In a recent report on the state of America's collections, The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) noted that over 190 million objects need conservation treatment and 65 percent of collecting institutions have damaged collections due to improper storage. In order to raise public awareness and inspire action, the IMLS has created the "Connection to Collections" website. On the site,...

Started as a germ of an idea back in 1987 (on a real, live bulletin board, as opposed to an electronic one), Conservation Online (CoOL) has been providing online resources for conservation professionals since 1993. As its website announces, it is a "full text library of conservation information," covering a wide array of topics ranging from digital imaging to reprographics, and quite a bit of...

Founded in 1973, the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NDCC) was created to address the rapid deterioration of older paper-based documents in a number of institutions across New England. On their website, visitors can learn about their conservation and imaging services, and also examine some of their fine resources intended for members of the preservation community. The "Resources" area is a...

In an effort to stimulate international information exchange, cooperative projects, and research, the European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA) has created an online directory of European organizations working in the preservation field. This directory is based on a survey conducted over the past year. For each of the twenty-five countries currently listed there is a section on national...

Photographic negatives, motion picture film, microfilm, and sound recordings produced from the 1930s into the 1950s often used cellulose acetate as the transparent plastic carrier. As anyone who has ever come in contact with it well knows, its strong vinegar-like scent is hard to miss. Unfortunately, over time, the material is prone to deterioration, which eventually renders it unusable. In an...