC, the team participates in conferences, discussion groups, and published journals.
The division between what a conservator is and what a conservator is not lies primarily in
the amount of trust and responsibility afforded by the institution. Not all institutions employ
an accredited conservator, but all institutions need maintenance on their collections. A
conservator’s role is broader than simply repairing books, and they must be accountable for
the items for which they are responsible. Some institutions cannot support a qualified
conservator, but they might be able to support a conservation lab and staff with more
limited roles, or contract work to private labs. The measure of a conservator is the measure
of the freedom they have to determine the best course of action, with the support of the
institution that employs them.
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