Preservation & Conservation
The Center fulfills its mission to preserve its collections through a variety of programs and endeavors.Through the generous support of the Smith Foundation, the Center employs a part-time conservation intern, a graduate student studying conservation in the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin. Under the supervision of the Head of the Archives and Manuscripts Unit, the conservation intern mends books, pamphlets, documents, and photographs; constructs phase boxes to stabilize rare books and documents; conducts surveys; performs mold remediation; monitors environmental conditions; and consults with staff on questions of preservation.
Through a partnership with the The William and Margaret Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record in the School of Information, several documents, books, and photographs from the Center's collections are treated each year by conservation students, under the tutelage and supervision of Kilgarlin Center faculty. Students undertake both basic and advanced treatments including humidification, flattening, washing, mending, tape removal, silk removal, and fills, as well as rebacking, recasing, and resewing of books. (See Kilgarlin Center student portfolios.)
On occasion, as funds are available, the Center employs professional conservators to undertake projects that are too intensive and time consuming to be carried out by our conservation intern or students in the Kilgarlin Center. In 2005, for example, both the processing and conservation of the Abel Head "Shanghai" Pierce Papers were funded by a generous grant from Mr. Clive Runnels III, a descendant of Abel Pierce. Three volumes of invoices documenting the business interests of Pierce, a Texas cattle rancher, were disbound, mended, and rehoused, prolonging the life of the documents and making it easier for researchers to use them.