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Please provide a brief narrative description of the preservation program, and describe specific preservation projects being undertaken by the Library and their anticipated duration.
Description of the Preservation Program at NYU
The Preservation Department is responsible for the following activities: commercial binding, including first time binding and rebinding; conservation treatments, including all collection maintenance activities, i.e., rebinding, recasing, rebacking, paper mending tip-ins, etc.; preservation microfilming; preservation photocopying; education and training; environmental control; disaster preparedness; and, special grant-funded preservation projects, such as the Research Libraries Group (RLG) Great Collections Microfilming Project, Phases II and IV (GCMP) and the RLG Archives Preservation Microfilming Project (APMP). Recently, collection maintenance and preservation microfilming activities have been emphasized to address a backlog of deteriorated volumes from the general collection. Identified at the point of circulation, these materials have become a priority because they are use generated and assumed to be in demand.
Commercial binding includes first-time binding of most newly acquired paperbacks and rebinding of worn and damaged volumes. Since many of the materials processed by the Preservation Department are deteriorated from heavy use rather than age, our policy is to bind almost all of the journals and paperback materials received at the library and rebind heavily used, damaged materials while they can still sustain commercial binding.
On-going preservation microfilming activities support our brittle books program to reformat deteriorating general collections materials. General collections materials for microfilming are identified when they return from circulation. Circulation staff are trained to identify damaged items. Bibliographers review volumes on a title-by-title basis before making a decision to film. There are no microfilming facilities in Bobst Library; all microfilming is done off-site by filming agents.
Efforts to preserve fragile, embrittled documents and manuscript materials held in archives and special collections are an on- going activity in the Barbara Goldsmith Conservation Laboratory. Working through collections identified by archivists and curators, these materials are identified and routed to the preservation department for deacidification prior to encapsulation.
>From year-to-year federal, state and private grant funds support a variety of projects administered through the preservation department. Past projects have included such preservation activities as special collections microfilming, preservation photocopying of music scores, photoduplication of deteriorating acetate negatives, reel-to-reel transfer of audio tapes, and others.
Education and training for both staff and users are on-going activities. NYU has developed and produced a book handling video entitled, Handle With Care, which is shown periodically during the semester on a video monitor with a loop device at the entrance to the library. Printed bookmarks and posters highlight preservation messages and are distributed and displayed in various places in the library. Plastic rain bags distributed at the circulation desk carry a preservation message and protect circulating books during inclement weather.
Each fall semester, the Preservation Department provides staff and users of the Library with an exhibit illustrating the scope and purpose of the preservation program at Bobst. Also, the Department offers training sessions for library staff, lectures and shows documentary videos relating to both national and local preservation efforts. More intensive training for library departments, such as circulation and stacks, is conducted to train staff in proper book handling procedures and to teach them methods of identifying damaged and brittle books that should be routed to the Preservation Department.
Hygrothermographs and dataloggers are used to monitor the Library's environmental control system. Conditions are analyzed, reported and discussed with building management personnel.
The Library's has a disaster plan which regularly updated by the Library's Disaster Prepraredness Committee.