In reply to Kent.

Kent, thanks for the comment. Having worked with a lot of small institutions I know this can be a difficult issue. If you aren't familiar with the NEDCC preservation leaflets they do have some basic conservation information. The NPS also has a lot of information in their Conserve-O-Gram series, although not a lot of conservation instruction. I'm not sure where you are located, but there are often affordable book repair training options regionally or locally. Check with Lyrasis and if you are in North Carolina, check with the North Carolina Preservation Consortium, both of them have affordable classes. In terms of a reference book, look at the Alaska State Library manual written by Artemis BonaDea. I think this is a pretty good, basic manual.

There are a lot of online videos out there but you have to be very, very careful in choosing ones that give you good information vs. bad information (most of the online tutorials I have seen give you very bad information). I think our field's reluctance to put training videos online stems from the fact that we know how complicated repairs can be and how fast things can go wrong during treatment, even minor treatments. The wrong choice of adhesives, repair materials or methods can cause permanent damage to original materials and we don't want to feel responsible for telling people "you can do this" when maybe they really can't or shouldn't. It's tough, I know, because most institutions do not have conservators on staff or a budget that would allow you to send items out for conservation. But we also have our own ethical standards we are required to adhere to, which sometimes precludes us from saying "just do it."