Wednesday 24 August 2011

Balfour Library Conservation Project - meet the volunteers!

We are pleased to introduce the volunteers who are bravely cleaning our rare books as part of an ongoing project to conserve and preserve them.

They are Heritage Volunteers from CAMdfas, one of the Cambridge branches of the East Anglia area of NADFAS, the National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies  http://www.nadfas.org.uk/

Wendy - proving she's getting her hands dirty!

Audrey, Pam and Wendy (note the state of the yellow microfibre cloth used to clean the shelves with!)

Diane
The volunteers really are doing sterling work, and have cleaned over 600 books already. The books are looking great once cleaned and placed back on nice clean shelves; it really is amazing the difference that is being made.

The basic workflow is as follows:
  • Books are removed from the shelves and placed on a trolley;
  • The shelves are cleaned;
  • The trolley is taken to the work area where the books are cleaned using specialist brushes;
  • The books are re-shelved.
I will shortly be blogging, with accompanying photos, about the equipment being used, the methods involved, the types of books being cleaned, some pest damage, and including some brilliant 'before and after' photos of dirty and clean books.