Conservation research

This three-year project, funded through a major grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, began in October 2006.

It is a collaboration with the other five Legal Deposit libraries of the UK and has two main research strands. The first is to investigate the condition of identical books held in different storage environments to see the effects on their condition and predict changes in their future condition.

The second is to investigate the emission of acids by books and paper. We hope to use the results to design better storage areas and minimise the rate of paper degradation in the future.