Preservation

Department Head: Hilary T. Seo, Assistant Professor, 441 Parks Library, (515) 294-3540, hseo@iastate.edu
Conservator: Katherine Swift Kelly, 441 Parks Library, (515) 294-9116, kkelly1@iastate.edu
Physical Locations: Conservation Laboratory, 441 Parks Library; Preservation Services and Digital Initiatives, 204 Parks Library.

Departmental Responsibilities: Coordination and implementation of a preservation program for the University Library collections in all formats. Binding, conservation treatments, brittle book replacement, environmental monitoring, disaster preparedness and preservation education are the principal focus of preservation program efforts.

The Preservation Department currently consists of three functional units:

Preservation Services (Reformatting, Deacidification, Binding, Marking and Collation)
Section Telephone: (515) 294-6348

Responsibilities: This unit brings together all vended services under one manager. This unit consists of reformatting services including, preservation photocopying and microfilming, custom-fit enclosures, mass deacidification, commercial library binding. This unit is also responsible for providing materials with security devices, property stamps, bookplates, and call number labels.

• An estimated 26,000 volumes are commercially bound a year
• Roughly 30,000 new books and 35,500 serial titles are received a year
• Approximately 650 newspapers are processed a week
• Approximately 500 custom-fit boxes are ordered annually;
• Approximately 1,000 volumes mass deacidified.

Conservation
Section Telephone: (515) 294-0776

Responsibilities: Physical care of general, circulating materials in the Parks Library, Library Storage Building, and the Reading Rooms, as well as Special Collections and Archives materials.

• Over 6,000 items are treated in Conservation annually;
• Treatments range from simple mends to full item conservation to custom-fit enclosures;
• Books, flat paper, photographs, and three-dimensional artifacts are treated and/or re-housed in Conservation.

Digital Initiatives
Section Telephone: (515) 294-8951

Responsibilities: Creation and maintenance of digital library collections.

• Digital conversion of a variety of formats including books & manuscripts, photographs, lantern slides, film and audio.
• Contributes digital collections to the Iowa Heritage Digital Collection.