To report a collections-affecting emergency in a library location, please dial 475-301-4519 (anytime day or night).
Preservation is a universal field with many facets: it reaches local communities and international entities; it employs skills and expertise across many disciplines; it utilizes low tech and high tech solutions. Preservation is carried out by conservators, historic preservationists, librarians, policy makes, scientist, historians, teachers, activists, and many others. Preservation is generally organized around three major goals: preventing damage and managing risk, conserving physical artifacts and objects, and reformatting and managing at-risk content and new media formats.
Our Mission
The Yale University Library's Preservation and Conservation Services Department supports the Library's mission by ensuring continued access to collections, through a program of specialized expertise, proactive stewardship and collaboration.
Contact Us:
Director, Preservation & Conservation Services
203-432-1710
Senior Administrative Assistant
203-432-1803
Conservation and Exhibition Strategies - Brenna Campbell, Associate Director
Preservation Digital Strategies - Shira Peltzman, Associate Director
What is Preservation?
In libraries and archives, the term preservation is usually used to refer to any and all activities that prolong the useable life of collections and objects. Preservation can include a variety of preventative and remedial measures, like environmental control, reformatting, conservation and digital content migration, that address deterioration, damage and mitigate the effects of time and continued use. In museums, many preservation actions, like monitoring environments, disaster planning, handling instruction and protective housing, are called preventative conservation.
At the the Yale University Library, we often use "preservation" to characterize activities, strategies and programs that involve significant format change, migration to a new medium, or emulation of an experience to prolong the use and life of collection. We use "conservation" to describe our work and programs of preventative care for physical objects with the objective of maintaining the original format, feel, and use with only as much alteration as is needed.
The Preservation and Conservation Department offers tours of facilities at 344 Winchester Ave. for new staff and other interested Yale affiliates. We also hold training sessions throughout the year on various topics including care and handling of special collections, mold and pest in library collections (in partnership with EHS), and safe packing and transport for collections. To see or register for our upcoming events, please consult our outreach calendar.
The Stephen F. Gates Conservation Laboratory opened in 2016 with 8000 sq. ft of purpose-built space for the library's conservation operations and specialized equipment.
Digital Preservation maintains a set of older computing equipment to aid efforts to transfer and rescue content off older media. New computers often lack the drives to open and read this content.
Students from the 5th grade at the Hooker School in New Haven made a thank you manuscript for conservators and technicians who spent an afternoon showing the students how books were made in the Middle Ages.
Exhibition staff work on matting and framing for an upcoming Beinecke Library exhibition.
Our digital preservation system, Preservica, is now part of a growing eco-system of digital collecting and access.
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Remembering ‘Amnesia