Book conservation and ethics

I have been following the discussion of ethics in relation to book
conservation and would like to pour some fuel on the discussion fire.
Does anyone else have trouble accepting the "currently accepted
standards" phrase in the Code?  Who dictates what is currently accepted?
What are the implications for innovative treatments, research, good old
trial and error?  Does this phrase not lock us into a fixed set of
recipes?

A related issue is what happened to "the integrity of the object"
concept?  Has this gone the way of reversibility?

My sense of the most recent revisions to the Code is that it has become
a set of business practices that is divorced from the artifacts it
professes to protect.  Any comments?

Geoffrey I. Brown
Kelsey Museum
University of Michigan

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 7:74
                  Distributed: Friday, April 15, 1994
                        Message Id: cdl-7-74-002
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