Conservation and Preservation Services staff members assess and evaluate materials in any format—paper-based, media-based, or digital—that are already in the Libraries’ collections or that may be acquired by the Libraries. Assessments may be conducted for an individual item or for an entire collection. An assessment determines the items’ needs for conservation treatment and long-term digital preservation, as well as their suitability for circulation, reformatting, and storage. CPS then makes recommendations and treatment proposals that inform decisions made by curators and other library staff.

The MIT Libraries contract with a commercial binder to bind journal volumes, theses, and monographs, and to create custom enclosures and preservation photocopies. The Collections Preservation and Reformatting unit of CPS coordinates the flow of materials to and from the binder in regular shipments. We send approximately 6,000 items each year to our commercial binder.

Physical Collections
Collections disasters—such as floods, temperature and humidity fluctuations within library facilities, and pest or mold infestations—can significantly damage library materials. Conservation and Preservation Services works with MIT Facilities and other entities on campus to mitigate risks and to respond when a collections disaster occurs. In most cases, timely response and remediation is critical. CPS provides training for all library staff members in basic disaster response procedures, and our Disaster Response Team provides after-hours response.

We also provide information for MIT community members who experience an emergency that affects their personal books and papers.

Digital Collections
The Digital Curation and Preservation unit of CPS coordinates with the IT staff of the Libraries and of MIT to ensure that digital collections are as protected as possible from disasters. Disaster planning and response for digital collections includes establishing effective storage of preservation copies with copies stored in multiple geographic locations; developing plans that will enable systems that support receiving, processing, storing, preserving, and making available digital content to be reactivated following a disaster, if needed; and communication strategies that allow responses to disasters that affect digital collections to be coordinated with responses to disaster that affect physical collections, as needed.

The Conservator is the Libraries’ Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Coordinator and serves as the Libraries’ liaison to MIT’s EHS office. The Conservator is the Principal Investigator (PI) for labs within the Libraries and oversees safety in the the three labs of Conservation and Preservation Services: the E. Martin and Ethel Wunsch Conservation Lab, the Scanning Lab, and the Digital Sustainability Lab. The PI sets a good example for others, is trained to respond to lab emergencies, and ensures training is completed by CPS employees.

Climate control is crucial to the longevity of physical library collections. For this reason, the MIT Libraries have dedicated HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) systems in the areas that house our most significant and rare collections. Conservation and Preservation Services works with MIT Facilities to ensure that the equipment maintains both temperature and relative humidity within acceptable ranges for paper-based and media materials.

We use PEM2 and HOBO® dataloggers to monitor environmental conditions. Each battery-powered instrument–about the size of an iPod–uses electronic sensors and a computer chip to record temperature and humidity at prescribed intervals. Data is uploaded to eClimateNotebook for analysis and the production of customized graphs and charts that track changes.

Climate control can also be a factor for digital collections, but environmental monitoring for digital collections is typically handled by IT staff with advice and oversight by CPS as needed.

As books, journals, DVDs, and other items in the MIT Libraries general collections are used, they become worn and sometimes damaged. Damaged items are sent to the E. Martin and Ethel Wunsch Conservation Lab for treatment. Books are sorted according to their primary form of damage so that staff can group repairs into batches, which enhances productivity.  Non-print formats such as DVDs may be reformatted or replaced if they cannot be repaired in the Lab.

Pests such as silverfish and booklice can damage library materials. Silverfish feed on the paste and paper used in book bindings, and booklice feed on the mold that can grow on damp glue and paste. MIT applies the principles of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) campus-wide to control pests while minimizing pesticide use and the risks pesticides can pose to people, property, and the environment. The Conservator serves on the MIT IPM Team and monitors pest activity in Libraries’ facilities.

Shelf preparation for new library materials can be compared to “preventive medicine.” Each year, the Collections Preservation and Reformatting (CPR) unit of CPS prepares approximately 10,000 items to be shelved for use; about as many are shelf prepped by vendors. Shelf prep ensures that all cataloged items will be physically accessible to our patrons. CPR staff apply call numbers to facilitate storage and retrieval and applies security devices to minimize theft and loss.  Many new items need modification before they can be safely shelved (or stuffed into a backpack), so CPR staff use the equipment in the E. Martin and Ethel Wunsch Conservation Lab to construct pockets and protective enclosures so materials can be easily handled.