Newsletter of the Section on Conservation Newsletter

April 1995
Issue 2
ISSN 1024-2414

"Library Preservation and Conservation in the 90s"

The meeting being organized by the IFLA Section on Conservation in cooperation with the IFLA Preservation and Conservation Core Program

Chief organizer:
Beatrix Kastaly

Travel Agency of the meeting

REGISTRATION

The registration fee covers the costs of the meeting, admission to all sessions, a reception, a concert and coffee during the meeting days.

Various accommodation possibilities are offered during the meeting.

Tentative Programme for Satellite Meeting in Budapest

Géza Poprády,
National Széchényi Library, Hungary
Museum of books or a big research library? - Dilemma of national libraries

Wim De Vos,
Bibliotheque Royal Albert 1er, Belgium
Chronicle of a disappearing future: conservation and preservation in the Royal Library of Belgium

Diane Nester Kresh,
Library of Congress, USA
Preservation planning for the 21st century

Marc Walckiers,
European Foundation for Library Cooperation, Belgium
Permanent papers: myth of reality, vogue or necessity?

Yannick Maignien,
Bibliothèque nationale de France
On digitisation for preservation

Jan Michaels,
National Library of Canada
On methods of preventive preservation

Svetlana Uspenskaya,
Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg
On preventive preservation and recovery after disaster

Peter Schwerdt,
Battelle Institut, Germany
Freeze-drying of water-damaged paper materials --a report on practical disaster recovery

Dr. J. Liers,
Deutsche Bibliotek - Deutsche Bücherei, Germany
Mass deacidification in Leipzig--the Battelle process in practice

Ulrich Behrens,
Battelle Institut, Germany
Battelle's mass deacidification service--Experiences from commercial treatment of books for German and US libraries

John Mavermans,
TNO Research Institute for Paper and Board, Holland
Research results and recommendations on four mass deacidification processes: FMC, DEZ, modified Wei T'o, Battelle

Astrid B. Brandt & Katia Baslé,
Bibliothèque nationale de France
In the treatment of brittle paper, does the future belong to mechanical or chemical reinforcement?

Henrik Otto,
Deutsche Bibliothek - Deutsche Bücherei, Germany
How we work at a conservation section, today

Colin P. Smith,
Rentokil Ltd., United Kingdom
Controlled atmosphere techniques

Ralph W. Manning,
National Library of Canada
The IFLA Section on Conservation

Abdelaziz Abid or Wolfgang Löhner,
UNESCO, France
The memory of the world programme

Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff,
Bibliothèque national de France
The IFLA Preservation and Conservation Core Programme

Susan Swartzburg,
Rutgers University Library, USA
On librarians' training on preservation

Galina Kislovskaya,
Library for Foreign Literature, Russia
Preservation in Russian libraries; current situation, tendencies, aspirations for the future

Beatrix Kastaly,
National Széchényi Library, Hungary
Training of book conservators in Hungary

IFLA
Istanbul 1995

The Conservation Section is planning a programme on library buildings during the 1995 IFLA General Conference in Istanbul. The tentative programme includes the following papers:

Frank Fabry
(National Library of New Zealand)
The National Library of New Zealand Building--Purpose built for preservation: what we've learned in the first ten years of operation

Mirjam Foot
(British Library)
Housing our collections: the balancing act

Wolfgang Undorf
(Royal Library, Stockholm)
Die Königliche Bibliothek bleibt an ihrem alten Platz. Strategien für der Ausbau der Königlichen Bibliothek in der Innenstadt von Stockholm für den Schutz ihrer Sammlungen in den neuen unterirdischen Magazinen.

Mass Deacidification Reports Issued by the Library of Congress in December 1994

Over the past two years, the Library of Congress continued its commitment to enhance and encourage the development of mass deacidification technologies through a two-part Action Plan that was approved by Congress.

Under Phase A of the plan, the Library pursued refinement of the diethyl zinc (DEZ) process. Phase B permitted the Library to offer a program of evaluation and testing to other promising deacidification technologies; under this provision, Preservation Technologies, Inc. (PTI) of Pittsburgh asked the Library to evaluate its Bookkeeper deacidification process.

The first 30+ pages (the textual pages) of separate reports on these two processes are available on Internet through LC's Gopher. Access them by telnetting to "Marvel.loc.gov" and logging in as "Marvel." To locate the 2 reports on Marvel, select "Libraries and Publishers (Technical Services)," "Preservation at the Library of Congress," then "Mass Deacidification: Reports.". Free paperbound copies of the Bookkeeper and DEZ reports (including all of the appendices not reproduced on Internet) can be obtained from Kenneth Harris in the Preservation Directorate at the Library of Congress.

With the DEZ process, the Library conducted a series of planned test runs in the Akzo Chemicals deacidification plant in Texas and succeeded in eliminating process-related problems that were experienced earlier with the DEZ technology. However, we note with disappointment that Akzo Chemicals withdrew from the deacidification business this past spring and terminated its DEZ license with the U.S. Commerce Department effective in September 1994. The Library has not requested Congressional support at this time for a DEZ initiative because of projected high DEZ capitalization costs and because of encouraging developments with the Bookkeeper process, which affords lower capitalization costs along with other attractive features.

