BODLEIAN LIBRARY

REPORT FOR THE YEARS 1985-1993

CONSERVATION SECTION

The eight years have been a period of considerable change and expansion in the Conservation Section, which in 1988 took over responsibility for the Photographic Studio and the following year relinquished oversight of the book service, while retaining responsibility for storage and housekeeping in the bookstack. Changes of staff at a senior level and the initiation of a series of new work programmes also contributed to the development of the division of the work of the Section into six areas: Preservation and Exhibitions, General Bindery, Conservation Bindery, Conservation Workshop, Photographic Studio, Book Storage and Housekeeping.

The saddest change in staffing was the loss in November 1989 of Mrs J Segal, Superintendent of the Conservation Workshop, who died in post after a long illness. She had worked in the Bodleian for twenty years and during that time had established herself as one of the foremost practitioners in British Conservation. Ms C L Blaxland subsequently became Superintendent of the Conservation Workshop. In 1987 the Conservation Officer, Mr C Clarkson left the Library after eight years' service, to direct a new course on `Bookbinding and the care of books' at West Dean College, Chichester. We were fortunate to retain the benefit of his expertise on a consultancy basis. In September 1990 Mr C E Braybrooke retired from his post as Chief Photographer, to be succeeded by Mrs J L Merralls. In September 1992 Mr R E Harvey, the Superintendent of the General Bindery, retired. He was the Library's longest serving employee, having joined the staff as an apprentice bookbinder in 1939. He was succeeded by Mr B E Taylor.

The staff of the section had grown by 1993 to an establishment of the equivalent of 41 full-time posts, supplemented by a further 13 temporarily-funded posts. The success of the Campaign in raising funds both for staffing and for materials is to be applauded, but it is a matter for concern that only 67% of the staffing costs of the section are met by the Library's staff grant. Many benefactions figure below in the report of the work of the different divisions of the section, but others have been more general in their application. Marks & Spencer plc had, by June 1993, funded four 18-month internships. Dillons paid for 50 days work each year from 1990 to 1993 on the conservation of major printed treasures in the collections, including a copy of Shakespeare's first folio and the copy of Burton's Anatomy of melancholy which was annotated by Samuel Johnson for work on his Dictionary. The Pilgrim Trust supplemented the Mellon Micro-filming Project with a generous £ 75,000. A grant of £ 10,000 from the Francis Coales Charitable Foundation enabled us to buy top quality leather for conservation work. The Drapers' Company contributed £ 10,000 over five years for binding and conservation work at the Radcliffe Science Library.

The section is regularly called upon by individuals and institutions, both inside and outside the University, for advice and information. It maintains files relating to the suppliers of conservation materials and equipment which have frequently been consulted. The conservators have several times provided assistance in emergencies elsewhere in the University and have continued to be involved in the formulation and implementation of procedures for dealing with emergencies within the Bodleian.

The post of Preservation Officer was created in 1991 with duties in the administration of the section, the development of the Library's preservation programme, the management of the Photographic Studio and the organisation of work associated with exhibitions. It was filled by Mr T R Kirtley. Throughout this period the amount of work involved in preparing internal exhibitions and in arranging loans to external exhibitions continued to grow. The Library's commitment in this area was recognised in 1990 with the appointment of a conservator with special responsibility for exhibitions funded by Mr Paul Hamlyn's benefaction. The initial two-year contract was subsequently extended for a further two years. The Head of Conservation, the Preservation Officer and the Exhibitions Conservator were all heavily involved in the design work for the refurbishment of the exhibition room in the Old Library.

The General Bindery has been largely concerned with the binding and repair of periodicals and monographs from the main Bodleian collections and the reading rooms on the central site. The section aims, as facilities can be enlarged and more staff employed on site, to undertake more of the binding needed by the dependent libraries. Rhodes House Library's requirements have been met since the mid-1980s. Since the refurbishment of the General Bindery an increasing amount of Radcliffe Science Library binding is done there. The boxing programme, one of the main elements in the Library's preservation programme, continued to be run by General Bindery staff, who make about 3,500 phase boxes annually to protect older and/or more important items in the collections. They also made permanent book boxes for major items, many subsidised by personal gifts and by grants from the Friends of the Bodleian.

