College and Research Libraries


NANCY E. GWINN 

CLR and Preservation 

The deterioration of library materials has become an increasingly critical 
problem . Many of the programs devoted to finding solutions during th e last 
twenty-five years have been sponsored by the Council on Library Resources 
(CLR ), a private, operating foundation. CLR grants supported chemical. and 
applied research in the causes of paper deterioration , helped to establish 
conservation laboratories , and supported development of new equipment 
and tests. CLR also has assisted in attempts to establish cooperative pres-
ervation programs and to spell out a national strategy. Recent events show 
a heightened awareness of the problem; several new programs and promise 
of increased funding give hope for the future. 

IN A FULL-PAGE COLOR PHOTOGRAPH in the 
April 1980 issue of Smithsonian magazine, 
Library of Congress restoration officer Peter 
Waters stands enveloped in a shower of 
paper fragments , the remains of a scholarly 
work blown from his open hand by a puff of 
exhaled air. No more dramatic te stimony is 
needed to illustrate the danger the United 
States is in "of losing its mind. " 1 The his-
tory of why millions of books , journals , 
manuscripts , and other paperbound records 
of our cultural and intellectual inheritance 
are deteriorating has been carefully 
documented. Indeed , in the last twenty-five 
years , a litany of shocking examples of de-
cay and calls to action has rung repetitiously 
through the literature , often with quite 
positive results. Activity on many fronts has 
led to substantial chemical research and 
laboratory testing, to the establishment of 
preservation programs in individual institu-
tions , and to cooperative efforts to ensure 
preservation of specific categories of mate-
rials . Yet, despite this attention, the dispar-
ity that Edwin Williams pointed out in 1969 
"between the alarming statements that have 
been published and the alarm that has been 
generated in individuals, even historians, 

Nancy E . Gwinn , fonnerly program officer at 
the Council on Library Resources , is associate 
director for program coordination for the Re-
search Libraries Group , Inc. , Stanford , California . 

104 I 

remains. "2 It persists because the dete riora-
tion is passive, largely unnoticed by the li-
brary user until a book or journal is re-
quested and the pages begin to crumble in 
the hand. 

Much of what has been accomplished in 
the last quarter of a century has been made 
possible through an array of grants fur-
nished and programs administered b y the 
Council on Library Resources , Inc. (CLR), 
an independent , private , operating founda-
tion established in 1956 by the F6rd Founda-
tion . In recognition of the seriousness of 
the problem of deterioration of library 
materials , within its first year of operation 
CLR initiated a study of the causes . Since 
that time , the council has authorized ex-
penditures of more than $2.5 million on 
preservation-related activities. 

Periodically, however, it is necessary for 
the foundation to .reassess its role , review 
its past efforts, and use the insights gained 
to devise new strategies for the future. This 
is in part a desire to analyze and learn from 
past failures and build on successes. But it 
is also a response to change, both external 
and internal. A recent change in the coun-
cil's presidency provided the occasion for a 
total review of its programs and priorities. A 
change from the single benefaction of one 
foundation to multifoundation support of the 
council's program reinforced the need for 
such a review . But of more importance, 



perhaps , is the increased attention of 
others , some such as the National Endow-
ment for the Humanities (NEH ) and the 
Department of Education with far greater 
resources , to the possibility of loss of part of 
our heritage and the impact of that loss on 
the future of scholarship. 

The purpose of this paper is to review 
and summarize the council's preservation 
program , to discuss its present activities , 
and to set forth some ideas on the future of 
council activity in this critical area. The 
council has in the past also worked hard to 
assist in improving microform technology , 
which has considerable benefit both for pre-
serving the intellectual content of books , 
journals, and other documents and for mak-
ing them more accessible . Projects involv-
ing the design of prototype equipment or 
systems have not been included here , nor 
have CLR-supported microfilming projects, 
unless their principal objective was for pres-
ervation. 

Although the limits to its resources have, 
from its genesis , prevented the council from 
assisting individual institutions in preserving 
their collections, the council has consistent-
ly searched for programs that would ad-
vance the knowledge and techniques of all 
libraries by attacking the root causes of the 
problem and assisting the development of 
mechanisms to overcome them. CLR pro-
grams thus can be readily grouped into two 
categories : (1 ) research , analysis , and dis-
semination ; and (2) national planning. 

RESEARCH , ANALYSIS , AND DISSEMINATION 

Lack of information about the causes of 
deterioration, coupled with a lack of under-
standing about what was in fact known, was 
clearly the most critical problem in the field 
of preservation in the 1950s. The obvious 
need was for research , both pure, chemical 
research to determine the reasons for the 
increasingly swift decay of paper, and ap-
plied research to develop techniques to 
combat it. Finally, dissemination of results , 
procedures , and techniques to those in a 
position to act was imperative. 

William]. Barrow Research Laboratory 

Central to any discussion of council activ-
ity in preservation research is the figure of 
William J. Barrow and the research labora-

CLR and Preservation I 105 

tory that bore his name. A document restor-
er at the Virginia State Library, Barrow in-
vented a lamination process to protect valu~ 
able manuscripts and records . But he wor-
ried that papers would continue to deterio-
rate inside the lamination, and this stimu-
lated him to begin a series of investigations 
concerning causes and remedies. His study 
ended only with his death in 1967, although 
the work he started subsequently continued 
for some time. 

Prior to becoming the first president of 
the council, Verner W . Clapp worked for 
many years at the Library of Congress (LC) . 
An amateur bookbinder, Clapp acquired var-
ious responsibilities at the library, which 
included the repair of documents, binding, 
and preservation. He and Barrow became 
acquainted, and a warm personal and cre-
ative professional relationship developed 
that was to have a fruitful result , as re-
vealed in a 1968 letter from Clapp to Bar-
row's son: 

While I was still at LC your father and I used to 
discuss the need for research in the book-
materials area . However, while I was able to 
throw small commissions his way, LC had no re-
search money. But in 1956 I became president of 
the Council on Library Resources , Inc., and the 
road to research suddenly opened up. The rest is 
history. 3 

Convinced that acid was the chief cause 
of paper decay, in the 1940s Barrow de-
veloped a deacidification process based on 
the submerging of paper in baths of calcium 
hydroxide, calcium bicarbonate, and/or 
magnesium bicarbonate. He continued valu-
able studies of inks and old papers and pub-
lished his findings with the help of Clapp, 
who had become his collaborator and un-
official editor. By 1957 Barrow was eager to 
begin an organized program of testing. In 
that year he was given the opportunity, 
under the auspices of the Virginia State Li-
brary and with funding from CLR in one of 
its first grants. By determining resistance to 
tearing and folding, Barrow tested paper 
from 500 books, published from 1900 to 
1949, that had " spent sheltered and tem-
perate lives in the scholarly atmosphere of 
Virginia institutions. "4 Similar results were 
produced by testing freshly manufactured 
papers to which artificial aging techniques 
were applied. And the results were stagger-



106 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

ing. "It seems probable," he said, "that 
most library books printed in the first half 
of the 20th century will be in an unusable 
condition in the next century. "s 

As part of the same project, Barrow col-
lected papers from the seventeenth and 
eighteenth _centuries and subjected them to 
chemical analysis. As he reported in Sci-
ence, the "acidity of the weakest papers is, 
on the average, from six to ten times as 
great as that of the strongest. "6 This was not 
a new discovery, nor was Barrow's identifi-
cation of alum-rosin sizing and residual 
chlorides from bleaching as the perpetra-
tors. But in this first investigation and more 
extensive later ones, also funded by CLR, 
the facts were documented as they never 
had been before. 7 

Barrow's findings disputed the prevailing 
theory of the time that paper deterioration 
was caused primarily by polluted urban, or 
industrial, atmosphere and that paper made 
entirely from rag would ipso facto be the 
strongest. Although pollution does play a 
role (and in some areas , such as New York 
City, a critical one), Barrow identified 
manufacturing processes as the principal 
cause of paper decay ; in a later investigation 
of book papers manufactured from 1800 to 
1899, he was able to trace historically the 
loss of strength in papers in a time line that 
matched the introduction by paper mills of 
alum sizing and the use of cheaper and 
shorter fibers. ts 

Barrow was convinced that a permanent 
and durable paper could be made that 
would avoid the pitfalls of the manufactur-
ing process and still be economical. Accord-
ingly , he developed specifications using 
chemical wood pulp and an alkaline sizing 
(Aquapel) that had recently come onto the 
market. An experimental run at the Herty 
Foundation and later tests at a commercial 
mill proved successful. 9 Testing showed that 
the paper had an expectation of longevity 
comparable to that of the fine book papers 
of the past, yet it was within a medium 
price range. Named Permalife , the paper 
was manufactured for fifteen years by the 
Standard Paper Company. When Standard 
closed in the mid-1970s , Howard Paper 
Mills, Inc., of Dayton, Ohio, purchased the 
rights to Permalife, as well as Standard's in-
ventory. 

On September 16, 1960, the American 
Library Association and the Virginia State 
Library called a conference on permanent/ 
durable paper, to which were invited scien-
tists who served Barrow as consultants, rep-
resentative librarians , archivists , book pub-
lishers, book designers, printers, papermak-
ers and merchants , paper chemists, and 
others. The purpose was " to explore the 
potential benefits for the users of books 
offered by the new chemical wood pulp 
paper. ... " 10 While there was enthusiasm 
among the participants familiar with the 
paper for its potential, the critics raised 
issues that have a familiar ring: "it would be 
wasteful and costly to try to upgrade the 
paper used for all books ; much that was 
published was intended to be of only tem-
porary use or was not in any case worth 
preserving ; anything worth preserving 
would be repri~ted if there was a need for 
it or if it became a 'classic' ; it was impracti-
cal to publish part of an edition on penna-
nent/durable paper unless a large group of 
libraries subscribed for all copies in such an 
edition ; there would be problems of print-
ability ; and manufacture rs would be hesitant 
to increase paper prices simply to increase 
perman e nce or durability on a large 
scale ." 11 It was also noted that while con-
sumers d e manded much of publishers and 
papermakers , permanence and durability 
were seldom high on the list. 

