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Preservation Department

Tempe Normal School bookplate

Early ASU bookplate: ASU was Tempe Normal School from 1901-1925.

Welcome to Preservation Services, a unit of the Collection and Scholarly Communications Office

Our Mission Statement...

To make information available in support of the ASU Libraries mission, and to maintain the condition and integrity of the collections in the effort to preserve knowledge, both artifactual and textual, now and for the future.

In pursuing this mission, we have a highly trained staff and a fully equipped conservation lab for doing in-house treatment and repair for our circulating collections and our many specialized collections. As part of our treatment program, we use the services of Etherington Conservation Services and The HF Group, a member of the Library Binding Institute.


The CSC Chief Officer is:
Jeanne Richardson, 480-965-5345, jeanne.richardson@asu.edu

The Preservation Services staff is:

Preservation Services:

  • spray deacidifies material
  • evaluates material and recommends treatment
  • repairs or rebinds damaged bindings and other containers
  • repairs and encapsulates flat items
  • works with a variety of formats: cd roms, cassettes, videos, etc.

Our goal is to return the repaired material to our patrons and to specialized library collections as quickly as possible.

Currently we are participating in an ASTM study on the aging of paper over a period of 100 years. The study will be completed in 2099. Our laboratory is registered with the University, and complies with EPA laws and regulations.

The Preservation Department was founded in 1987 under the direction of Sharlane Grant, and is located on the first floor of Hayden Library in room 139. Lois Schneberger was Department head from 1996 until 2004. After her retirement, Preservation became a part of the Collection Development Division, now CSCO. David Moore supervised the Conservation Lab from 2004 until his retirement. Beverly Schlee became the lab's supervisor in 2010.

Many useful conservation links can be found at Conservation OnLine. Other sites of interest include the Library of Congress, ALA, Regional Alliance for Preservation, Northeast Document Conservation Center, and the Image Permanence Institute.

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