ブックタイトルConservation and Restoration of Western Paper

概要

Conservation and Restoration of Western Paper

3-1. Importance of originalityTaking the opportunity provided bythe Florence flood, IFLA set up theConservation Working group (WG) whichwas later raised to a subcommittee status,since library conservation came to berecognized as a global challenge in need ofa solution, not only to be tackled throughperforming daily tasks in individual libraries.The important initial result of ConservationWG was IFLA Principles of Conservationand Restoration issued in 1979.The fundamental concept of thesePrinciples is the importance of originalityof documents. Therefore, one of the mainprinciples of restoration is, although it mightsound paradoxical as such, trying to takerestoration measures as less as possible, sincerestoration processes may often damage theoriginal state of paper documents. Then,provided that restoration is inevitable,applying most suitable techniques, using safeand stable materials for treatment, adoptionof reversal techniques and documentingrestoration processes are stated as theprinciples of restoration. 5These“Principles of Conservation andRestoration”stated here have been sharedand practiced among Japanese libraries andarchives since the 1980s.3-2. Focus on PreservationInternational professional conservatorsand volunteers participated in the rescue ofhistorical documents that had been damagedby the flood which hit Florence. Amongthe cases, the rescue of the collectionhoused in the National Central Library ofItaly in Florence was one of the importantprojects, where British experts exercisedtheir leadership, especially Peter Waters whoplayed an eminent role. His achievementwas highly recognized, which then led tohis being appointed the chief of the newlyestablished conservation division at the USLibrary of Congress in 1970.The Library of Congress, which isthe world’s largest library, faced the verydifficult issue in document preservationat the time which is the massiveness ofdamaged books and documents. Watersasked his former fellow conservators in theFlorence project, Donald Etherington andChristopher Clarkson, to work with himto tackle this difficult task. Through theirefforts, some systematic and well-plannedcountermeasures were established based onthe previous experience they had gainedin Florence, one of which was the phaseconservation approach. 6Confronted with a large number ofdeteriorated and damaged documents inneed of treatment, Waters and his colleaguesthought that they needed to establish newideas and approaches that were differentfrom conventional ones. Out of thisnecessity, they contrived plans to preventthe number of documents in need of beingtreated from increasing, and to provideappropriate conservation treatments todocuments according to the priority ordersthey set. As a result, preventive measuresfrom further degradation and damage weregreatly expanded. The details of the methodare as follows: first, the documents arestored in conservation containers, such as14