Implementing such a program requires skilled staff, carefully selected and implemented technologies, and sound management practices. The term conservation embraces activities that improve the condition of an object or protect it from damage. Paper treatments, for example, include everything from mending a small tear to washing, deacidifying, and other complex chemical and mechanical treatments. For books, treatments range from tipping in an errata sheet to full conservation rebinding.
Conservation is also an appropriate strategy for preserving certain non-paper media.
Conservation videotape, for example, can include ultrasonic cleaning and splicing of breaks. In this context, an individual item is more important as it relates to other materials in the collection than it is as a disassociated object. Typically, 19th and 20th-century books and journals in circulating collections are the focus of a collections conservation program. While collections conservation techniques are often complex, items with similar problems can be grouped for batch treatment. The goal is to preserve large collections of scholarly significance and therein to improve the library's overall service performance.