Conservation survey costs (360G-Wellcome-094052_Z_10_Z)

This professional survey is needed to inform our bid to conserve and catalogue the materials in five of our most important collections relevant to the history of modern genetics. The assessment will look at the current condition and storage of the materials, and make costed recommendations in terms of re-housing, repair and cleaning. The conservator will take into account the need to make these materials accessible, particularly through digitisation. This report is essential for the bid to give an accurate picture of the work needing done. The collections on which our bid is based contain very diverse material with a range of conservation challenges. There are, for instance, printed items which have suffered extensively from being kept in damp and unheated conditions in a chicken shed; glass negatives; press cuttings on acidic paper; manuscript items in need of refoldering and reboxing; bound volumes in need of binding work; films which need extensive work to assess their storage and preservation requirements. These factors mean that it is not straightforward to identify and cost the various conservation activities required, and that a survey by a professional conservator is necessary. If we do not assess the scale of the task properly, there is the danger that long-term access through cataloguing and digitisation of these collections will not be sustainable because the materials themselves cannot be handled and consulted. Caroline Scharfenberg, who has provided the attached quotation, is a highly experienced private conservator who is based at Edinburgh University Library.