The Conservation Training Team share reflections on delivering their most recent in-person workshop in collection care at the Endangered Archives Programme South Asia Hub in Kolkata, India.
29 April 2026Blog series Collection care
Author Zoe Voice
Funded by Arcadia, the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) provides grants to fund digitisation of archival material at risk of loss across the world. Since its foundation over 20 years ago, EAP has supported digitisation projects in over 90 countries. An additional function of the programme is to support capacity building in the care and digitisation of archives, which gives EAP an additional, enduring impact.
In 2022, five EAP hubs were established at the American University in Beirut, Jadavpur University, National University of Lesotho, University of the West Indies and Pontificia Universidad Católica Del Perú. The hubs have been instrumental in co-designing and co-delivering online and onsite training opportunities spanning a range of topics, from metadata to sound archiving. They also develop local networks, and we have seen a significant increase of EAP applications from these regions.
For more information about EAP funding, dive into the vast EAP online collection, or for resources and upcoming events, please visit eap.bl.uk.
The Conservation Training Team is made up of conservators with backgrounds in book and paper conservation who work with the International Office of the British Library on international skills & knowledge exchanges projects. Our role is to devise and deliver webinars, workshops, placements, and other training content on collection care and conservation topics for our international partners, including the EAP hubs. We aim for our training output to be accessible, and the strategies of care to be achievable, for a wide range of professionals working in libraries and archives. So far, we have worked with all five EAP hubs to deliver eight in-person workshops since 2023. These cover fundamental conservation practices essential to safeguard collections, from item handling, to pest management, to creating item supports and enclosures.
Our most recent workshop, ‘Managing Resources for the Preservation of Libraries and Archives’, took us to the South Asia Hub at the School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University, Kolkata in February 2026.
Condition surveying collection items on day one of the workshop.
Assessing the damage to some photographs during the salvage exercise on day two of the workshop.
Hanging photographs to airdry on a ‘washing line’ we constructed around the legs of a table during the salvage exercise on day two.
The workshop aimed to impart strategies that help structure collection care activities holistically, identify and weigh risks, justify decisions, and help to support the implementation of effective mitigations. Because we teach across many regions, we focus on sharing strategies and tools which can be adapted to any situation, empowering participants to evaluate and make decisions specific to their contexts and available resources for the long-term.
Our roundtable discussion on the topics of climate change and environmental sustainability on day three.
The head of the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Dr. Abhijit Gupta (front row, fourth from left), with the 18 participants and two trainers, at the certificates presentation, day three.
We were delighted to host 18 participants for the workshop, coming from Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Asansol, and Kolkata.
The participants represented different collection types and varied professional experiences, which made the group exercises and discussions particularly valuable, especially the sustainability roundtable. It is always a joy in the workshops to see networks forming over the three days of the workshop – the practical salvage exercise especially was a trial by fire in team building and communication! Us trainers learn a lot from the participants also, collecting ideas that we take forward to our next workshop.
If you live in South Asia, West Asia, Africa, the Caribbean or Latin America, keep your eyes peeled for our next call for applications to an EAP Hubs workshop, or be sure to tune in to our next free online webinar series.
This blog is part of series where you can discover how we care for the British Library’s Collections. Follow our expert team of conservators and scientists as we take you behind the scenes, into the Centre for Conservation and the Scientific Research Lab, to share some of the projects we are working on.
You can access millions of collection items for free. Including books, newspapers, maps, sound recordings, photographs, patents and stamps.
