10 December 2015

The guest from the National Library of Poland shared experience in conservation of library collections

On December 8, the Document Conservation Centre of the National Library of Lithuania received the guest  – Bogdan Filip Zerek, the head of the new structural unit of the National Library of Poland – the Institute of Conservation of Library Collections.

The guest spent half a day in the Document Conservation Centre and got acquainted with the equipment, the attestation system for restorers, monitoring of the state of the national archive of published documents and exclusive maintenance of it, as well as other issues of long-term preservation of documentary collections relevant for both libraries. B. F. Zerek, being educated biologist, was especially interested in technologies and programmes of coping with bio-contamination of documents.

The Institute of Conservation of Library Collections, recently established in the National Library of Poland, had merged five separate departments – Book Restoration Department, Mass Conservation Department, Mass Deacidification Department, Classical Binding Department and Restoration Research Laboratory. Aiming for better preservation of the cultural heritage collected in the National Library of Poland, the changes were targeted to raise autonomy and facilitate decision-making.

On December 9, B. F. Zerek delivered a lecture for restorers and collection keepers from the Lithuanian memory institutions about the experience of the National Library of Poland in coping with mycological contamination of stocks.

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