Staff in the Conservation Bindery concentrated on binding work required by many of the Library's older and more valuable items. The range of material dealt with remained wide, both in date and in place of origin. The Senior Consultant spent much of his time in this area and completed, in time for its loan to Edinburgh in 1993, conservation work and rebinding of the famous gospel book of St Margaret, Queen of Scotland (d.1093).

A generous grant of £ 100,000 over five years from the John S Cohen Foundation, supplemented by other donations made through the Campaign, funded a major initiative to conserve the books stored in Arts End and Duke Humfrey's Library. A detailed report was carried out on the books below the galleries in Arts End, and regular furbishing of the volumes and much detailed conservation work have already been achieved. The senior conservator engaged on this project also did much work in preparation for an environ- mental monitoring system for this part of the Old Library.

In the last quarter of 1992 a senior conservator from the National Diet Library in Tokyo, funded by the Japan Foundation, worked in the Conservation Bindery, enabling our conservators to improve their knowledge of Japanese materials and the techniques for dealing with them. The Superintendent of the Conservation Bindery, Mr R G Minte, has visited Hong Kong and Japan in order to study Chinese and Japanese materials and methods of repair.

Staff of the Conservation Workshop continued their work on damaged paper and parchment items, from a wide variety of countries and centuries. As in previous years one conservator concentrated on the repair and mounting of the Library's extensive map collections. The Workshop is responsible for the fasciculing programme, which in this period developed as a major element in the Library's overall preservation programme. Shortage of staff has slowed down progress on collections of loose papers requiring this treatment. A series of grants from the National Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and the National Manuscripts Conservation Fund financed work on the fasciculing and repair of the Disraeli papers, a collection owned by the National Trust and deposited in the Library.

The Andrew W Mellon Foundation awarded a grant of $1,000,000 to the Library in 1988 to initiate a programme of preservation microfilming. As a result of the establishment of the programme, the Photographic Studio (until then a part of the Publications Section) was brought into the Conservation Section in 1989. The commercial side of the Studio's work continued throughout the period in response to orders from the general public, ranging from single photographs ordered by individual scholars to microfilm of whole collections ordered by publishers. This commercial work provides an income which in the early years of the period under review not only covered staff salaries, equipment, materials and processing costs, but also contributed substantially to the general running costs of the Library. In the increasingly difficult economic climate and with large outlays on new cameras, the profits of the Studio fell. The newly appointed Preservation Officer reviewed the Studio's work and practices and presented his findings to the Librarian and Officers in November 1992. Implementation of his recommendations was delayed by the need to consider them alongside the reports of other internal working parties.

1988 saw the completion of over 30 years' work in the Studio microfilming pre-1640 English books for the Short-Title Catalogue project, published by University Microfilms International. Work then began on filming `Wing' (1640-1700) books. In 1993 a start was made on Bodley's contribution to Research Publications' project to microfilm 18th-century English books. Figures for the overall production of the Studio are to be found below (p.119).

The Mellon Microfilming Project led to the establishment of a special team during 1989. Its work was co-ordinated with similar projects at the British Library and Cambridge University Library, under the auspices of a steering committee within the National Preservation Office on which the Head of Conservation served. In 1992 an impressive manual of practices and standards adopted by all participating libraries was produced. Within the Bodleian efforts were concentrated on modern manuscripts and trade journals and monographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By July 1993, 2,710 reels comprising ten heavily used modern manuscript collections, 183 trade journals and 421 monographs had been produced - in all almost 1.7 million exposures.

Anything which affects the environment in the Bodleian has over this period come to be recognised as a matter which concerns the Conservation Section and requires the attention of the Head of Conservation. The installation of an environmental control system in 60% of the New Library bookstacks has been mentioned above (p.17). It is a major step forward in the preservation of the collections, made possible with the help of the Buildings Committee and the Surveyor's Department. The gradual replacement of the old lighting in the bookstack greatly improved the efficiency and the effectiveness of lighting at acceptable levels. The new fire detection system enormously increased the collections' level of protection from fire hazards. Each new storage module at Nuneham Courtenay is accompanied by improvements in security and environmental control. But completion of further modules in 1990 and 1992 brought little relief to storage problems in the central buildings, which by the end of the period were full to overflowing. Inadequate staffing to organise book moves and maintain tidiness in the bookstacks remained a major concern in 1993. The overcrowding of shelves and the constant shuffling of stock to make a little more space available on the central site combine to reduce efficiency of the book service and increase handling of and therefore the risk of damage to the Library's collections.