THE British Library’s 150 million documents are at risk of decay because of a worldwide shortage of conservation experts.
Conservators qualified to look after priceless works such as Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible, the earliest printed book, have become increasingly rare because colleges have dropped expensive book conservation courses.
The shortage has now reached a crisis. There are so few conservators being trained in Britain that there will not be enough each year to replace those approaching retirement age.
The current staff are predominantly older men and women, meaning that within five years the library will have lost 16 of its 58 staff. Within ten years 40 will have retired, and in 15 years all but four will have left.
Without fresh talent, items ranging from 2,300-year-old documents to 20th-century manuscripts will deteriorate. Conservators can slow the rate of decay by restricting access to documents, but ultimately even the most important documents will be affected.
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Helen Shenton, head of collection care at the library, said that even its most valuable materials, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and the only manuscript of Beowulf, would suffer in the long run.
“Where are the conservators who have the skills to look after Magna Carta going to come from?” she asked. “If we can’t get more staff we won’t be able to conserve so much of our material.”
The library cannot turn to other conservators because there are no organisations large enough. “We have 58 conservators. There is no other company in the country with that many,” she said. “They don’t have the skill base and we wouldn’t have the funding.”
Even if the library decided not to buy new acquisitions, it is obliged by law to accept 150,000 new publications every year under the Legal Deposit scheme, which requires publishers to submit one copy of all works. Ms Shenton said: “Within five years we would be able to conserve fewer items while the need is growing. We are trying to develop techniques that need less time, but that, too, would have to come to a halt.”
Books printed in the late 19th century are particularly at risk because of weaknesses in the paper. Other problems include documents written in iron gall ink, a corrosive ink that has been used in manuscripts since the 9th century.
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The lack of book conservators is caused by the drop in the number of courses. In 1988 seven colleges offered courses covering book conservation, but that has dropped to two. Book conservation is vulnerable to budget cuts because it is one of the most expensive courses per student. It requires intensive teaching, space and expensive equipment.
Camberwell College of Art in London and West Dean College in West Sussex produce nine graduates between them every year, but most candidates take jobs overseas or in the private sector. Regional and national libraries must fight over the three or four left.
The library has now been forced to take the radical decision to train its own conservators. From the end of 2006 it will offer courses, in collaboration with academic institutions, for ten candidates. “We would have five full-time training courses and five interns,” Ms Shenton said.
The library is building a £12.5 million extension to house the new Centre for Conservation alongside a planned sound archive. Students will be taught in a special studio, working alongside professionals. The Centre for Conservation was part of the original library design in 1977 but was removed after years of delays and budget cuts. In 1988 Margaret Thatcher ordered the building be reduced to two thirds of its original size.
The extension is now being designed by Sir Colin St John Wilson, the original designer of the library’s St Pancras home. He said recently that his involvement in the extension meant that he had been designing the building since 1962. The library has raised £8.5 million for the project so far from the sale of its former premises and funding from the government and trusts.
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The centre will be open to the public, who will be able to watch book conservators at work behind a screen. Experts work on 25 different materials including glass, papyrus and clay. Librarians estimate that it would take more than 100 years just to cope with present conservation needs.
HOW TO BECOME A CONSERVATOR