The libraries at Harvard are well used, and many millions of items throughout the collections are in need of repair or conservation treatment. The goal of the conservation program is to ensure that the overall condition of the collections is improved and that materials remain accessible to scholars and researchers. This year Baker Library launched an important conservation initiative, securing the ongoing services of a sixth Weissman Center conservator. Throughout the libraries, conservation technicians repair circulating collections and oversee commercial binding activities. Since the beginning of recorded history, copying has been vital to the survival of information.
Polymer chains break into smaller units, and materials such as paper become brittle.
While decay is inevitable, it happens more rapidly when the paper is inherently weak. Attention to the problem is critical, because with increasing brittleness comes increasing vulnerability to damage and loss through the normal course of use. At Harvard, enormous number of books, journals, and other materials produced in the 1800s and early 1900s are brittle. Unfortunately, the point in time at which paper has become too deteriorated to sustain use cannot be practically identified, and once it can no longer be handled with ease, copying of any sort becomes difficult, expensive, and often unsatisfactory. For this reason, in the ideal, materials are reproduced when deterioration is evident but while the item can still be copied safely and with good results.