The conference group voted unanimously , 
however , to "invite the American Library 
Association to establish a continuing group , 
constituted to represent the various in-
terested groups here , which would find 
necessary support to continue some discus-
sion of this probl e m , looking toward 
mutually agreeable solutions. " 12 Thus the 
ALA Joint Committee on Perman e nt/Dur-
able Paper was born and was charged with 
reviewing Barrow's tentative specifications 
and, based on this review, with developing 
"acceptable standard specifications for paper 
of this or similar type , to establish standards 
on a national scale, to establish a suitable 
designation, to determine costs, to promote 
use , to develop a quality control program 
including testing, and to stimulate further 
research. " 13 It proved to be too great a task. 
After one meeting, a stalemate occurred be-
cause of disagreements on , among other 



things, testin·g procedures. While an 
attempt was made to assess the printability 
and ease of handling of permanent/durable 
papers along with other promotional efforts, 
in 1968 ALA requested the council's per-
mission to dissolve the committee because, 
as constituted and administered, it "was un-
wieldy and thus relatively ineffectual in 
accomplishing the assignment. " 14 The coun-
cil concurred, noting that the committee 
was "unable to realize the hopes that led to 
its establishment. "1s 

Up to the time -of the 1960 conference, 
Barrow's investigations had been carried out 
with the meager resources of his restoration 
shop in the Virginia State Library. In 1961, 
at Clapp's suggestion and with the aid of 
council funds, he took advantage of the hos-
pitality of the Virginia Historical Society to 
construct in its building a paper-testing 
laboratory employing the most exacting con-
trols of temperature and humidity and de-
voted exclusively to problems of preserva-
tion of library materials. On August 1 he 
signed the first of a series of contracts with 
the council that continued for the next six-
teen years. 

Assembling a small staff, Barrow opened 
his laboratory with an investigation of an 
aerosol deacidification method that could be 
used on whole books, rather than separate 
pages, and with the development of 
methods for predicting the longevity of 
polyvinyl adhesives suitable for perfect 
bindings. He continued to study what had 
happened to book papers from the fifteenth 
through the nineteenth centuries, and he 
began to look at the effects storage tempera-
tures have on the permanence of paper. He 
developed spot-testing procedures so that li-
brarians and archivists would have a quick 
and easy method of distinguishing stable 
from unstable book and record papers. Not 
all of his work, however, was done under 
direct council sponsorship. 

In 1959 the American Library Association 
began its Library Technology Project with 
the aid of a council grant. The project staff 
engaged the Barrow Research Laboratory 
on several efforts. One investigation led to 
an improved paper stock for use in the 
manufacture of library catalog cards. But 
the most important was the laboratory's 
assistance in A LA's development of stan-

CLR and Preservation I 107 

dards for library binding. Barrow and his 
staff participated in the research and de-
velopment phase of this project, during 
which they established criteria for the per-
formance of bindings used in libraries and 
designed testing equipment so that the per-
formance could be measured. 

The results of Barrow's work on many of 
these matters appeared in a series of book-
lets entitled Permanence/Durability of the 
Book. His reputation was growing in nation-
al and international spheres . In 1967, the 
American Library Association asked him to 
travel to England to consult with British 
paper manufacturers to ensure that a 
permanent/durable paper could be used for 
the pre-1956 imprint edition of the National 
Union Catalog, a work subsequently pub-
lished by Mansell in more than 700 
volumes. The final volumes are scheduled 
to be issued in 1981. Barrow found three 
British mills skilled in the use of alkaline 
size and eager to learn his techniques for 
properly preparing the necessary long 
fibers. He subsequently tested the paper 
produced and of that which was finally 
selected (manufactured by Guard Bridge 
Paper Company, Ltd.) said: "This has the 
highest strength characteristics and one of 
the best rates of deterioration of any 20th 
century book paper that we have tested in 
this laboratory. " 16 

Throughout the 1960s Barrow worked 
tirelessly to awaken the general public to 
the gravity of paper deterioration and the 
potential loss to society of its recorded 
heritage. He wrote extensively, stimulated 
others to publicize the enormity of the 
problem, and was himself the subject of 
several articles. Perhaps because of his 
nonscientific background, he was able to tell 
his story in terms easily understood. An 
editorial, "The Paper Man," in the Rich-
mond News Leader of June 8, 1963, is am-
ple illustration: 

So off we went to Battle Abbey (the building 
housing the Virginia Historical Society), past rows 
of great Virginians peering with portrait eyes, 
down stairs to talk to Mr. Barrow over a bowl of 
apples and pears. "See," he said, taking a yel-
lowed book off a shelf of yellowed books. It was 
an old cookbook, "Printed in 1905," he said, as 
page 282 came out in his fingers. We folded the 
paper over; then back. Two folds were all the 



108 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

paper could take. The page fell into two pieces, 
and the recipe for Chicken a Ia Terrapin was cut 
in half. 

There were, of course, critics of Barrow's 
results. Some thought Barrow's specifica-
tions for permanent/durable paper might be 
"excessively high" or "not really practical" 
for all except a few percent of the users of 
printed materials. Indeed, a later project of 
the laboratory, under ~on tract with CLR 
and the Library of Congress, was a revision 
of the specifications, but they were not sub-
stantially lowered, and eight of thirty-two 
commercial papers were found to meet 
them. The close relationship between Bar-
row and the Standard Paper Company was 
viewed with disfavor by some manufactur-
ers, who thought that Barrow did not give 
enough recognition to others who were pro-
ducing alkaline papers. It was reported 
that the rag paper manufacturers had their 
own group that as a whole had been ques-
tioning Barrow's accomplishments in the 
permanent/durable paper field. But his 
reputation and the quality of his work sur-
vived these mild criticisms, and his efforts 
continue to inspire those who are working 
today on finding solutions to one of the li-
brary world's most baffiing problems. 

Following Barrow's death, his wife and 
son determined to carry on the laboratory, 
and the council agreed to support a con-
tinuance of the projects Barrow had begun. 
Dr. R. N. Dupuis, retired from a position 
as vice-president in charge of research at 
the General Foods Corporation and one of 
Barrow's consultants, was hired to direct 
the laboratory on a part-time basis. In 1971, 
it was determined that the laboratory would 
benefit from full-time direction, and Dr. 
Bernard F. Walker, formerly corporate 
director of research for the Huyck Corpora-
tion, a manufacturer of components for the 
paper industry, was appointed. Dr. Dupuis 
continued his association with the labora-
tory, however, as an official CLR represen- , 
tative, serving on site in Richmond as 
liaison in scientific and policy matters. 

In the post-Barrow period, work con-
tinued at the laboratory on the effects of 
temperature and humidity on the perma-
nence and durability of paper. Laboratory 
staff also continued studying the characteris-
tics of centuries-old book papers and tested 

some modern papers for the Library of 
Congress and others, although care was 
taken throughout the history of the labora-
tory to keep its focus on research rather 
than quality control. But its first major 
activity under Dupuis' direction was to eval-
uate a British vapor-phase paper-deacidifica-
tion method. This activity laid the ground-
work for the laboratory's principal focus for 
the next ten years. · 

In 1966, W. H. Langwell, a British liquor 
chemist, developed a vapor-phase deacid-
ification process for books and documents . 
The process used cyclohexylamine carbon-
ate (CHC), which was applied by interleav-
ing books with treated absorbent paper or 
by placing granules of pellets , loose or in 
sachet form, in manuscript boxes. Informed 
of the matter by a British colleague, Louis 
B. Wright, the council's vice-chairman, 
alerted Verner Clapp who , with Barrow's 
agreement, thought the method should be 
tested. 

In its conclusions , the laboratory stated 
that CHC increased the pH of book papers 
as well as their resistance to folding and 
tearing. It appeared to affect the rosin siz-
ing, however, and also decreased the 
brightness and fluorescence of the papers 
treated. 

More important, however, the laboratory 
confirmed that CHC hydrolyzes to cyclo-
hexylamine, an odorous and toxic chemical, 
on exposure to moist air often found in li-
braries. An opinion from the Food and 
Drug Administration confirmed that "Cyclo-
hexylamine has both carcinogenic and P.1uta-
genic potential. . .. " 17 As a result of the 
laboratory 's report, the Process Materials 
Corporation, a U.S. distributor of the CHC 
products, which had already suspended 
sales, removed the products completely 
from the market. 1H 

Nevertheless, the thought that someone 
had found a vapOI" capable of deacidifying 
entire books excited laboratory · staff, who 
began searching for a nontoxic substance 
that might achieve the same end . At a July 
1969 meeting of the laboratory's advisory 
group, to which were added representatives 
of the American Library Association (ALA), 
the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), 
the Center for Research Libraries, and 
others, the possibility of discovery of new 



methods of vapor-phase deacidification re-
ceived serious attention as one of the three 
highest priorities for the laboratory. "What 
is needed," the group concluded, "is a one-
time mass process not requiring unbinding 
of the treated books. "a1 

The laboratory experimented with several 
substances, even securing a patent on one 
(a vapor caused by the reaction of ammonia 
and formaldehyde · to form a solid, hexa-
methylenetetramine) , but none seemed en-
tirely satisfactory. Then, in July 1970, one 
of the laboratory 's consultants suggested 
that morpholine , a common chemical used 
at that time in many floor waxes and 
polishes, be used to stabilize cellulose with 
respect to pH. By December, the labora-
tory was able to report surprising results in 
terms of the capacity of morpholine to 
deacidify paper. The laboratory tested 
several other amines, but morpholine con-
tinued to be the most satisfactory. Sophisti-
cated hardware for administering the vapor-
phase treatment was also designed and 
tested. After years of painstaking experi-
mentation patents were obtained on two 
versions of the process, one using a strong 
concentration of morpholine, the other a 
mild. While the strong process prodticed 
excellent results when applied to unbound 
books, the mild version was considered 
more suitable for mass deacidification users , 
since it could be used without harm to 
books bound with pyroxylin-impregnated 
cloth, a c:ommon feature of library bindings . 

In 1975, the laboratory phase of the de-
velopment of the morpholine deacidification 
process was brought to a close. With match-
ing funds from the National Endowment for 
the Humanities and the council, the Virgin-
ia State Library and the Barrow Laboratory 
began a large-scale test of the process using 
custom-made equipment, manufactured by 
the Vacudyne Altair Corporation of Chica-
go, capable of processing fifty books at a 
time. At a meeting, sponsored by the 
American Chemical Society in 1976, the 
laboratory's director, Dr. Walker, summa-
rized the advantages and disadvantages of 
the process. 

