Protecting Your Collections

Here is a practical volume that focuses on the major security problems for libraries, archives, and museums. Written by a respected librarian and security consultant, Protecting Your Collection provides provides a thorough review of the procedures for protecting library, art, and archival collections against losses from theft, fire, flooding, and mutilation. Author Slade Gandert includes fascinating interviews with librarians, rare book dealers, archivists, detectives, and security professionals to find out who steals from institutional collections--how they do it and why they do it. Each chapter features case studies of intriguing security leaks in the institutional system and describes their outcome. This important book is beneficial reading for library staff and administrators.

Preserve, Protect, and Defend: A Practical Guide to the Care of Collections is an essential text for museum professionals, volunteers and consultants across a wide range of responsibilities: curators, registrars, collections managers, archivists, museum administrators, museum educators, conservators, art historians, operations staff, designers, engineers, architects, building contractors, suppliers, security specialists, and pest control experts. The topics are wide ranging: conservation assessments; practical advice for examining collections and buildings to uncover collection safety issues; routine collection safety practices; preparing for the unexpected, including wind and water penetration, fire and smoke, and infestations; and controlling the museum environment including temperature and relative humidity, light and lighting, and air quality. The book also offers an inside look into the world of museums and the people who work in them. Written in the accessible-and sometimes irreverent-style that the author is famous for, this book is a must-have for everyone who cares for collections and the buildings that house them-museums of all sizes, archives, libraries, and private collections.

Preservation involves a complex of activities including climate, air-quality, and surface control, as well as microbiological control, which is a key part of preserving and protecting library collections. The Preservation and Protection of Library Collections examines microbiological control for preservation of library and archival collections. A supporting tool for conservators, this title should be integrated into conservation and preservation policy. The book comprises nine sections that cover three aspects: microbiology, surveying, and the response required. Chapters in this title cover the nature of the library collections, physical and chemicals factors and their impact on microbiological issues, as well as biological factors and methods of microbiological control of the air and objects. Later chapters examine methods of object disinfection, disaster response, methods of microbiological control and evaluation of collections, and includes a vocabulary guide, appendices, literature information and references. Gives an overview of basic biological and environmental facts and their implications for library collections Informed by practical experience in the library situation Provides guidelines, requirements, procedures, workflow charts, regulations, and case studies

Writing for those with little or no technical background, Appelbaum clarifies the various phenomena that affect objects, how those objects respond, and what to do about it. The first half of the book covers five basic topics of preservation, and the second part goes into detail about the needs of specific materials and objects.