Flood in Florence, 1966: A Fifty-Year Retrospective

Educating Library and Archives Conservators in Art Conservation Graduate Programs

I would like to begin by sharing my path to a career in library conservation. I am a 2013 graduate of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center. I first learned about conservation as an undergraduate intern in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, working with book conservators Olivia Primanis and Mary Baughman. After graduating, I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Olivia introduced me to Shannon Zachary and Julia Miller, who in turn introduced me to Cathleen Baker and all the wonderful book and library people in Ann Arbor. Over the next four years, I prepared to apply to conservation graduate programs, taking chemistry and art history classes at night and bookbinding workshops on the weekends, all while working in the University of Michigan Special Collections Library and then the conservation lab. I enrolled in the NYU program in 2009, pursuing a major in book conservation with the ambition of working in a university research library. The Conservation Center did not offer a concentration in book conservation when I started; however, I knew that previous students had focused on books in the past, and I intended to supplement the paper conservation curriculum with book-specific internships and independent studies with book conservators in New York City. My timing was fortunate, as the Conservation Center faculty started planning programming for a libraries and archives specialty during my second year. I was lucky to be an unofficial guinea pig for new courses and workshops. This is the perspective I can share with you today, that of a recent graduate of an art conservation program who now works in a research library. I will briefly review how the art conservation graduate programs adapted to train library and archive conservators and then consider the benefits and challenges of this educational model.

As Ellen Cunningham-Kruppa outlined for us in her theme paper, in 2011, three of the four American conservation programs—Buffalo, Delaware, and NYU—each added a specialization in libraries and archives conservation, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A specialty in book conservation needs to include the following:

• bookbinding training, including working with leather, parchment, wood, cloth, and preparing and maintaining tools and knives
  Learning historical techniques with a conservator’s eye is essential to appreciating how a binding’s features impact its function and deterioration. The value of historic reconstructions to technical studies of art has been recognized since at least the work of Edward Forbes at the Fogg Museum.[1]
• connoisseurship of the history of bookbinding and related crafts, such as printing and the production of manuscripts, paper, and parchment
• book conservation treatment experience with book conservators
• experience with circulating collection care and book repair
• introduction to library preservation and special collections librarianship, as well as descriptive bibliography and book and manuscript studies

To meet these overall expected requirements, the graduate programs collaborated with many book conservators, book historians, libraries, and institutions, as well as library and information schools, to provide instruction in book conservation treatment, book history and descriptive bibliography, and library-related courses.[2] For example, NYU partnered with Columbia University Libraries for a winter intersession course on the history of bookbinding (four days of lectures, with time for the students to examine hundreds of books and practice writing binding descriptions), plus introductions to paleography (one day) and descriptive bibliography (two days). Any of these subjects could fill a semester or more, but there is not time in the already full curriculum. Instead, the short courses function as introductions to the topics, with the expectation that the students will seek further education as their careers progress.

The first and primary benefit of educating library conservators in tandem with art conservators is that shared coursework provides exposure to and interaction with the wider world of conservation. Students learn about the technology and structure of textiles, photographs, paper, leather and parchment, wood, paintings, metals, stone, ivory, bone, horn, glass, plastics, and time-based media. This equips students with a broad knowledge base to inform their own practice.

At NYU, I tailored my coursework to my specialization in books, working in the NYU Libraries’ conservation lab during the semesters, interning in libraries every summer, and selecting relevant art history seminars along the way. At the same time, I had two experiences that, at first glance, had nothing to do with books: first, I worked as a conservator on an archaeological dig, and second, I took an objects conservation course in which I treated a folding paper lantern. These experiences provided general training, valuable to every conservator, such as improving my hand skills, treatment planning, and documentation skills. They honed specific techniques useful in a library setting, such as efficiently creating custom housings for three-dimensional objects. This kind of cross-specialty sharing is valuable, particularly early in one’s career, because it encourages innovation and can lead to creative problem solving.

