Let's begin by defining our terms: preservation, conservation and restoration

The concept of preservation is a broad one. On the surface it seems simple: preservation is the process of maintaining access to information resources. These resources may be printed materials, such as rare books. They may also be maps, photographs, materials on microfilm or CDs. Or they may be other cultural heritage items such as paintings, etchings, textiles, three dimensional artifacts such as statues or architectural elements... The list is nearly endless. To make matters worse, the term used to describe the act of maintaining these information sources is far from clear. Some use the term preservation to refer to the fact that, "libraries are responsible for the care of materials which are physically endangered, and library preservation encompasses everything which serves to prolong the life of those materials and/or their informational content...reserving the term "conservation" for those activities which involve physical treatment of individual items by a "conservation technician" or professional conservator." Others prefer to use the term conservation to refer to the broader process of maintaining access to information sources while using the term prevention to refer to "preventive maintenance activities, or to saving information through replacement or reformatting, as in preservation microfilming." To make matters worse, the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), makes the same distinction between the overall process and the specific maintenance activities, but it refers to these maintenance activities using a third term: restoration. The AIC states, "Restoration refers to the reconstruction of the aesthetic appearance of an object. Although restoration can be one aspect of conservation, the latter encompasses much more. Conservation involves examination, scientific analysis, and research to determine original structure, materials, and extent of loss. Conservation also encompasses structural and environmental treatment to retard future deterioration." In this blog, I will be using the terms preservation and conservation interchangeably. I will use the term restoration to refer to processes used to improve the condition of information resources.

Darling, Pam. (1985) Abbey Newsletter, 9(6) (http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byorg/abbey/an/an09/an09-6/an09-604.html, last viewed May 27, 2008)

Guidelines for Selecting a Conservator, American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (http://aic.stanford.edu/public/select.html last viewed May 27, 2008)