The morpholine process, he stated, deacid-
ified about eighty to ninety pounds of books 
in sixty minutes, at an estimated total cost 
(at that time) of about thirty-two cents a 

C LR and Preservation I 109 

pound. The process could be used without 
likelihood of damage to 99 percent of the 
normal books found in libraries , and their 
life expectancy could be expected to be im-
proved on the average about two and one-
half times. 

The process did, however , occasionally 
cause color changes on pyroxylin book cov-
ers, noticeably changed the color of leather, 
and occasionally caused groundwood papers 
to show visible yellowing. The process did 
not work equally well on every paper nor, 
unfortunately , did it strengthen paper that 
had already deteriorated. A capital invest-
ment in equipment would, of course, be 
required. 20 

In May 1977, just before the field trial 
ended, CLR and NEH gathered a group of 
scientists, librarians, and conservationists to 
study the safety and efficacy of the _process 
and consider where and how it . should best 
be used. At the same time, the Library of 
Congress ' Preservation and Testing Office 
tested the process extensively and generally 
corroborated the findings of the lengthy and 
thorough testing previously carried out by 
the Barrow Laboratory. 

The NEH-CLR review panel recom-
mended further testing on the question of 
whether the morpholine process presented 
a health hazard to library patrons or staff. In 
response , a check with the National Insti-
tute for Occupational Safety and Health in-
dicated that this agency did not consider 
morpholine a carcinogen. To further cor-
roborate this point, samples of morpholine-
treated book paper were sent to Litton 
Bionetics, Inc., to be tested using the Ames 
mutagenicity technique, which showed a 
negative response, i.e ., no evidence of car-
cinogenic or mutagenic property . Finally, 
on the question of whether it was likely that 
the known carcinogen nitrosomorpholine 
would be formed in significant amounts 
through the combining of morpholine in 
treated books with oxides of nitrogen found 
in polluted air, an opinion was sought from 
Dr. Robert Taylor, associate chairman of 
the Department of Chemistry at the Uni-
versity of Michigan and a CLR consultant 
on the Barrow project. Based on his inves-
tigation, Dr. Taylor concluded that the 
likelihood of this occurrence "is extremely 
low and the hazard negligible. "21 



110 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

Throughout the development of the mor-
pholine deacidification process, the council 
had been in close touch with the Research 
Corporation ,. a nonprofit foundation for the 
advancement of science and technology that 
makes new inventions available in the pub-
lic interest. Research Corporation took over 
the patenting and licensing of the process 
and in August 1979 announced that the first 
license had been granted to the Pacific 
Northwest Conservation Laboratory of Port 
Orchard , Washington. 

While the work on the morpholine pro-
cess was proceeding, Barrow Laboratory 
staff engaged in other investigations. Under 
a contract with the Library of Congress, the 
laboratory reviewed the specifications for 
permanent/durable paper qriginally estab-
lished by W. J. Barrow in 1960. The review 
took into account the changes in manufac-
turing and technology during the period 
and resulted in revised specifications. 
Several existing commercial papers 1 it was 
shown , could readily meet them . 22 

Other work included investigations of the 
effects of storage humidity and temperature 
on paper, improvement of the equipment 
for testing fold endurance, and continued 
testing of various kinds of paper for charac-
teristics of permanence and durability. Just 
before the laboratory closed, plans had been 
laid for a project to look for a vapor-phase 
method of strengthening paper. 

The council's relationship with the W . J. 
Barrow Research Laboratory was described 
by Verner Clapp as that of " a full , if a 
junior partner. " 23 The council "proposed 
topics for research, . . . followed the reports 
in detail , . . . made suggestions for im-
provements, alternative approaches, etc." 
He described this "climate of active col-
laboration on a matter of mutual concern 
and excitement" as rewarding, and history 
has shown it to be of profit to libraries as 
well. When Clapp died on June 15, 1972, 
his role with regard to the laboratory was 
assumed by CLR program officer Carl M. 
Spaulding, who continued a careful over-
sight of laboratory activities . Periodically, 
review groups were assembled to evaluate 
the laboratory's work and to assist in the 
setting of future goals and priorities. Such a 
group assembled in 1973 recommended the 
continuance of the laboratory, which it be-

lieved had been a good investment as well 
as being unique among organizations work-
ing in the conservation field. But it recog-
nized that the laboratory was handicapped 
by its relative intellectual and geographic 
isolation from the scientific and library com-
munities and recommended that the council 
explore alternatives to the laboratory as it 
was presently constituted and sited. In par-
ticular , it was recommended that the 
laboratory be reestablished on a university 
campus, where contact with the related sci-
ences and technologies and with a large li-
brary would be possible. 

However , the council was b e ginning to 
recognize that the expense of operating an 
independent laboratory was growing and in-
hibiting the council's ability to respond to 
other equally pressing problems. Although 
the council approved further support for the 
laboratory , it did so in th e hope that the 
additional funds for its continuation could 
be found elsewhere . 

As noted earlier , funds were secured 
from the National Endowment for the 
Humanities for a project involving large-
scale testing of the morpholine process. 
Prospects for other funding, however, were 
not good, nor was it likely that the labora-
tory could be relocated easily. Then , just as 
the large-scale testing was drawing to a 
close, Dr. Walker, the laboratory's director, 
suddenly died. With this combination of 
events, the council regretfully concluded 
that in view of its " many obligations to li-
braries and its own funding situation , and 
because of the increasing costs of the inde-
pendent laboratory , it could no longer b e 
supported. "2 4 Following the discontinuance 
of CLR funding , the Barrow family decided 
to shut down the laboratory, and much of 
the specialized equipment was placed on in-
definite loan at the Carnegie-Mellon Insti-
tute of Research , Carnegie-Mellon Uni-
versity, where it was to be used in the insti-
tute 's planned research program on paper 
preservation . 

From 1957 to 1977, CLR appropriated both 
directly and indirectly through the Virginia 
State Library more than $1.67 million in 
grants in support of the work performed by 
W. J. Barrow and subsequently the labora-
tory that bore his name. The accomplish-
ments for this investment were many. The 



principal causes of paper deterioration were 
identified and documented ; permanent/ 
durable paper and card stock were created 
and continue to be available commercially; 
attention to this problem, spotlighted by 
Barrow's work, contributed to a growing 
availability of acid-free papers in the United 
States and Great Britain; testing equipment 
(e. g., universal book tester , openability 
plate) was developed and made available 
and other equipment improved ; specifica-
tions for permanent/durable paper and stan-
dards for binding were promulgated; a mass 
deacidification process was devised and 
tested; and a series of publications d·rew 
attention to the problems of preservation 
and assisted many to an understanding of 
their nature and possibilities for solution . 

ALA's Library 
Technology Project 

The establishment and operation of the 
Barrow Laboratory commanded much of the 
attention and resources of the council. But 
in the area of preservation, as in other 
areas, CLR has consistently sought a variety 
of mechanisms to attack the basic problems 
and has attempted to coordinate several 
different approaches. An example of this is 
the work performed by the laboratory under 
contract with the Library Technology Proj-
ect (L TP) of the American Library Associa-
tion, also funded by CLR. The project's ac-
tivities, however , were not restricted to 
preservation, nor were its preservation ac-
tivities always connected with Barrow. 

When the council approved the establish-
ment of the ALA Library Technology Proj-
ect in 1959, four principal goals were stated: 

1. To improve the quality of library 
equipment, supplies, and systems . 

2. To save money expended on inferior 
products or systems. 

3. To save inordinate expenditure of time 
in ascertaining existing knowledge on these 
matters. 

4. To produce knowledge where now 
there is none. 
The council provided administrative funds 
for the project, but it required that separate 
proposals be made for testing programs, 
each of which would be evaluated on its 
merits. 

CLR and Preservation I 111 

Between 1959 and 1973, LTP engaged in 
a number of preservation-related projects. 
Several involved the testing of supplies 
used by conservators, including pressure-
sensitive tapes used in the repair and mark-
ing of books, polyvinyl acetate adhesives 
used in mending, laminating equipment, 
and film coatings and rejuvenation treat-
ments designed to improve the resistance of 
microfilm to scratching and abrasions caused 
by use. The tests were usually conducted 
under contract with both commercial and 
nonprofit laboratories, such as Barrow or 
the Chicago Paper Testing laboratories, and 
the results were published in the official 
ALA journal. 

In addition to testing various products, 
LTP also atte\npted to improve what was 
available. Under contract with the Barrow 
Laboratory, for example, specifications were 
developed for a permanent/durable card 
stock, which would add to the longevity of 
the millions of catalog cards filed by the na-
tion's libraries on a daily basis. In 1961, 
with the assistance of the Institute of Paper 
Chemistry and on behalf of the Public Ar-
chives Commission of the state of Delaware, 
LTP attempted to develop specifications for 
cardboard stock for manuscript boxes that 
would make them more suitable for library 
and archival use in terms of reduced acid-
ity, insect repellency, and fire and moisture 
resistance. Unlike the former project, 
where successful commercial runs of a suit-
able card stock were made, the emphasis in 
the latter project was on treatments of ex-
isting stocks. While it was found possible to 
build each characteristic into the board, the 
cost was considered excessive for practical 

· use. 
In 1960, with the cosponsorship of the 

Special Libraries Association (SLA), LTP 
embarked on a six-year project to develop 
performance standards for library bindings, 
which, in many cases, deteriorate faster 
than the papers they encase. Although spe-
cifications had existed since the 1930s for 
class A library bindings and were amended 
from time to time, they were considered to 
be inadequate for two reasons. First, they 
did not satisfy all of the binding require-
ments in libraries (e. g., heavily used as 
opposed to lesser-used materials), and 
second, they concentrated far too much on 



112 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

existing and available equipment, materials , 
and methods and said too little in terms of 
prospective use and performance. 

Five categories of needed bindings were 
established through the use of an extensive 
survey. LTP then contracted with the Bar-
row Laboratory to develop the necessary 
tests and equipment that would measure 
performance. In addition, nearly fifty librar-
ies participated in field tests of trade edi-
tion , children's, and class A bindings to 
allow for a comparison of actual use with 
machine-produced " use." Finally , three 
" provisional" performance standards-for 
durability , workmanship , and openability-
were published and approved in 1967 by 
both ALA and SLA and subsequently by 
the Library Binding Institute. The universal 
book tester and openability plate developed 
by the Barrow Laboratory were made avail-
able through the Chicago Paper Testing 
Laboratory , where they are still in active 
use , primarily in response to requests from 
publishers. 

