Volume 7, Number 4
Sep 1983

Two Midwestern Programs

• Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, has been awarded $106,650 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a cooperative conservation program for research libraries and archives over the next two years in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri.

  In addition to an information service, major program services will include on-site consulting and workshops. Week-long training sessions in simple conservation procedures will be available at Morris Library's conservation lab for individual staff members from participating libraries. Project staff will develop and distribute training materials and information sheets. Already published materials will also be made available for loan. During 1984, the program will begin offering an at-cost service to construct custom protective enclosures for rare books. Staff include Carolyn Clark Morrow, Project Director; Sally Roggia, Conservation Specialist; and Ellen Agee, Conservation Technician. A 10-member Advisory Board representative of the region's institutions has been appointed. For more information contact the Midwest Cooperative Conservation Program, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901 (618/536-2171).

• A group of Ohio librarians accepted the challenge of the Ohio Library Foundation, and organized the Ohio Committee for Regional Library Conservation at a meeting on February 24, 1983, in Dublin, Ohio.

  The Committee is an outgrowth of the Midwest Regional Study for Materials Conservation (funded 1981/82 by NEH and reported in the February 1982 issue of this Newsletter). The Study was made to explore the feasibility and nature of a possible conservation effort in the region that includes Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Its initial goals were to open a regional office of conservation information and to establish a regional conservation laboratory for treatment of library materials, starting with Ohio and later broadening the area served.

  The first goal has been accomplished. The Committee has an 18-month grant for opening the Ohio Cooperative Conservation Information Office. The Project Director is Rebecca Winkle. The Information Office will serve any institutional library in Ohio as a clearing house of needs and as an educational force. At present it can be reached at the State Library of Ohio in Columbus.

  On October 27 the Committee will meet to begin planning for an Ohio conservation center.

  Interested persons in Ohio and surrounding states may contact the chairman, Robert F. Cayton, at Marietta College Library, Marietta, Ohio 45750 (614/374-4758).