Under the second phase of the Library's Action Plan, as indicated above, a Library-appointed evaluation team studied the Bookkeeper deacidification process. An earlier generation of PTI equipment, known as "Bookkeeper II," was being used by PTI when the Library's evaluation team initiated its examination of the Bookkeeper process over a year ago. Based upon results obtained with that earlier Bookkeeper equipment, the evaluation team concluded that the Bookkeeper process demonstrates the potential for meeting the Library's technical requirements for mass deacidification. The group indicated further that the process already meets many of the Library's specifications. The technical team also recommended that the Library work with PTI to enhance the Bookkeeper process.

While the evaluation team was drafting its observations about the results achieved by Bookkeeper processing and about subsequent accelerated aging and independent lab testing of materials treated with Bookkeeper II, equipment, PTI and the Library pursued two important, complementary activities:

• PTI engineered and installed its new "Bookkeeper III" equipment, with a current capacity for treating up to 100,000 books per year and capable of being cloned to handle a greater volume; and

• the Library initiated a limited contract to treat 600 additional test books to assist PTI in addressing some of the issues that were being identified by the evaluation team.

In light of treatment results obtained with the Bookkeeper process, the Library presented Congress in December 1994 with a second deacidification Action Plan, consisting of two phases that will run concurrently for two years (1995-97), if the plan receives Congressional approval.

Phase A
A brief enhancement initiative with the Bookkeeper process to be followed by a limited production effort. Over a two year period, this demonstration contract would result in treating 72,000 books. The focus will be on achieving an improved product at lower cost. Since the Bookkeeper process does not impart odors or cause physical damages to treated materials, we expect to make rapid progress with process enhancement. We anticipate that most of this effort will be devoted to the limited production initiative, resulting in deacidification of actual books from the Library's permanent collections.

Phase B
The goal of this phase of the Action Plan, with guidelines to be announced in the Commerce Business Daily, is to encourage and evaluate other technologies that can demonstrate a potential to meet or exceed the Library's deacidification requirements (complete deacidification, adequate alkaline reserve, an increase in the life of paper by at least three times its normal expectancy) without damage to collections. The Library is also hopeful that, during this phase, a U.S.-based company will recognize the potential for commercialization of the DEZ technology and develop a facility for deacidifying books through this process.

The Library's proposed two year plan reflects our determination to support the active development of mass deacidification technologies. We remain hopeful that our dedication to this effort, combined with mutual involvement by other like-minded institutions, will result in fulfilling the continuing interest of the library and archival communities in resolving one of our most pressing preservation challenges.

Please feel free to contact one of the persons listed below if you desire further information or if you would like to discuss the reports about Bookkeeper or DEZ or the Library's proposed deacidification Action Plan.

Kenneth E. Harris

Chandru J. Shahani

ISO Activities in Preservation

Subcommittee 10 and all of its working groups will be meeting in May 1995 in Ottawa, Canada. A report on the progress made at these meetings will appear in the next issue of this Newsletter. The following reports are based on information provided by the convenors of working groups 1 and 3.

ISO/TC46/SC10/WG1

Subsequently, the working group developed ISO CD 11108 Information and documentation--Archival papers--Requirements for permanence and durability which is now being prepared for distribution and balloting as a Draft International Standard.

At its last meeting in Stockholm, Subcommittee 10 resolved to create a new work item dealing with Standardization of permanent and durable boards used for book binding and for document storage purposes. This work item was allocated to WG1 and the group will initiate work on this project at its meeting in May.

ISO/TC46/SC10/WG3

The aim of WG3 is to elaborate a standard on Document Storage Requirements. Although the work is currently an internal paper not yet fully discussed within the WG, it is hoped that at the Ottawa meeting of TC 46 in May 1995, the work item might be approved for distribution and balloting as ISO CD 11799.

The work on this item began in January 1994, when H. Bansa was nominated project leader. The first step was to elaborate a Concordance of relevant national standards, as they exist in Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and the U.S.A. On the basis of this Concordance a first draft was developed. Papers were presented at the May 1994 meeting of TC46 in Stockholm. The draft was discussed there and subsequently by correspondence, primarily by Mirjam Foot, Sergio Palazzi and Peter Adelstein. Following two subsequent drafts, an intensive discussion took place at two meetings of WG3 earlier this year in Munich and in London. The result will be the fourth working draft which will be discussed in Ottawa.

The standard covers construction and equipment for library buildings and installations suitable for long-term storage of archives. Attention is paid to security, climate and inner structure including illumination, ventilation and environmental controls. Although the standard is not intended to cover repository management, it cannot avoid dealing with issues such as cleaning, protective devices for the collections, optimal storage positions and disaster preparedness plans.

Because the document continues to be under study and subject to change, it should not be used for reference purposes until its formal adoption as an International Standard. The working document can, however, be made available to interested individuals.

Comments, Queries, Suggestions?

Section on Conservation

Chair:
Beatrix Kastaly

Secretary:
Ralph W. Manning