For librarians responsible for , but un-
skilled in, the techniques of conservation , 
perhaps the most useful of the CLR-funded 
LTP projects was its publication series on 
the conservation of library materials . Origi-
nally planned as an extensive series that 
would provide a complete manual on the 
preservation of print and nonprint mate-
rials , only two volumes eventually found 
their way into print, but they have become 
classics on a conservator ' s bookshelf. 
Carolyn Horton's Cleaning and Preserving 
Binding and Related Materials (second edi-
tion , 1969) and Bernard C. Middleton's Res-
toration of Leather Bindings (1972) provide 
clear explanations of processes and · tech-
niques , accompanied by plentiful line draw-
ings and some photographs. And both were 
printed on Permalife paper. 

The Library Technology Program, as it 
had come to be known, was discontinued as 
a separate ALA unit in 1973 when council 
funding came to an end. Of the more than 
$2 million that had been supplied by CLR 
for support of the program , $212,000 was 
authorized for investigations relating to the 
preservation of library collections. ALA con-
tinues to supply much-needed evaluative in-
formation to libraries concerning equip-
ment, furnishings, automated systems, and 

supplies through its publication Library 
Technology Reports. 

The Chicago Process 

The work of the Barrow Laboratory and 
the preservation projects of the Library 
Technology Program provided much valu-
able information to the library community. 
In 1966 a third opportunity arose for yet 
another approach to solving the problem of 
paper deterioration by reducing its acidity , 
this one proposed by a doctoral stud e nt 
studying at the Graduate Library School of 
the University of Chicago : Richard D . 
Smith. Smith's investigation was directed at 
the nonaqueous deacidification of whole 
books , and the result was dubbed by Smith 
as the "Chicago process. "25 By the time the 
grant period ended in 1970, Smith had de-
veloped a procedure for treating single 
sheets of paper using magne sium methox-
ide . He eventually marketed the solution 
commercially under the name Wei T'o. 

Library of Congress 
Preservation Office 

A fourth opportunity to assist laboratory 
investigations into the problems of preserva-
tion arose when in 1969 the council re-
ceived a proposal from the Library of Con-
gress requesting assistance in establishing a 
preservation research and testing facility. 
According to the proposal, the new pFes-
ervation laboratory would "function at the 
national level and in the national interest to 
identify, assign priorities to, and conduct 
research on preservation problems related 
to books , manuscripts, prints and photo-
graphs , maps, microfilms , and other forms 
of microreproductions, and all other mate-
rials which must be preserved by .libraries 
and archives if recorded knowledge is to be 
available for future generations . . .. " The 
council agreed to provide funds to equip 
the laboratory and to assist in the review of 
a proposed research -program. 

During the grant period, which r~m from 
1971 to 1975, the library ' s preservation 
laboratory staff embarked on a number of 
investigations, which included an evaluation 
of known deacidification methods and de-
velopment of additional ones , stain iden-
tification and removal, measurement of fold-
ing endurance and tensile strength of paper, 



use of graft polymerization methods for 
strengthening deteriorated paper, and un-
usual methods of drying books. In addition, 
the laboratory began work on a vapor-phase 
deacidification method that utilized diethyl 
zinc vapor for treatment of books in bulk. 
Testing of this substance is still taking 
place. Results have been good in terms of 
neutralizing paper acidity and leaving an 
alkaline reserve to combat later acid attacks, 
but care must be taken with the substance 
because it is pyrophoric. 

New England 
Document Conservation Center 

Funding the laboratory efforts of William 
J. Barrow and the Library of Congress was 
attractive to the council for several reasons . 
First of all, both operations concentrated on 
projects of primary interest to libraries and 
archives, rather than to commercial, indus-
trial , or other interests. Furthermore, both 
organizations showed promise of having an 
impact on the library world at large, rather 
than concentrating on the preservation of 
the collection of a single institution. In 1972 
another opportunity with much the same 
characteristics appeared. The state librarians 
of six New England states approached the 
council with a request for funding, as part 
of their Interstate Library Compact, the 
first regional conservation center. The states 
were willing to put up half of the initial 
money to get the operation off the ground. 
Impressed by this commitment and in-
trigued by the collaborative and regional as-
pects of the proposal, the council agreed to 
match the amount. Thus the New England 
(now Northeast) Document Conservation 
Center was born and, within the two-year 
grant period, became self-supporting. 

The center has lived up to its early prom-
ise. It annually provides workshop services 
to about three hundred institutions and 
reaches another thousand through a con-
servation seminar program. In addition to 
the restoration of books, prints, maps, 
broadsides, manuscripts, and similar 
documentary materials brought to the cen-
ter by libraries, archives, historical associa-
tions, businesses, museums, and others, the 
center has set up programs involving con-
servation of photographs and preservation 
microfilming and provides a disaster-

CLR and Preservation I 113 

assistance service to institutions in the re-
gion. 

Florence Flood 

In 1966 a natural disaster stimulated a 
series of CLR research grants relating to 
preservation. The city of Florence, Italy, 
was inundated by a massive flood. Accord-
ing to a knowledgeable observer, more than 
1,200,000 bibliographic items stored in the 
basement and ground floor of the Biblioteca 
Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BCNF) were 
damaged, but more than 80 percent were 
considered salvageable. 

The size of the effort required was enor-
mous. "It took human chains of library per-
sonnel and student volunteers from all over 
the world about six weeks just to extract the 
books from the mud," reported the observ-
er. Fortunately, many nations joined in the 
restoration work and donated equipment, 
the time of professional conservators and 
technicians, and funds for operations. The 
council also contributed to the effort by 
funding several proposals for research de-
signed to assist BCNF efforts and to dis-
seminate the techniques used in the Italian 
national library's restoration department. 

In 1968, a grant was awarded to the Im-
perial College of Science and Technology 
for investigations of the scientific aspects of 
conservation, particularly needed with re-
gard to work on the valuable pre-1840 
books contain.ed in the BCNF' s Magliabechi 
and Palatine collections. Although work was 
begun on the bleaching and washing of doc-
uments, on the use of heat-set mending tis-
sues, and on limp-vellum binding practices, 
the project unfortunately became embroiled 
in an administrative tangle and eventually 
was disbanded. 

Two of the participants, however, received 
separate grants to continue aspects of the 
work that had shown particular promise. 
Christophe'r Clarkson, an English bookbind-
er, completed a study of early European 
limp-vellum binding practices and showed 
in great detail the process of limp-vellum 
binding. Margaret Hey, an English chemist, 
moved to Rome in 1971 to continue her 
work on bleaching and heat-set paper 
mending tissues, financed in part by CLR, 
at the Instituto di Patologia del Libro. 

At about the same time, Anthony G. 



114 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

Cains, a British restoration expert who had 
been appointed technical director of restora-
tion at the BCNF in 1967, successfully 
sought support from the council to complete 
work on a manual of the restoration tech-
niques for printed books and parchment 
manuscripts used at the library. The council 
received a draft of the work in 1972 and 
noted that it included some of the results 
achieved by both Clarkson and Hey . In 
1974 , Paul N . Banks , conservator at the 
Newberry Library , also received a small 
CLR grant to assist him in writing a manual 
on library conservation. Neither effort has 
yet reached publication. 

Aids for Conservators 

The council's support of these manuals 
serves as an example of another area of CLR 
int e rest within th e fi e ld of preservation . 
Occasionally ove r the years circumstances 
have allowed the council to assist in the 
preparation of publications that have the 
potential of serving the needs of a large 
number of librari e s , archives , historical 
associations , and other institutions con-
cerned with conservation of cultural prop-
ertie s. In the 1960s, for example, with the 
cooperation of the National Science Founda-
tion , the council was able to arrange for the 
translation and publication of several 
volumes of Russian studies in the preserva-
tion of documents and books. The English-
language editions were prepared by the 
Israel Program for Scientific Translations for 
the U.S. Department of Commerce and 
were distributed by that agency. 26 

In the 1970s, the American Association 
for State and Local History (AASLH) sought 
CLR assistance for the preparation of two 
volumes directed to persons and institutions 
entrusted with the care of manuscripts and 
historical photographs. Kenneth W. Duck-
ett's Modern Manuscripts: A Practical 
Manual for Their Management , Care , and 
Use (Nashville , Tenn.: AASLH , 1975) was 
well received and won the 1976 Waldo Gif-
ford Leland prize , given annually by the 
Society of American Archivists for the best 
addition to the professional archival litera-
ture. In 1977, the AASLH ' s handsomely 
illustrated Collection , Use , and Care of His-
torical Photographs, by Robert A. Wein-

stein and Larry Booth (Nashville , Tenn.: 
AASLH , 1977), was also published to wide 
professional acclaim . 

NATIONAL PLANNING 

The work of Barrow and others revealed 
that the book stacks of libraries ·contained 
something in the nature of a time bomb. 
Acid , compounded by growing environmen-
tal pollution , was eating away the records of 
history at a rapid rate. Advances in micro-
form technology and research into other 
means of pres e rvation were beginning to 
point the way to technical solutions. But in 
terms of the total collection needing treat-
ment , the problem was quickly seen to be 
of elephantine proportions , much out of the 
reach of an individual institution. Although 
coope rative programs are now seen as the 
answe r to many of the difficulties of librar-
ies , they have always been regarded as a 
necessity in the area of preservation. Yet to 
date they have proved almost impossible to 
achieve. 

Microfilming has for years been regarded 
as the most promising means of preserving 
the intellectual content of deteriorating 
publications , and it is in this area that the 
first major cooperative efforts began. News-
papers , invariably printed on fast-decaying 
groundwood paper, were the most serious 
problem and thus became the first target in 
1938 when Harvard University received a 
grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to 
reproduce on microfilm files of foreign 
newspapers. 27 Recognizing the need to avoid 
wasteful duplication of limited resources, 
the Library of Congress set up a microfilm 
clearinghouse for information about pro-
posed , in-progress , and completed micro-
filming projects and began to publish union 
lists of newspapers already microfilmed and 
lists of ne wspapers recommended for this 
treatment. The Association of Research Li-
braries played a ·role in much of the plan-
ning of these activities . Recognizing the 
need for expanded coverage of foreign 
newspapers and of national coordination of 
such projects , ARL established in 1956 a 
foreign newspaper microfilm project admin-
istered by the Mid-West Interlibrary Cen-
ter (which eventually became the Center for 
Research Libraries). Four years later, the 



Council on Library Resources entered the 
picture. 

