The Book And Paper Group Paper Conservation Catalog

Catherine I. Maynor

I was contacted recently by the BPG chairperson who inquired about the status of the Paper Conservation Catalog (PCC.) I replied that there had been no activity since the completion of our National Endowment for the Humanities grant in June 1994; no new group of volunteers had yet emerged to resuscitate the project. Thus, I offered, as a first step, to contact former board members and brainstorm with them about where we now stand with the PCC and what the future might hold. This seems timely, given the emergence of other publications-related issues, including upcoming commentary on specialty group publications from the AIC Publications Committee.

The status of the PCC at the end of the grant was as follows: a total of 34 chapters were identified; this list had been periodically revised, with topics added, deleted and even combined, to reflect the interests and needs of our membership. 23 chapters were completed, although three of these ("Mending", "Humidification" and "Drying and Flattening") are the original 1983 prototypes and are therefore quite skeletal. 7 chapters remain unwritten: 3 of these, "Enzymes Treatments," "Suction Table Treatments" and "Encapsulation" are considered to be core topics; the other 4 relate to the broader field of collections management and preventive care (for example, "Exhibition and Storage" and "Environment.") Over the years, these have been addressed to varying degrees in other publications.

In my communication with former PCC editorial board members, we discussed a number of issues including writing unwritten chapters and expanding the skeletal prototypes; revising completed chapters; updating bibliographies; reformatting the entire PCC for consistency and, finally, creating electronic versions. We noted various changes since the PCC was first begun, including the increase in published conservation literature and the advent of electronic communication. We noted isolated examples of feedback we'd received but wondered how our membership is using the PCC . We wondered whether the graduate training programs continued to find it useful.

We then attempted to identify activities that could be undertaken, depending upon the level of support from the BPG membership. We considered the idea of working on the PCC again as a BPG millenium project with the goal being to take on projects that could be completed by the end of the year 2000. Following are possible projects:

1. Form a "PCC Task Force" consisting of several former editorial board members, as well as some "new blood." This group, which would work together with the BPG Publications Committee, would develop an agenda for the PCC .
2. Conduct a survey of the BPG membership to assess the PCC as it currently exists, identify priorities for writing and/or revising chapters and, most importantly, recruit participation.
3. The project could end at this point should we find little discontent with the PCC , insufficient commitment to continue work on it or lack of funds to hire necessary assistance.
4. Two further activities which could be reasonably accomplished in a finite period of time are:
5. Update the bibliographies for each chapter.
6. Scan existing chapters, create and index, and reformat for consistency and improved appearance.
7. Additional activities which would require the greatest commitment of resources are:
8. Write the remaining "core" chapters (see above) and revise and expand the 3 prototype chapters.

A final issue which should be addressed is creating an electronic version of the PCC . A possible starting point would be to prepare one chapter for internet distribution to establish a standard for information delivered in this format, choosing a topic such as "Encapsulation" that would have the broadest appeal.

Response from the BPG membership is encouraged.

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