A second benefit of cotraining book, paper, and art conservators, as Ellen highlighted, is that art conservation graduate programs have a particular advantage in providing a more well-developed curriculum in conservation science. In addition to studying material science, students learn to apply and interpret analytical techniques. This is essential to the goal of creating scientifically literate conservators who are capable of planning and carrying out technical analysis themselves or in partnership with scientists. Technical studies are an area of increasing interest to the fields of book and art history, and conservators should be centrally engaged in these discussions.

Third, shared graduate education results in increased integration of library conservators with the art conservation world. Classmates become objects conservators, paintings conservators, and textile conservators and form an important professional network for a library conservator to draw on for expertise throughout his or her career. This is valuable, as libraries contain more than just books and documents. As a particularly extreme example, my colleague and classmate Jessica Pace, preventive conservator in the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation and Conservation Department for NYU Libraries, recently built custom housing for a stuffed alligator in the David Wojnarowicz Papers.[3] Furthermore, rare book libraries are increasingly engaged in exhibitions and loans with museums, and it benefits library conservators to be more connected to their museum colleagues.

For me, the most valuable part of my graduate school experience was learning how to think about my own work and where it fits into the broader field, its history, and its theories. The scope of activities and diversity of approaches included within “conservation” is much more wide-ranging than I had realized. I learned that the goals and activities of a conservator are specific to each collection and context. And I realized that the history of conservation is more vital to our work today than I had previously appreciated. Perhaps most important, I came to understand that the theories of conservation are not static. They have evolved in response to events such as the Florence Flood and to changes in technology, material science, and the arts themselves.[4] As professional conservators, it is essential that we continue this conversation about what our work means with each other and the wider library and museum communities.

There are some important challenges in a model of integrated conservation training. Art conservation students in an integrated program are not necessarily exposed to the broader library and archives community; they may not attend professional association meetings, such as the biannual American Library Association conferences, and do not learn to “talk the talk” with librarians. Whereas book and paper conservation students in the NYU program take classes with art history graduate students, who will become their colleagues in the museum world, library conservation students have to educate themselves about the work of rare books librarians and build an equivalent network. Courses at Rare Book School are an opportunity for building this type of professional network.

In preparing for this symposium and considering conservation education from the perspective of educational institutions and instructors, rather than that of the student, I was continually awestruck that the training of conservators, whatever the educational model, relies entirely on a tremendous amount of work put in by some extremely dedicated and determined teachers and the institutions who support their educational work. Clearly, no student becomes a conservator in just three or four years of graduate school. Rather, the graduate programs provide a framework: the student learns what it means to be a conservator and gains the tools to seek the additional education and experience that he or she needs to work responsibly in our field. It is through many years of work, continuing education and training, relationships with mentors, curiosity, and drive that we become conservators. It has been more than three years since I graduated, and I am still building my treatment experience. My “bench training” is ongoing.

Book conservation is the intersection of multiple disciplines. This alluring combination of art and science applied to historical artifacts makes it interesting and rewarding to practitioners and fascinating to outsiders. It is also what makes educating conservators awkward and challenging: the needs are many and diverse; the equipment is expensive, highly specialized, and often situated all over campus; and the job market for new conservators is never as large as the need for conservation.

In considering the future of library and archives conservation education, let’s look at the unique contributions book conservators make to libraries. Beyond treatment, which is itself an essential contribution, conservators understand the technical and historical aspects of the collections in ways that are frequently unique within an institution. It is precisely our training across disciplines combined with our hands-on work that puts us in a position to interpret and contextualize data prepared by scientists or to assist curators and researchers in recognizing material evidence to understand the creation and history of an object. In addition to serving others, we conduct our own research contributing to the wider scholarship in history and material culture. I suggest that the question motivating us when we consider the future of conservation education and the field should be this: How do we communicate our unique value to libraries and prepare future conservators to best contribute?