Association of Research Libraries 

Three considerations led ARL to conclude 
that something had to be done about micro-
forms. First, improvement in technology 
had made it easy to make microcopies of 
any kind of textual material. Second, for 
preservation purposes, microform was 
thought to be more permanent than paper. 
Third, publishers were beginning to pro-
duce original publications in microform. 
Bibliographic control of microforms was 
practically nonexistent. No systematic pro-
cedure for the reporting of microform proj-
ects by their producers existed, nor were 
there means for libraries to report, for use 
by others, their catalog entries of individual 
titles on microform. 

In 1960, therefore , ARL sought funds 
from the council for a study by Wesley 
Simonton, a professor in the Library School 
of the University of Minnesota, for the pur~ 
pose of developing, with the cooperation of 
scholars, librarians, and producers of micro-
films, a comprehensive mechanism for 
bringing scholarly material in microform 
under bibliographic control. ARL was not 
alone in its concern, for it had been urged 
to sponsor the study by the American His-
torical Association's Committee on Docu-
mentary Reproduction and the American 
Library Association's Subcommittee on Mi-
cropublishing Projects. 

The Simonton study recommended sever-
al improvements involving the inclusion of 
microform publications in general catalogs 
and union lists of materials in other forms, 
as well as improvements in filming prac-
tices. In addition, it was suggested that a 
new national listing of master microfilm 
negatives be established to indicate what 
materials had been filmed and which master 
films were available for reproduction. With 
the help of a subcommitttee within ALA's 
Resources and Technical Services Division, 
the National Register of Microform Masters 
took shape. In January 1965 a CLR grant to 
ARL established a unit at the Library of 
Congress for the purpose of producing the 
first volume of the resister. Published 
annually since 1966, the edition for 1979 

CLR and Preservation I 115 

contained sixty thousand entries in approx-
imately one thousand pages. The Library of 
Congress assumed financial support of the 
project in 1967. 

The Register contained entries for foreign 
and domestic books, pamphlets, serials, and 
foreign doctoral dissertations. Newspapers 
continued to be listed in the LC publication 
Newspapers on M icro.film. Following the 
establishment of the ARL foreign newspa-
per microfilming project in 1956, area studies 
programs continued to expand and the in-
terest of research libraries in foreign news-
papers grew accordingly. Separate micro-
filming and acquisitions projects began to 
spring up, again causing problems of du-
plication and accessibility. 

The ARL Foreign Newspaper Microfilm 
Committee therefore expanded its scope 
from one of oversight of the ARL project to 
that of developing a truly national foreign 
newspaper microfilming program encompas-
sing at least two thousand titles and utiliz-
ing the resources of the ARL project, the 
Library of Congress, and other interested in-
stitutions. In May 1969, the council funded 
a preliminary study for such a program. The 
report made recommendations concerning 
the expansion of coverage of foreign news-
papers required to serve the scholarly com-
munity of the United States and Canada 
and identified institutions willing and able 
to participate in a national program. Fur-
ther, it recommended the creation of a 
national coordinating office "to facilitate in-
stitutional cooperative filming or acquisi~ 
tions and to facilitate accessibility through 
interlibrary loan and other means. " 28 In 
1972, the position of coordinator of foreign 
newspaper microfilming was established 
within the Reference Department of the Li-
brary of Congress. In 1976, coordination of 
domestic newspaper microfilming was 
added to the position and it was moved ad-
ministratively to the library's Preservation 
Office. 

ARL' s interest in preservation did not 
end with microfilming programs, however. 
For one thing, although it was thought that 
microforms would be more permanent than 
paper, no data were available to support 
that assumption. And while the filming it-
self was easy, it was still too expensive to 



116 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

consider application to an entire library col-
lection. · 

In 1960, spurred by the information and 
advances produced by the Barrow Labora-
tory , ARL appointed a Committee on the 
Preservation of Research Library Materials 
with Harvard's librarian, Douglas W. 
Bryant, as chair , to investigate various 
aspects of the problem of paper deteriora-
tion . At the behest of this group , the coun-
cil began a series of grants that attempted 
first to gain some idea of the size of the 
problem and second to develop a. national 
program for solving it. 

The first grant, to Virginia state librarian 
Randolph W. Church, allowed Church to 
pursue an investigation that would provide, 
among other things, data as to the number 
of books in libraries published in the period 
from the introduction of mechanical-
chemical book papers in the 1860s through 
1960. Church recommended that a sample 
of the National Union Catalog be taken , 
which would allow an estimate of total num-
ber to be made . Following this advice , CLR 
awarded a second grant to ARL to contract 
with the Research Triangle Institute to car-
ry out the sampling, with the hope of estab-
lishing by this means a statistical basis for 
planning the preservation of research library 
materials. Based on what had been reported 
to the National Union Catalog, the institute 
concluded that research libraries contained 
at least 7,665,800 separate titles for books 
(not serials) published after 1869, and that 
these contained roughly 1. 7 billion pages. 29 

The enormity of the problem served as a 
goad to further action. In 1962, a third CLR 
grant allowed Gordon Williams to look at 
methods for (a) coordinating efforts so as to 
assure maximum utility of results; (b) de-
veloping bibliographic control of materials 
submitted to preservation programs; and (c) 
developing arrangements for custody and 
service, in the national interest, of micro-
film negatives and other master copies re-
sulting from these programs. Williams' cen-
tral recommendation was for the establish-
ment of a central preservation agency , 
federally supported, to preserve one copy of 
every significant book in its original form 
(by deacidification and storage at the lowest 
practical temperatures) and to make micro-
form copies available readily and cheaply to 

all libraries . Doubts about the longevity of 
microfilm were expressed , thus the need for 
preserving at least one copy of an original, 
and it was shown that it would cost "only 
about $2 more per volume to preserve the 
original for an indefinitely long future time 
and make a microfilm copy of it only when 
the book needs to be used , than it will cost 
to microfilm the original now and discard 
the original completely. "3o 

ARL endorsed the report in January 
1965 . The prospects looked bright when 
ARL reported to the council that " the Li-
brary of Congress had agreed to accept re -
sponsibility for 'a national program for the 
preservation of deteriorating books in accor-
dance with the principles set forth in the 
report . . .. · "3 1 

The Library of Congess had , it turned 
out, set aside some twenty thousand items 
that had been pulled from the main collec-
tion because they were too brittle to with-
stand use. Using this collection , the library 
proposed a pilot project that would develop 
what it hoped would be inexpensive 
routines for comparing existing copies of de-
teriorating works wherever they were lo-
cated and determining the best copy for 
preservation , for arranging for appropriate 
treatment, and for recording the copy's ex-
istence so other libraries would not have to 
repeat the operation. Through ARL, CLR 
awarded the required funds and the library 
set to work. 

In November 1967, the library reported 
to ARL that "it is administratively feasible 
to establish a national preservation collec-
tion of materials now deteriorating in the 
nation's research libraries. This assessment, 
however, extends only to the identification 
of brittle or deteriorating materials in other 
libraries and to a determination of the 
physical condition of such materials. " Actual 
implementation , the library said , would 
pose substantial technical questions as well 
as administrative problems. The willingness 
of libraries to contribute to a national pres-
ervation collection had not been ascer-
tained , nor was it known whether they 
would be willing to accept responsibility for 
preserving books for which a given library 
was listed as holder of a national preserva-
tion copy. Nor, as the Librarian of Congess 
pointed out in his covering letter, was the 



procedural process inexpensive. 32 

In the early 1970s, ARL again tried to 
spell out a practical national strategy for 
preservation, this time under the auspices 
of a grant from the U.S. Office of Educa-
tion . The final report stated that the study 
was prompted by "the assumption that the 
general plan incorporated in the 1964 report 
needed only the addition of operational de-
tails and funding for implementation . " 33 
Views had changed, the author acknowl-
edged, and even though the original objec-
tives were still valid , six years had passed 
with no action. A problem of scale was in-
volved . 

In moving from research and training to the topic 
of actual operating programs in libraries, the 
complexity of the preservation problem becomes 
apparent. In a sense, it is as if there were two 
preservation problems, one reducible to specific 
items or specific categories of mate rial in indi-
vidual research collections ; the other a seemingly 
unscalable mountain of the millions of volumes in 
the slowly crumbling collections of older research 
libraries of the country. In the first case , there is 
some action and perhaps even progress. Logic 
would suggest that such progress would lead to 
improvement in the second case as well, but the 
change in scale from the first situation to the 
second seems somehow to undermine the possi-
bility of even a fleeting sense of accomplish-
ment. 34 

To bring the problem down to manage-
able size, the report includes a number of 
suggestions for action in the areas of re-
search and education and training. In terms 
of collective action , however, the proposal 
shifted from the earlier call for a centralized 
preservation collection to the idea of a 
national system of collections. As a first 
step, it was suggested that ten or fifteen li-
braries join in a "preservation consortium" 
to carry out certain specific preservation 
projects. This would set the stage for the 
formulation of common preservation proce-
dures and uniform performance standards. 
Local preservation collections would be-
come the basis for national resources collec-
tions , which would result in a shared re-
sponsibility. Eventually, a national library 
corporation might act as the coordinator for 
the national program. "By not aspiring to 
preserve everything and concentrating in-
stead on discrete subject areas , some real 

CLR and Preservation I 117 

progress becomes possible," the · report 
concluded. 35 

For all its advances in other areas, at this 
time technology for preservation had not, it 
seemed, caught up with the national plan-
ning. No efficient, inexpensive method for 
deacidifying books in bulk had been in-
vented. Optimum economical storage condi-
tions were as yet unknown. Procedures and 
standards for bibliographic control were still 
unformulated . Work was proceeding on 
these items, and until information became 
available, it appeared that the political and 
economic questions raised by the LC Brittle 
Book Project and the collective action sug-
gested by ARL could not be addressed. To 
this point, CLR had expended approximate-
ly $103,000 for work leading toward a na-
tional preservation program. Action was, 
however, temporarily halted. 

