Profile * Book and Paper Conservation Studio - Preserving the Past

How do we make sure that history doesn't fade into the mists of time? The documents and records which carry the details of times gone by can become increasingly fragile as the years roll on, leaving them exposed to all sorts of potentially fatal damage.

The terrors which can lay waste to anything printed on paper or in books read like a list of biblical disasters - floods, chemical attack, mould, dust and disintegration. That rare volume of Victorian poetry may have faded to almost nothing as the ink which was used to write it 150 years ago starts to burn through the paper. A basement flood may have stained a treasured family painting beyond recognition.

Tucked away discretely in a corner of the University Library is the frontline in the battle to preserve these items. This is where the staff in the Book & Paper Conservation Studio daily battle to save anything from 500-year-old land records to pieces of contemporary art which have begun to show signs of an alarmingly short shelf life.

"We work on everything from medieval parchment to pieces of contemporary modern art to try and preserve the work and make sure it doesn't become more damaged in the future," said Vanessa Charles, one of two Senior Conservators working with eight staff at the Studio."Our work is not about restoring something to its original state, it is about preserving the object in its current or most recent condition before any damage has been suffered. We aren't trying to make a book from the 18th century look new, we want it to still look like a book from more than 200 years ago, but one which can be protected and kept in good condition. Fundamentally what we are doing is conserving heritage objects."

Those objects can range from those which carry considerable monetary value or are of great historical significance to those which occupy a sentimental place in the heart of the owner.

"A member of the public with a single, cherished object has access to the same highly professional service as a large institution with world-class collections," said Phillipa Sterlini, the other Senior Conservator.

"Among the items we have worked on are the family bible of Robert Burns, which contains a genealogy in his own hand, and drawings done by Charles Rennie McIntosh. It is the kind of job where you never quite know what is going to arrive through the door the next day."

"It hasn't been unknown for us to be asked to repair a marriage certificate which has been ripped in two!"

The unit was started in 1985 as a dedicated resource and grew into a regional centre in 1994 after receiving a substantial grant from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, at a time when there was a growing realisation in Scotland of the need for such a facility.

"We advise people on how best to look after their collections, in particular the kind of environmental conditions that are best for storing material, and we will also advise on the levels of conservation or restoration that can be carried out," said Vanessa.

"One area of our work is in preserving items which have been damaged by water. Flooding is obviously a real concern and can cause a lot of damage to collections but in many cases they won't be beyond salvage."

"The concerns with water damage are mould growth and water staining. The first thing we will try to do is dry the books or paper using techniques like freeze-drying or air-drying, which helps prevent mould growing, and then we have to try and remove any staining."

"In extreme cases we can use techniques like washing, which can admittedly sound quite scary to some people when you tell them you are going to wash their prized and valuable possessions, but sometimes that is what the remedy involves."

The work follows traditions which have been maintained for centuries. For many items the need to preserve them didn't become obvious until relatively recently but they have grown to collect worth.

"There is a real challenge in preserving things which weren't made with any intention of them lasting any amount of time, things like newspapers, leaflets and postcards," said Vanessa. "But these things now hold value and people want to keep them and have them in good condition."

"The techniques employed on the book preservation side have grown out of the bookbinding tradition, although conservation and book binding are now separate disciplines."

"On the paper side the work relies still on the ancient techniques and traditions developed through Japanese scroll-mounting, techniques which in some cases are around two thousand years old."

How hard the task is to preserve something can depend not just on the type or level of damage which may have been inflicted, but on the materials which were originally used to make it.

"Our job, ironically, gets harder for artefactss which are of relatively more recent history," said Philippa. "A lot of old books, pre-mid 19th century were made of very good materials - there would be calfskin leather covers and the paper was of extremely good quality."

"From the middle of the 19th century onwards, the time when you are starting to see wider production of books and so on, the quality of the materials suffered. Woodpulp replaced cotton and linen as the main constituent of paper, and the quality isn't nearly so good, so there is a lot more work to be done in preserving these."

That is work that continues to be done at the Studio, keeping us in touch with the treasures of our past.

www.dundee.ac.uk/library/conservation/