Mission Statement
The Preservation & Conservation Department ensures long-term use of the collection, maintaining the integrity of the physical artifact and retaining its content in order to support research, teaching, and learning at the University of Iowa.
Overview
The Conservation Department was established in 1984. The Preservation department was established in 1987, drawing together various preservation activities previously carried out in other departments. In the mid 90′s Preservation and Conservation were merged into a single department as a part of a library wide reorganization. The current Preservation Department consists of three units; Conservation, Assessment/Reformatting and Binding/Marking all under the administrative head of the Preservation Librarian.
The Preservation Department is responsible for activities that relate to the care and handling of Library materials, both circulating and non-circulating. Services include commercial and in-house binding, repair, marking, attaching security tapes and in-house and vended reformatting. The Conservation unit provides specialized treatments. The Preservation department also provides services aimed at improving the storage condition of the collections including environmental monitoring, emergency planning and preparedness and staff and user education. In 2003, the department assumed the responsibility of directing the activity of the statewide digital collections initiative and is an integral part of digital initiative planning and production and also a member of the Iowa Conservation and Preservation Consortium.