Library of Congress 

As noted earlier, in 1969 the Library of 
Congress turned its attention to setting up a 
preservation laboratory, which, in a pro-
gram of research, would investigate some of 
the problems that seemed to prevent the 
building of a coherent national plan. By 
1976, with considerable progress made in 
its own program, LC announced to the 
American Library Association at its annual 
conference that it was now prepared to be-
gin the development of a broad-scale 
national program . The first step was an in-
vitational conference, held in December 
1976, the purpose of which was to obtain 
opinions and recommendations of the li-
brary and archival communities on a pro-
posed program. Council funds supported 
the event. 

The library's plan called for a series of ac-
tions grouped in three broad categories . 
First, to preserve those items the intellec-
tual content of which does not warrant more 
expensive treatment, it proposed a national 
preservation microfilming center with space 
for archival storage of master negatives, 
along with appropriate surveys, standards 
development, bibliographic control mecha-
nisms, and other procedures that would allow 
for contributions to the center and retrieval 
of the items housed within. For those items 
that ought to be preserved in the original 
format , the plan proposed a training pro-



118 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

gram for conservators, establishment of re-
gional conservation centers and emergency 
salvage teams, and an improved means of 
sharing information through national con-
servation workshops and distribution of 
training aids. Finally, to ensure that the 
materials of the future do not follow the 1 

route to decay of their forebears, the library 
recommended provision of low-temperature 
facilities and microfilming procedures and 
an effort to persuade papermakers to pro-
duce stronger, long-lived paper. 

Although the wide-ranging discussion 
made clear the divergence of opinion on the 
best way to proceed, the need for action 
was strongly felt. Warren J. Haas, at that 
time vice-president and university librarian 
at Columbia University , closed the confer-
ence by saying that "scholars, librarians and 
archivists do, in fact, have the responsibility 
to solve this preservation problem. And that 
responsibility is not conditional-it does not 
depend on public perception, or amount of 
money, or anything else. It is our responsi-
bility, and we can either succeed or fail. 
The rate at which things get done is a func-
tion of money ; whether or not they are 
done at all is a function of people . "36 He 
called for the establishment of a small advi-
sory committee to begin the process of de-
termining a course of action. The Council 
on Library Resources, he said, would sup-
port the meeting expenses of such a group. 

The Library of Congress thereupon estab-
lished an ad hoc Advisory Committee for a 
National Preservation Program and on June 
14, 1977, announced the appointment of a 
national preservation program officer to 
coordinate LC's activities. Only two meet-
ings of the committee were held, in June 
and September of 1977. The group consid-
ered the list of possible projects and recom-
mended priorities . At the top of the list 
were the items considered easiest of accom-
plishment: timely preparation of LC pub-
lications on preservation, LC sponsorship of 
a series of workshops and seminars, the de-
velopment of three-month conservation in-
stitutes, and production of a series of con-
servation training aids. At its second meet-
ing the committee unanimously recom-
mended that LC move to convert the Na-
tional Register of Microform Masters to ma-
chine-readable form and went on record as 

favoring the training of more conservators. 
The group also asked the national preserva-
tion program officer to investigate the topic 
of a cold-storage facility. 

Just six months after the initial appoint-
ment, the position of national preservation 
program officer was vacated and has not 
been refilled. To be sure, the library has 
continued to operate a National Preserva-
tion Program Office, which most recently 
has issued a newsletter called National Pres-
ervation Report. The results of LC's re-
search and testing program, directed at 
problems associated with its own collec-
tions, are often useful to all libraries. LC 
has continued to publish pamphlets contain-
ing valuable basic information on conserva-
tion techniques, and its staff frequently con-
duct workshops, make presentations, and 
consult on problems caused by natural di-
sasters. Some materials used in conservation 
have been made available commercially 
after careful testing and experimentation in 
LC laboratories. The library has been 
spending $1 million a year each on pres-
ervation microfilming and binding. These 
activities are valuable in themselves . 
However, no other action on any of the 
committee's recommendations has been re-
ported. In the last few years, the library 
also has entered into a period of budget 
constraint. In the face of the demanding job 
of preserving its own collections, and for a 
number of internal, fiscal , and political 
reasons, the library has been unable to 
assume the leadership role it had 
announced. 

CURRENT PROSPECTS 

Although a lack of fiscal resources and 
technical procedures, along with a lack of 
trained manpower, has adversely affected 
development of a national strategy for pres-
ervation, the current lack of leadership and 
the failure by librarians to assume responsi-
bility are perhaps the most serious impedi-
ments to progress. Plainly speaking, 
academic and research libraries, whose col-
lections comprise the cultural record and 
which therefore are the most threatened, 
have historically shown little capacity for 
collective action. Many important projects 
have salvaged, and continue to salvage, sub-
stantial pieces of the records of history. But 



deterioration is occurring at a faster rate than 
conservation, and the threat that, as one 
commentator put it, the nineteenth century 
might become known as "the beginning of 
the bookless age" remains. Yet events of re-
cent years have engendered hope, rather 
than despair, for two reasons : a growing 
awareness of the seriousness of the prob-
lem, and a remarkable shift in attitude 
among academic and research libraries. 
Advances in technology are also playing a 
role. 

That the message is getting across was 
clearly documented by Pamela Darling in a 
recent issue of Library ] ournal in which she 
cataloged the association meeting programs, 
courses, institutes, workshops, articles in 
journals within and outside the profession, 
and publications that have blossomed since 
1976.37 The problem of manpower is being 
seriously addressed by , among others, Co-
lumbia University' s School of Library Ser-
vice, which is seeking to fund and develop a 
full-scale academic program for conservators 
and preservation program administrators. 
The Resources and Technical Services Divi-
sion of the American Library Association 
has created a Preservation of Library Mate-
rials Section. But general awareness does 
not create the capacity for action. 

In 197 4, four major research libraries 
-Columbia, Yale, Harvard , and the New 
York Public Library-formed the Research 
Libraries Group. Although Harvard with-
drew, the group has since enlarged to more 
than twenty members. Dedicated to " im-
proving the management of the information 
resources necessary for the advancement of 
scholarship," the group is an effort "to man-
age the transition from locally self-sufficient 
and independent comprehensive collections 
to a nationwide system of interdependencies 
that will preserve and enhance our national 
capacity for serious research in all fields of 
knowledge and improve our ability to locate 
and retrieve relevant information. " 38 The 
formation of this group signals a shift in atti-
tude of many research libraries from one of 
waiting for a savior to one of self-help. And 
it is this group that may, at last, provide the 
capacity for joint action. 

Why is this group a promising locus for 
activity? For one thing, RLG members are 
connected by a fully functioning comput-

C LR and Preservation I 119 

erized bibliographic data base, capable of re-
finement to add the necessary information 
concerning preservation on an item-by-item 
basis. Second, the group has been commit-
ted from the beginning to the goals of 
shared resources and cooperative collection 
development, and preservation is a large 
factor in both. Third, the group is not wait-
ing for the Library of Congress to take the 
lead, but views LC as an important partner 
in reaching its goals . The potential for con-
certed action clearly is evident. 

Nor is the group alone . The Association 
. of Research Libraries is continuing to initi-
. ate activities that will assist the preservation 

cause. Most recently, with the help of an 
_ NEH grant, ARL commissioned another 

study of the bibliographic control of mate-
rials in microforms. While gains had been 
made following the Simonton study, 
changes in cataloging rules and the growth 
of machine-readable data bases had made it 
appropriate to reassess the situation. ARL' s 
objective is "to plan and coordinate North 
American efforts toward building a machine-
readable data base of cataloging records for 
materials in microform, " with particular 
emphasis given "to facilitating the produc-
tion and dissemination of analytics for titles 
published in large microform sets . "39 ARL is 
involving librarians , microform publishers , 
representatives of bibliographic utilities , 
and others to develop the agreements , stan-
dards, methods , and mechanisms required. 
In addition , the ARL Office of Management 
Studies also received a grant from NEH to 
develop a self-study process that will enable 
individual institutions to focus on preserva-
tion and its relationships to library proces-
ses from a management point of view. 

There are other movements as welL · At a 
meeting in June 1980 at Snowbird, Utah, 
representatives from libraries, archives , his-
torical societies, and museums in eighteen 
western states agreed on a master plan for 
preservation and conservation of materials 
in the West. The plan included, among 
other items, the creation of a regional con-
servation clearinghouse in the short term 
and in the long term, the development of a 
regional capacity to treat deteriorating 
materials. 

Increased funding po~sibilities in both 
federal and private sectors are also playing 



120 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

a role. The National Endowment for the 
Humanities has been mentioned several 
times as providing funding support for pres-
ervation projects, and there is evidence of 
increased interest. NEH's fiscal year 1981 
budget carries a line item specifically ear-
marked for preservation. The Department 
of Education, through Title 11-C of the 
Higher Education Act, has awarded more 
than $3 million since 1978 to research li-
braries for substantial preservation pro-
grams. With these funds the Art Institute of 
Chicago is preserving rare architecture 
photogravure plates, Harvard is making 
master microfilm negatives of, among other 
items, Chinese ephemera, and the Univer-
sity of Alaska is preserving deteriorating 
materials in its Alaskan and Polar Region 
Collection. The records program of the Na-
tional Historical Publications and Records 
Commission , established in 1974, has 
pumped additional money into programs for 
preserving and making accessible valuable 
archival collections. Several private founda-
tions , notably the Andrew W. Mellon 
Foundation, have shown increased interest 
in assessing efforts toward preservation. 
Already the Mellon Foundation has 
awarded $750,000 to the New York Public 
Library , which has had a strong institutional 
preservation program for years, to develop 
an on-line data base of microform masters 
and micropreservation activity. It will be 
made available to other libraries through 
the Research Libraries Group. 

The council has not . been idle, either, in 
pressing the cause of preservation and in re-
sponding to promising programs. A change 
in the council's funding pattern has limited 
the resources available for programs in this 
area, but it has not lessened its interest or 
concern . CLR has never been able to re-
spond to the needs of individual institutions 
for preservation of their local collections, 
nor has it been able to finance large-scale 
cooperative projects. As in the past, the 
council looks for programs with multiplier 
effects. 

