National Cooperation in Preservation and Conservation

Conservation awareness has grown from virtual professional indifference at the beginning of the 1980s to a high degree of commitment. Neither the disaster in Florence nor the impending crisis of the embrittled book seemed to have stirred the conservation conscience of British librarians, and it was not until the full implications of the British Library's problems were revealed that the library community seriously began to take note. The Cambridge Preservation Project, sponsored by the British Library, showed that the problem was nationwide. As a result of the Project Report, the National Preservation Office came into being as an independent body in the British Library. Since then, preservation has achieved a high profile. The achievements and prospects of the National Preservation Office, its creative use of existing cooperative agencies, are described in the context of today's professional attitudes and the continuing crisis.