Encyclopedia of Conservation and Restoration

Encyclopedia of Conservation and Restoration: Version 1

For the past 5 years or so I've been chipping away at a big idea: to
create an Encyclopedia of Conservation and Restoration that is
available to anyone in the world for free.  I wanted this
encyclopedia to be all encompassing, include many allied fields, and
super easy to improve, find online, and share.  So, with the help
from many interns, fellows, museum studies graduate students at both
IUPUI and JHU, I present today Version 1 of this effort.

It is made entirely in Wikipedia and is available for download right
now at

    <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:Encyclopedia_of_Conservation_and_Restoration>

where you can either look at the book electronically, download it as
a single PDF, or order a printed copy of the book from PediaPress in
either color or black and white.

As Version 1, this book has some great potential, but it really
needs your help.  Please look through it and consider what's
missing, what's working, and what's not.  In general I believe the
content is uneven, as some of the articles were written by general
Wikipedians interested in various parts of the topics.  It needs
more work and your help to be broadly viable.

I decided to do this project in Wikipedia because it is one of the
most visible web pages in the world, and when people search for a
topic related to conservation and restoration I wanted them to be
able to easily find accurate information that could help them make a
good decision.

The most productive way for you to provide feedback on the book is
to write your thoughts on the Talk page of the book.  If you put
them there, others can see it and we can build a broad community
discussion:

    <URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_talk:Encyclopedia_of_Conservation_and_Restoration>

The vast majority of this work has been completed by my JHU Online
Museum Studies graduate students, who for the past few years have
written an article as part of the final project in my course, "Core
Aspects of Conservation: A 21st Century Approach".

In particular, I would like to invite other allied graduate programs
to consider using this project as a way to have graduate students
work together on a globally significant effort, while learning about
individual topics.  Have your students review this book, edit
individual articles, or create new ones that you believe are
missing.  It's an assignment that educates and creates educational
material at the same time.

Working together we could turn the Encyclopedia of Conservation and
Restoration into a remarkable book that is used globally to great
purpose.  Some of the articles in this book already have been
translated to other languages, and there is certainly potentially to
make the entire book available in any language you want.

Richard McCoy


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 29:46
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