One example, if it ever comes to pass, 
would be the establishment of a National 
Periodicals Center (NPC). The council was 
involved in the early planning stages of the 
proposed center. In 1977 at the request of 
the Library of Congress, CLR began the 

preparation of a technical development plan 
that outlined the key operating characteris-
tics, requirements, and funding needed to 
establish such an institution. A primary 
objective of the NPC, according to the plan,_ 
is its potential contribution to the preserva-
tion of periodical material. Its centralized 
collection of 30,000-60,000 journals would 
be preserved in perpetuity and its preserva-
tion activities would become "an integral 
and dependable part of a national preserva-
tion program . " 4° Following publication of 
the plan in 1978, legislation was introduced 
into the U . S. Congress to continue the 
planning for the center. 

At the present time , several modest 
CLR-supported projects focus on a number 
of aspects of the preservatiol) issue . Early in 
1980, CLR joined other funding agents in 
support of the Library Affairs Conservation 
Program at Southern Illinois University, 
Carbondale. The university library has set 
up a conservation laboratory, headed by a 
trained conservator, and is developing train-
ing programs , workshops, and other activi-
ties to assist libraries and other institutions 
throughout Illinois and the region. In a 
similar vein , to promote increased awareness 
of preservation activities and opportunities, 
CLR awarded a small two-year grant to the 
University of Wyoming to support direct 
editorial costs associated with producing the 
fledgling newsletter Conservation Adminis-
tration News, edited by the university's li-
brary director. 

To consider the preservation issue fully, 
however , one must , like Janus, look in 
opposite directions. Because the retrospec-
tive side . of the issue is so enormous , it is 
easy to fail to look ahead to the prospective 
problem. If steps are not taken to change 
the way books are made , the retrospective 
problem becomes exponentially more se-
rious . 

As mentioned earlier, an outcry in the 
1960s accompanied the reports by -Barrow 
on the extent of the deterioration of library 
materials and his concurrent discovery that 
it was possible technically to make a perma-
nent/durable paper at affordable prices. Fol-
lowing the 1960 conference, journal articles 
and letters to the editor began to call on 
paper manufacturers to produce acid-free 
papers and publishers to use them. In 1964, 



the University of Oklahoma Press 
announced its intention of indicating in each 
book the life expectancy of the paper used. 
In 1968 an editorial in Publishers Weekly 
reported two promising trends. 41 At least 
two paper mills had converted to acid-free 
processes and the McGraw-Hill Company 
announced that it would print all of its 
books on -alkaline stock .. Although the ALA 
Joint Committee on Permanent/Durable 
Paper proved ineffectual, in 1967 another 
joint committee, this time of the American 
Book Publishers Council and ALA's Re-
sources and Technical Services Division, 
brought up the matter again and sent out a 
questionnaire to ascertain the extent of use 
of the paper among publishers. But by 
1970, the hue and cry, such as it was, 
seemed again to die down. A shortage of 
supply of paper in the late 1970s did not 
help revive general interest. 

In his Bowker Memorial Lecture in 
November 1977, Herbert S. Bailey, Jr., 
pointed once again to the need for height-
ened awareness among publishers of the 
problem of paper permanence. The fact that 
there has been some improvement in pa-
per-manufacturing processes and in the num-
ber of alkaline mills has, he said, perhaps 
caused the problem to be forgotten. "In a 
recent study it was found that most pub-
lishers' production managers did not know 
whether they were using permanent/dur-
able paper," he reported. "Their minds 
were on other things such as appearance , 
printability , opacity, texture, bulk, and 
price. "42 To help remind publishers and en-
sure the longevity of the works it sponsors, 
the National Historical Publications and 
Records Commission in 1978 issued stan-
dards that must be met by papers used in 
NHPRC publications. By 1979, with in-
terest in the preservation issue again 
mounting, the time seemed right to attack 
the prospective aspects once more. 

On May 14, 1979, CLR and the Andrew 
W. Mellon Foundation invited about twenty 
individuals with knowledge of paper manu-
facturing, publishing, and library book pres-
ervation to contribute to a discussion in 
New York. The participants sought to 
gather information about book paper and its 
use and to identify ways to address the 
prospective aspects of the preservation 

CLR and Preservation I 121 

problem. Following that meeting, a Com-
mittee on Production Guidelines for Book 
Longevity was formed to carry on the dis-
cussion and plan a program of action. The 
committee determined that its aim was to 
establish a basic set of guidelines to assure 
reasonable permanence and acceptable 
durability and to consider the relation of the 
guidelines to the ways in which books are 
used. In essence, the committee is again 
seeking to raise awareness of the prospec-
tive problem among all those concerned and 
to develop practical, realistic methods of 
dealing with it. The report of the committee 
was expected in late 1980. 

The problem of preservation transcends 
national borders, of course. In an attempt to 
focus attention at an international level, the 
council awarded funds to the International 
Federation of Library Associations and In-
stitutions (IFLA) for several projects, among 
them an examination of the problems associ-
ated with prospective preservation. IFLA 
will seek to give preservation greater visibil-
ity and will address such questions as 
whether special manufacturing of library 
copies should be advocated and what will 
be the role of microforms in preserving 
materials for future use. The special climatic 
conditions to which paper is exposed in 
Third World countries will also be studied. 
At an international conference in Bellagio, 
Italy, in May 1980, the International Coun-
cil on Archives agreed to participate in the 
IFLA venture. 

But there is more, much more, to be 
done. Although two processes for mass 
deacidification of books have been de-
veloped, one is still in the laboratory phase 
and the other, while available commercially, 
has received little attention. Recent de-
velopments in computer technology and the 
emergence of videodiscs and their storage 
capabilities have ·Jed to the question of 
whether there are suitable applications of 
these technologies for preservation pur-
poses. Columbia University's projected 
training program certainly will not be able 
to supply the total number of specialists 
needed to address the preservation prob-
lems of individual institutio~s. -And while 
there is substantial movement toward de-
veloping the capacity for collective action, 
and an apparent increase in funding pros-



122 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

pects, there still is no national program or 
system for preservation. 

The council will continue to monitor 
events in this crucial area and, within its lim-
ited resources, to supply· funding for proj-
ects that hold promise of progress toward 
solutions. When it can act as a catalyst in 
helping to identify and clarify the issues at 

stake or coordinate disparate activities, it 
will. But in the end, commitment and re-
sponsibility for leadership must be assumed 
by those who have custody of the collec-
tions, with assistance from scholars, uni-
versity officials, publishers, papermakers, 
and others engaged in creating and using 
the records of humankind. 

REFERENCES 

1. James W . Henderson, "Foreword," in John 
P. Baker and Marguerite C. Soroka, eds., Li-
brary Conservation: Preservation in Perspec-
tive (Stroudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson 
& Ross , 1978), p. vi. 

2. Edwin E. Williams, "Deterioration of Library 
Collections Today," in John P. Baker and 
Marguerite C. Soroka, eds., Library Con-
servation: Preservation in Perspective 
(Stroudsburg, Pa.: Dowden, Hutchinson & 
Ross, 1978) p.18. 

3. Verner W. Clapp to Bernard G. Barrow, 
Aug. 19, 1968, Project Files, Council on Li-
brary Resources, Washington, D.C. Also, in 
1948, this entry appears in Clapp's diary: 
"Bill Barrows [sic] wants a grant for research 
in old paper," Diaries of Verner W. Clapp, 
Clapp Papers, Library of Congress, Washing-
ton, D.C. 

4. Randolph W. Church, "Is There a Doctor in 
the House?" Publishers Weekly 175:76 Qan. 
5, 1959). 

5. Randolph W. Church, ed., Deterioration of 
Book Stock, Causes and Remedies: Two Stud-
ies on the Permanence of Paper (Richmond, 
Va.: Virginia State Library, 1959), p.16. 

6. W. J. Barrow and Reavis C. Sproull, "Perma-
nence in Book Papers," Science 129:1079 
(1959). 

7. A useful discussion of the history of paper-
making and the effects of technol_ogical pro-
cesses on durability is found in Verner W. 
Clapp, "The Story of Permanent/Durable 
Book-Paper, 1115-1970," Scholarly Pub-
lishing 2:107-24, 229-45, 353--67 (1971). 

8. W. J. Barrow Research Laboratory, Strength 
and Other Characteristics of Book Papers, 
1800-1899 (Permanence/Durability of the 
Book, no.5 [Richmond , Va.: The Author, 
1967]). 

9. Randolph W . Church, ed., The Manufacture 
and Testing of Durable Book Papers: Based 
on the Investigations of W . ]. Barrow (Rich-
mond, Va.: Virginia State Library, 1960), 
p.23-27. 

10. Permanent/Durable Book Paper, summary of 
a conference held in Washington, D. C., 

Sept. 16, 1960 (Richmond, Va.: Virginia State 
Library, 1960), p.15. 

11 . Lee E . Grove, "Paper Deterioration-An 
Old Story," College & Research Libraries 
25:365 (1964). 

12. Permanent/Durable Book Paper, p.28. 
13. Randolph W. Church to ALA Joint Commit-

tee on Permanent/Durable Paper, Feb. 5, 
1962, Verner W. Clapp Papers, Library of 
Congress , Washington, D.C. 

14. Forrest F. Carhart, Jr., to Fred C . Cole, 
Sept. 26, 1968, Project Files, Council on Li-
brary Resources, Washington , D .C. 

15. Council on Library Resources , 13th Annual 
Report (Washington, D.C.: The Council, 
1969), p.35. 

16. W. J. Barrow to Verner W . Clapp, Aug. 16, 
1967, Project Files , Council on Library Re-
sources, Washington, D.C. 

17. Leo Friedman, director, Division of Pharma-
cology and Toxicology, Food and Drug Ad-
ministration, to R. N. Dupuis, Nov. 28, 
1969, Project Files, Council on Library Re-
sources , Washington, D.C. 

18. Arno Roessler to R. N. Dupuis, Sept. 2, 
1970, Project Files, Council on Library Re-
sources, Washington, D.C . 

19. Minutes of meeting on program of W. J. Bar-
row Research Laboratory , July 29, 1969 , 
Project Files, Council on Library Resources, 
Washington, D.C . 

20. Bernard F. Walker, "Morpholine Deacidifica-
tion of Whole Books," in John C. Williams, 
ed., Preservation of Paper and Textiles of 
Historic and Artistic Value (Washington, 
D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1977) , 
p.85-86. 

