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The Church History Department (comprising the Church Archives, Church History Library, and the Museum of Church History and Art) of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is working on Process Improvement. As part of that effort, I am working to gather data about Best Practices in Conservation. I am hoping to start a discussion with this group for the purpose of brainstorming conservation process improvement.
I have limited my questions to 3 to make this easier.
Questions:
- In 2003, there was a brief discussion on this list about identifying conservation needs work. The consensus seemed to be that prioritization of conservation work should be use-driven. However, I have found that use-driven priorities often ignore some of the most valuable items of collecting institutions. For example, some institutions have items that will only be valuable to the future, are deteriorating on the shelves, but are being ignored because they are not being used today. Other institutions collect items that will never be used by the public because they have been deemed sacred by a particular group. Has anyone found a truly successful way to find those ?hidden? items that require conservation treatment?
- Measures of quality should be at least somewhat objective. Yet, I can?t help but think that there is some subjectivity in judging the quality of conservation work. How do you determine the quality of your employees or your own work in an objective way? Is there also value to subjective judgement?
- We are looking at ways to speed up the process of getting items through our lab and back into the collection. We believe that the biggest bottleneck to this is the actual treatment time and we don?t want to sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. We also believe that there are ways to improve pre- and post-treatment efficiency. What have you done to streamline the process of moving work from the ?customer? to the bench? And when the treatment is completed, what have you done to streamline the process of moving work from the bench back to the ?customer??
Thank You,
Christopher McAfee
Senior Conservator
Family and Church History Department
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
50 E. North Temple St. Rm. 227E
Salt Lake City, UT 84150-3420
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