The Beach Conservation Lab provides preservation and conservation services to all units of the University of Oregon Libraries. These services include technical expertise on preservation and conservation issues, as well as book and paper repair, housing and reinforcement stabilization of physical library materials.

Lab staff includes the Lead Conservator, the Book and Paper Conservator (position currently open) and Library Student Assistants who assist in book repair, music repair, archival housing and preservation reformatting.

History

In 1980 the UO Library received a generous gift from Mrs. Sally Altick in memory of her father, Frank Beach. The purpose of the gift was "to permit the Library to preserve its research collections through the purchase of equipment and supplies designed to preserve and restore valuable research materials." This gift laid the foundation for the Frank L. Beach Memorial Conservation Laboratory, originally located in the Special Collections Department.

In 1985 the UO Library began to develop an active preservation program, following a Preservation Planning Program conducted under the auspices of the Association for Research Libraries. The immediate consequence of the Program was a widespread interest in preservation throughout the library, and a willingness to make changes to help protect the collection. The Library modernized its book repair procedures through the efforts of Carol Pratt, then supervisor of the Mending, Processing and Binding units of the Catalog Department. During renovation and expansion of the main library in 1992, the resources of the Beach Conservation Laboratory, formerly part of Special Collections, were incorporated into a new space designed to house centralized preservation activities.

The Preservation Department was established in 1993, incorporating the Mending, Processing, and Binding units of the Catalog Department. In 2001, the Preservation Department joined the Catalog Department as the Materials Processing and Conservation unit. In 2022, the Beach Lab was transferred under the portfolio of Special Collections. In 2023, a new position of Lead Conservator was created, and the Unit is now overseen by two professional conservators.  Throughout these changes the Beach Conservation Lab staff has continued to stay abreast of advances in library preservation and conservation and has expanded the variety of treatments offered to the UO Libraries' collections. 

What We Do

In the Beach Conservation Lab, we collaborate with staff, librarians, archivists and faculty to care for Library collections.

• Our in-house conservation treatments of library materials include repairing general collections materials so they can safely circulate, specialized treatments of rare and archival materials, as well as housing, binding and creating preservation facsimiles of especially fragile items.
• Preservation methods encompass a variety of interventions, from creating custom archival housings to preparing items for exhibition.