Author: tonypilmer

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It is important to build relationships with a wide circle of fellow professionals, so you can identify potential areas of joint working and refer enquiries to useful services. Local Studies staff also need an understanding and awareness of other heritage professionals’ practices, especially as the divisions between fellow heritage professionals are narrowing and users will not be aware that priorities, attitudes and training in these professions are quite different.

These can include visits, meetings and temporary exchanges in staff. Key groups include:

• Neighbouring collections, especially those with overlapping collections. These include collections both inside and outside your authority. Local networks of local studies librarians include:
  • LocScot
  • NE Heritage Group
• County Record Offices.
• Local Museums
• Family history societies
• Local history societies
• Archaeological services, especially the Site and Monuments Officers.

Other important relationships within your local authority network includes:

• Planning offices (Especially the Buildings Conservation Officer and the guys who produce all of the maps for the Council)
• Parks departments.
• IT
• Arts Development
• Conservators
• Communications & Social Media Officers.
• Tourist information officers
• Registrars and cemetery staff

You also need an understanding of roles of those organisations on the national stage. In England, Local Studies sits uneasily between the remits of the Arts Council and the National Archives, so an awareness of their priorities is important. The British Library also plays a key role and the Society of Antiquaries of London, the learned society for our area, also has some interesting resources.

There are a number of national heritage organisations you need to know about. These include:

• The Imperial War Museum, especially their Memorials Register:  War Memorials Register.
• Historic England, especially National Heritage List for England

Your local area history and traditions will also dictate which specialist regional and national heritage organisations you need to know about.

• Museum of English Rural Life (though they also have a lot of material on the growth of towns and cities, as they care for the archive of the Council for the Protection of Rural England)
• National Coalmining Museum

The Broader picture:

You also need a wider view of the library world, which is where CILIP Update and old friends from library school can help.

Further Reading

Martin Hayes, Sleeping wuth the enemy : co-operation between archivists and librarians in West Sussed, Local Studies Librarian, v.16(1) 1997, p.2-5

Local Studies Toolkit: Who uses a local studies collection

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Local Studies is a blend of special collections and lending library work. As such you have to treat lending and branch stock completely differently to material found in a local studies hub.

There is always a tension between access and preservation. With use local studies materials will deteriorate, however there is no point keeping most material if it is not used. After all, a large amount of local studies material is not unique. Pragmatically, judgements will be made on an item by-item basis, however there is a lot we can do to extend the life of our collections.

Lending & branch stock

As with all other lending stock in public libraries, local studies lending material needs to be attractive and kept in good condition, but unlike the majority of lending books, it should be durable as the contents of the book are unlikely to be replaced by a newer version. You can extend life of a title by:

• Bind likely to be well-used paperbacks. Get your binders to use the original covers as part of the new boards.
• Ensuring that hard-back cover protectors are cleaned and, when necessary, replaced.
• Ensuring that you buy a good quantity of new publications. If a title is going to have a short print run and will be a valuable resource, you should factor in that some copies will be damaged and lost in the years ahead.

Storage

Storing materials in appropriate conditions is the best way to ensure long-term survival of materials. Each format has its appropriate packaging and storage conditions and those are described in the appropriate parts of the toolkit.

High replacement cost or low availability of a replacement may suggest that access should be restricted, however if an item cannot be browsed easily, or if it is stored away from the main book stock, it will be used less often.

Format specific guidance

Advice on storing different types of library stock can be found in the appropriate parts of this toolkit, however the National Archives and the old British Library website has some useful general advice on storing delicate materials:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/browse-guidance-standards/?letter=c&keyword=conservationhttps://web.archive.org/web/20220306212848/https://www.bl.uk/conservation/guides

Repackaging

Repackaging collections is a very valuable activity, but can also be extremely time-consuming, however there are some other ways you can do it:

• Get staff reassigned during computer outages.
• Hold an annual local studies help day. Staff are asked to drop in for an hour during a day and give you a hand. This is a good marketing tool and good for staff bonding.
• Many companies lend groups of staff to organisations for community days.

Storage conditions

The British Standard for archival and library storage is set out in BS 4971:2017. This standard is used by Special Collections and archives and gives guidance on ideal conditions for storing important parts of collections.

Material should be protected from direct sunlight, dust, pests and atmospheric conditions. If material has to be stored in direct sunlight, film can be placed on windows to filter-out harmful rays. Dust damage can be limited by using boxes and regular cleaning. Insects and atmospheric should be monitored using pest traps and the temperature and relative humidity should be tracked.

It is unlikely that local studies collection will be in ideal storage conditions, but a quick regular check of conditions can pay dividends. A lot of damage to collections can be avoided by moving material away from areas where roofs are known to leak, spotting when widows become damaged and spotting fire risks.

Handling:

To help reduce the amount of damage caused by readers and staff using delicate material, make sure that:

• book pillows are available for readers using delicate books
• weights are available for those using rolled maps
• cotton gloves are available for those handling photographic material

More information on handling rare materials can be found here in the old British Library guide, courtesy of the Wayback Machine

National Archives also provides some interesting information on handling rare items in differing formats:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/visit-us/researching-here/handling-documents/rules-and-handling-aids/

Surrogates

If certain materials are delicate but of wide interest, can a surrogate be made? If it is that popular, should it be digitised and/or microfilmed and placed online? Has it already been digitised by someone else, such as Archive.org, Google Books or the Hathi Trust? Under copyright law, publications can be photocopied for preservation purposes if the copy is kept for reference only.

Conservation

Delicate materials can be stabilised. Local Studies materials should be conserved and not restored – you are not returning the item back to its former glory but stabilising the object and making it less likely that further damage will be made through handling. As such, any work undertaken on an object should not be hidden.

Using professional conservators

Local studies collections should enjoy some support from the conservation unit in their county record office. However, if extra support is required, you can find contact details of conservators via the Institute of Conservation’s register: https://www.conservationregister.com/

In-house conservation projects

Repackaging should be the first conservation priority for a local studies collection. However, after receiving training from a conservator, members of staff and volunteers can undertake a range of basic conservation tasks. These can include:

• Cleaning material using brushes and smoke sponges
• Basic paper conservation, including using water pens to remove folds and using starch glue and Japanese paper to repair tears.
• Re-sew pamphlets with rusting staples
• Make phase boxes to protect delicate books

As with all projects, work has to be closely monitored. Conservation works should also be recorded, ideally on the item’s catalogue record.

Initial training for such projects may be available from your county record office, from free-lance conservators such as Caroline Bendix or through organisations such as the Historic Libraries Forum: https://historiclibrariesforum.com/events.

Rather than create an in-house volunteer project, you should consider approaching your local branch of The Art Society. Members of the Art Society can be trained to undertake paper conservation by in-house tutors. The upshot for collections is that, for the cost of travel plus tea and coffee, they can undertake conservation tasks for you. They also do a large amount of the volunteer management role too – the librarian’s job is to liaise with the volunteer leader.

For more information on the Arts Society, then known as NADFAS, read the second post on this page: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20130626183045/http://communities.cilip.org.uk/blogs/lsgblog/default.aspx

Conservation suppliers:

• Conservation by Design (CXD): https://www.cxdinternational.com/
• Conservation Resources: https://conservation-resources.co.uk/
• PEL: https://www.preservationequipment.com/

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