Volume 13, Number 1
Feb 1989

RBMS Activities

The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) in ALA has several groups which should be of interest to Abbey Newsletter readers: the Standards Committee, the Conservators' Collations Committee, and the Curators and Conservators Discussion Group. As the Liaison from RBMS to RTSD (PLMS), I hope to furnish this Newsletter with biannual reports of RBMS activities. If you want to find out about committee membership or committee charges, see the ALA Handbook, 1988-89, Chicago: American Library Association, 1988, pp. 64-67.

The Standards Committee is currently drafting two thesauri (Typeface Evidence and Paper Evidence) and revising the one on Genre Terms. The Typeface and Paper thesauri will be published by ACRL in the same format as the earlier Binding Terms, Provenance Evidence, and Printing & Publish Evidence, probably in 1990.

The Conservators' Collations Committee mailed questionnaires to conservators in a variety of institutional settings, to find out about local collational practices. A report of the Committee's findings was sent to the Executive Committee, which expects to take action on it at the Annual Conference in Dallas in June.

The Curators and Conservators Discussion Group meetings are structured around a modified case study method. At the Midwinter Meeting Charlotte Brown, the Archivist at Franklin and Marshall College Library, led a discussion on treatment considerations for two large hand-colored fraktur broadsides. Both curatorial and conservation issues were considered. For example, what acceptable levels of change or loss should be allowed in a treatment? The Dallas Meeting will be chaired by Cathy Henderson, and the topic will be the preparation of items for exhibitions. (Thanks to Sidney Berger, Charlotte Brown, and Robert Milevski for this information on the Discussion Group.)