21. Robert C. Taylor to Carl M. Spaulding, July 
11, 1977, Project Files, Council on Library 
Resources, Washington, D.C. 

22. Barrow Research Laboratory, "Specifications 
for Permanent/Durable Book Papers," in 
Clark W. Nelson, ed. , "Technical Notes," 
American Archivist 38:405--16 (1975). 

23. Clapp to B. G. Barrow, Aug. 19, 1968, Proj-
ect Files, Council on Library Resources, 
Washington, D .C. 



24. Council on Library Resources, 21st Annual 
Report (Washington D.C.: The Council, 
1977), p.45. 

25. Richard D. Smith, "New Approaches to Pres-
ervation," Library Quarterly 40:143 (1970). 

26. Collection of Materials on the Preservation of 
Library Resources, no.2, ed. L. G. Petrova; 
no.3, ed. L. A. Belyakova and 0. V. Kozul-
ina; tr. from the Russian (Jerusalem: Israel 
Program for Scientific Translations , 1964); D. 
M. Flyate , ed., Preservation of Documents 
and Papers, tr. from the Russian (Jerusalem: 
Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 
1968); New Methods for the Restoration and 
Preservation of Documents and Books, ed. 
N. Ya. Solechnik, tr. from the Russian (Jeru-
salem: Israel Program for Scientific Transla-
tions, 1964). 

27. For a detailed history of cooperative news-
paper microfilming programs, see John Y. 
Cole, "Developing a National Foreign News-
paper Microfilming Program ," Library Re-
sources & Technical Services 18:5-17 (1974). 

28. Norman J. Shaffer , "Study to Develop a 
National Foreign Newspaper Microfilm Pro-
gram: Final Report" (Paper presented at the 
meeting of the Foreign Newspaper Microfilm 
Committee, Association of Research Librar-
ies, Detroit, June 30, 1970), p.10-11. 

29. Edwin E. Williams, "Magnitude of the Paper 
Deterioration Problem as Measured bv a 
National Union Catalog Sample," Colleg~ & 
Research Libraries 23:543 (1962). 

30. Gordon R. Williams , "The Preservation of 
Deteriorating Books," Library Journal 91:55 
(1966). 

31. James E . Skipper to Verner W. Clapp, Jan. 

C LR and Preservation I 123 

18, 1966, Project Files, Council on Library 
Resources, Washington, D.C. 

32. L. Quincy Mumford to Douglas Bryant, Dec. 
14, 1967, Project Files, Council on Library 
Resources, Washington, D.C. 

33. Warren J. Haas, Preparation of Detailed Spe-
cifications for a National System for the Pres-
ervation of Library Materials , Final Report, 
Project No. 0-8004, U.S. Office of Education 
(Washington, D.C.: Association of Research 
Libraries, 1972), p.2. 

34. Ibid ., p.8. 
35. Ibid., p.24. 
36. Proceedings of the Planning Conference for a 

National Preservation Program Held at the 
Library ofCongress in Washington, D.C. , on 
December 16 and 17, 1976 (Washington, 
D.C.: Library of Congress, 1980), p.122. 

37. Pamela W. Darling, "Preservation: Today on 
a Shoestring, Tomorrow .... ?" Library 
journal 105:781-85 (1980). 

38. Research Libraries Group, Inc., "An Intro-
duction to the Research Libraries Group, 
Inc." (Stanford, Calif.: The Group, 1980), 
p.l. 

39. "Microform Project Underway," Association 
of Research Libraries Newsletter, no.99:10-
ll (Nov. 30, 1979). 

40. Council on Library Resources, Inc., A Tech-
nical Development Plan for a National 
Periodicals Center (Washington, D.C.: The 
Council, 1978), p.15. 

41. " More Pleas for Permanent Papers," Pub-
lishers Weekly 193:69 (March 4, 1968). 

42. Herbert S. Bailey, Jr., The Traditional Book 
in the Electronic Age (New York: Bowker, 
1978), p.17 0 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ITEMS RESULTING FROM OR RELATED TO 
CLR-SUPPORTED PROGRAMS, 1956--80 

Applebaum, Edmond L. "Implications of the 
National Register of Microform Masters as Part 
of a National Preservation Program," Library 
Resources & Technical Services 9:489-94 
(1965). 

Auerbach, Sylvia. "Coming: Books That Won't 
Crumble," Economics and Business Bulletin of 
the School of Business Administration, Temple 
University 16:2&-28 (March 1964). 

Barrow, W. J. "An Accelerated Aging Study of 
Several Writing Papers: Re-evaluation of 
Data," TAPPI 47:105-7 (1964). 

---. "Acidity: An Undesirable Property in 
Paste and Mending Tissue," American Archi-
vist 30:190-93 (1967). 

---. "Archival File Folders," American 
Archivist 28:125-28 (1965). 

---. The Barrow Method of Restoring De-
teriorated Documents. Richmond, Va.: Virginia 
State Library, 1965. · 

---. "Deacidification and Lamination of De-
teriorated Docume;..ts, 1938-63," American 
Archivist 28:285-90 (1965). 

---. "Establishing Least Squares Regression 
Lines for Data of Aged Paper," TAPPI 
45:209A-10A (1962). Supp. 

---. "Hot vs. Cold Extraction Methods for 
Making a pH Determination," TAPPI 46:468-
72 (1963). 

---. "New Device Tests Performance of Li-
brary Bindings," Book Production 79:60-62 
(March 1964). 

---. Permanence and Durability of Library 
Catalog Cards. (LTP Publication no.3) Chica-



124 I College & Research Libraries • March 1981 

go: American Library Assn., Library Technolo-
gy Project, 1961. 

Barrow., W. J., and Carlton, Ann M. "Durability 
of Three Current Laminating Tissues," Amer-
ican Archivist 30:526-29 (1967). 

---. "Permanence of Laminating Tissue," 
American Archivist 31:88-91 (1968). 

Barrow, W. J., and Sproull, Reavis C. "Perma-
nence in Book Papers," Science 129:1075-84 
(1959). 

W. J. Barrow Research Laboratory. Permanence/ 
Durability of the Book. Richmond, Va.: W. J. 
Barrow Research Laboratory, 1963-74. 

I. A Two-Year Research Program. 1963. 
II. Test Data of Naturally Aged Papers. 

1964. 
III. Spray Deacidification. 1964. 
IV. Polyvinyl Acetate (PVA) Adhesives for 

Use in Library Book-Binding. 1965. 
V. Strength and Other Characteristics of 

Book Papers, 1800-1899. 1967. 
VI. Spot Testing for Unstable Modern Book 

and Record Papers. 1969. 
VII. Physical and Chemical Properties of Book 

Paper, 1507-1949. 1974. 
---. "Specifications for Permanent/Durable 

Book Papers," in Clark W. Nelson, ed., "Tech-
nical Notes ," American Archivist 38:405-16 . 
(1975). Also available from ERIC (ED 104 345). 

Blum, Fred. "The National Register of Microfilm 
[sic] Masters (NRMM)," Microcosm 12:3 Oune 
1967). 

Carhart, Forrest F., Jr. "Performance Standards . 
in Library Binding," Book Production 79:74 
Qan. 1964). 

Carlton, Ann M. "Aging of Paper," in Kenneth 
W. Britt, ed., Handbook of Pulp and Paper 
Technology, p. 700-14. 2d ed. New York: Van 
Nostrand, 1970. 

Church, Randolph W., ed. Deterioration of Book 
Stock, Causes and Remedies: Two Studies on 
the Permanence of Paper; conducted by W. J. 
Barrow. Richmond, Va.: Virginia State Library, 
1959. 

---. "Is There a Doctor in the House?" Pub-
lishers Weekly 175:76, 78-80 Qan. 5, 1959). 

---, ed. The Manufacture and Testing of 
Durable Book Papers; based on the investiga-
tions of W . J. Barrow. Richmond, Va.: Virginia 
State Library, 1960. 

---. "Perish the Paper, Perish the Book, Per-
ish the Thought: An Inquiry," Publishers 
Weekly 172:54-58 (Sept. 2, 1957). 

Clapp, Verner W. " 'Permanent/Durable' Book 
Papers," ALA Bulletin 57:847--52 (1963). 

---. "Permanent/Durable Book Papers," Book 
Industry 1:28-31, 52 (Dec. 1964). 

---. "The Story of Permanent/Durable Book-
Paper, 1115-1970," Scholarly Publishing 2:107-
24, 229-45, 353-67 (1971). 

Collection of Materials on the Preservation of Li-
brary Resources; no. 2, ed. L. G. Petrova; 
no.3, ed. L. A. Belyakova and 0. V. Kozulina; 
tr. from the Russian. Published pursuant to an 
agreement with the National Science Founda-
tion and the Council on Library Resources. 
Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Trans-
lations, 1964. 

Cunha, George Martin. "National Trends in 
Cooperative Approaches to Conservation," PLA 
Bulletin 28:226--31 (1973). 

Dabney, Virginius. "New Ways to Permanent 
files," Saturday Review, May 9, 1964, p.87-
88. 

Darling, Pamela W . "National Planning for Pres-
ervation in the United States," Rest au rat or 

1 2:205-13 (1978). 
Development of Perfonnance Standards for Bind-

ing Used in Libraries , Phase. II: Report on a 
Study Conducted by Library Technology Proj-
ect. Chicago: American Library Assn ., 1966. 

Development of Perfonnance Standards for Li-
brary Binding, Phase 1: Report of the Survey 
Team. Chicago: American Library Assn., Li-
brary Technology Project, 1961. 

Duckett, Kenneth W. Modern Manuscripts: A 
Practical Manual for Their Management, Care, 
and Use. Nashville, Tenn.: American Associa-
tion fo.r State and Local History, 1975. 

Dupuis, R. N.; Kusterer, J. E. , Jr.; and Sproull, 
R. C . "Evaluation of Langwell's Vapor Phase 
Deacidification Process," Restaurator 1:149-64 
(1970). Also in Library of Congress Infonna-
tion Bulletin 29:A41-43 Qune 4, 1970). 

"Evaluation of GBC [General Binding Corpora-
tion] Laminator," ALA Bulletin 56:56-57 
(1962). 

Flyate, D. M., ed. Preservation of Documents 
and Papers; tr. from the Russian. Published 
pursuant to an agreement with the U.S. De-
partment of Commerce, the National Science 
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