The preservation section at LMA works for both preservation and
conservation of archive material. It is responsible for the
collections of both LMA and Keats House in Hampstead, which is
managed by LMA.
By preservation we mean all managerial, financial and technical
actions taken to extend the life of an object by retarding
deterioration and preventing damage. It describes any course of
action taken to prevent items being damaged in the first place, or
stopping them from getting worse if they are already damaged.
Preservation programmes at LMA include archival packaging,
practical conservation treatments, staff and user education, and
input into any archive-wide activity that relates to the physical
protection of the material.
By conservation we mean the practical treatments applied to an
item to achieve chemical and physical stabilisation for the purpose
of extending its useful life. This can include basic cleaning and
repair or more complex treatments consisting of alkaline buffering
of paper, washing or lining severely damaged documents.
LMA has a 'conservation for access' policy which means that
priority is given to documents which are frequently requested by
the public, such as Anglican parish registers. The reason for this
is simple - In total there are already over 25,000 'unfit' items in
our collections, which would take about 400 years to repair. If
possible, we try to conserve documents to the point at which a copy
can be made, and used in place of the original document. The most
common form of copying for preservation is microfilming, carried
out at LMA by the reprographics unit.
You can find out more about some of the specific
projects we are carrying out at the moment. To find out a bit
more about the type of work carried out in the preservation unit
you can also visit the archive work
section of our learning zone.