Despite the fact that we met on Saturday evening, the Library Collections Conservation Discussion Group (LCCDG) had a full house at this years' meeting. We began the session by recapping an issue that came up last year—heat-set tissue. IS anyone still making it in-house? Conservation legend says yes, but actual recipes currently in use are not forthcoming. More information on this topic was desired by all.
The first discussion topic was focused on conservation technicians — finding them, training them, and keeping them. Maria Grandinette reported on the AIC task force that is working on technician related issues. The task force is examining what technicians do across all of the conservation specializations, defining what knowledge they need and what skills they should possess. In the course of the discussion, LCCDG members posed and responded to a number of questions: Where do you find technicians? If you advertise for a technician—what part of the newspaper do you advertise in? What kind of experience do you require from a person when you hire her/him? Do you prefer hiring "artsy" people with hand-skills or worker bees (i.e. art/aesthetics vs. speed)? What training do you offer technicians? Do you send technicians to workshops? What do you do with a slow technician? Do technicians order supplies? Do you tell your technicians why they are doing something? Where do you draw the line, if you do, between a technician and a conservator? Our answers were varied and interesting! There was discussion about the questions people ask when interviewing technicians, including whether or not to use dexterity tests. Many members of the group showed an interest in more information about how to manage and train staff, in particular, learning better interview skills.
The second discussion topic was statistics keeping in collections conservation. We viewed overheads of statistics reporting forms from various institutions, which provided a springboard into a discussion about why we all keep statistics and how we use them in our institutions. One obvious difference in statistics keeping exists between libraries that are members of the Association of Research Libraries [ARL] and non-ARL libraries. ARL requires conservation statistics based on the amount of time spent on a treatment. This requirement raises the question of how treatment times are recorded—whether we record the time each treatment actually takes or assign a standard time to each treatment performed. Since both methods are used in reporting ARL statistics, the validity of using ARL statistics to compare institutions' conservation out-put is questionable.
Look for more information about the issues discussed at LCCDG in publications to come. Two ideas suggested for next years' meeting were quality control, and inks for marking materials. If you have an idea you'd like discussed next year, please let us know. Contact Meg at (785) 865-3429 and mmbrown@ukans.edu and contact Ethel at (617) 495-3494 and hellman@fas.harvard.edu.
Meg Brown and Ethel Hellman, LCCDG Program Co-Chairs