The construction of the British Library Centre for Conservation is a milestone in the history of the care of the collections at the Library. In early 2007, some of the British Library Conservation staff, the Sound Archive Technical Services section and their support staff moved into the new building.
The conservation studios are on the top floor of this three-storey building. An important design feature is the sawtooth roof that provides year-round north light for conservation work. Each of the three studios has conservation benches specifically designed for our requirements. Running alongside is a dedicated wet area for washing and other aqueous treatments of collection items. There is a fourth studio, which in addition to being a base for a team, is flexible enough to accommodate project work, workshops and demonstrations and training programmes. There are a number of other facilities in the building such as areas for the treatment of material with solvents, a separate space for leafcasting, a workshop and a facility for archival box-making.
The Sound Archive Studios – designed to meet the exacting audio engineering standards required for high-quality sound recording, digitisation, and remastering – are housed on the lower floor of the building. There are ten transfer studios, one recording studio, a small workshop and a laboratory. The studios have the direct benefits of improving our ability to produce in-house copying of recorded sound items to international archival standards using appropriate technical expertise and equipment., and improving access to our collections through greater on-site and remote access to Sound Archive holdings by mastering of CD publications, and by producing audio excerpts for exhibitions and on the web. Two of the transfer studios are designed for training, where students can learn and practise the craft and science of audio archiving. The recording studio allows us to make high-quality microphone recordings of oral history interviews and other live performances for the Sound Archive collections but also for radio broadcasts and web podcasts.
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