Sustainable conservation
As well as the ongoing long-term preservation of archival material, archives also undertake more concentrated active care of damaged or fragile material, and this is what’s known as ‘conservation’. This aims to prolong the life and accessibility of the collection. If material comes to us badly damaged by water, fire, mould, insects or tearing, our professional conservator will intervene. Some of these interventions can be quite small, for instance repairing tears in the paper and flattening really tightly folded material, while other repairs are larger, such as rebinding material. This is a delicate process.
We are very fortunate at UL to have a dedicated in-house conservation lab, which means that a lot of work can be done onsite. See the images of our lab below, where repair work was carried out on ‘The book of fame’ (1483) and an 1821 Census return from Co Tipperary, as well as some leaves of specialist repair paper, made in-house by our conservator.
(click image to zoom)
© All images held at Glucksman Library. Please contact us for copyright information and permission to reproduce.
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