Conservation Research

Conservation Research supports the work of the Collection Care department across all of its activities by enhancing our understanding of the materials in the collections and constantly updating our awareness of the impacts of the processes employed to prolong the lives of the collections.

Conservation research is concerned with the nature of the materials that make up the Library's collection items. This includes the identification and characterisation of materials as well as the investigation of the different ways in which they age, interact with each other and deteriorate.

Collection Care staff need to understand how the materials that are used to clean, repair, stabilise and store collections can affect their condition. This important aspect of research work assists Collection Care in the selection of appropriate furniture, equipment and materials.

Conservation Research works towards understanding the process behind the aging and deterioration of books and paper and the effects the environment has on these processes.

Armed with an understanding of the chemistry involved in these processes, Conservation Research provides an invaluable contribution to Collection Care in its aims to slow down the deterioration of our collection items and to provide them with a stable storage environment.

Lifecycle

99% of material in the BL is organic and by its very nature ages and deteriorates over time.

Conservation Research aims not only to help reduce the rate of ageing, but also to introduce conservation and preservation techniques that minimise physical intervention while maximising the useful lifetime of the item before it needs to be treated again.

By examining the life cycle of collections, Conservation Research can assist in identifying the optimum times in the life cycle to apply treatments.

Testing and Analysis

Testing can give an objective measurement of the benefits of both treatments and materials. By choosing or devising appropriate tests, we can build a realistic picture of how well a treatment improves the usability or extends the life of a collection item. Such tests include:

tear test
fold test
hot and cold extraction to measure pH (level of acidity or alkalinity)

Accelerated ageing tests can give an idea of how well materials will withstand natural ageing under normal conditions.

Analytical techniques enable us to examine items in greater detail, providing valuable information about our collections and how best to treat them, for example, identification of pigments in illuminated manuscripts.

Collaboration

Libraries and archives across the UK and around the world are confronting the same challenges in caring for their collections. The British Library is collaborating with the National Archives and the Legal Deposit Libraries in the UK to develop applied research programmes that will address the problems that have been identified and agreed as being the most urgent.

The British Library is forging links with international research projects, some funded by the EU, including:

IDAP: (Improved Damage Assessment of Parchment) aims to develop non-destructive techniques to assess the condition of parchment
UTAH Project: aims to assess the effects of different drying methods for flood-damaged books.

The Mellon Foundation has provided funding for research in the following areas:

life-cycle prediction for paper, bindings and conservation materials
benign storage environments for different materials - e.g. books, manuscripts, microfilm
non-destructive methods for assessing damaged materials

This funding has made the following research projects possible:

Identical Book Project (Please see related links for further details)
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in Books (Please see related links for further details)