Current Status and Future Directions for Library and Archive Conservation Education in the United States

Abstract

For many years, the status of Library and Archive Conservation Education (LACE) in the United States has been in flux. The history of the institutional education of library conservators in the U.S. has been surveyed elsewhere in this issue. This essay will begin by reviewing some recent history and describing current collaborative efforts to educate conservators in this specialty within the three comprehensive graduate programs in cultural heritage conservation in the U.S.: The Conservation Center at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts (IFA), the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC), and SUNY Buffalo State’s Garman Art Conservation Department (SUNY Buffalo State), hereafter referred to as the Consortium. This essay will conclude by addressing several ideas for future directions in the education of library and archive conservators. In 2016, the Consortium approached the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to request funding of a survey of library and archive institutions in the U.S. with the stated goal “to determine priorities and identify areas of both strength and weakness regarding the skills and competency of conservators entering the workforce” (Waller and Thomas 2016, i). Concurrently, the Mellon Foundation funded planning grants to explore potential future directions in the education of library and archive conservators. One grant investigated the establishment of a library and archive conservation education program at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) within their Program in Library and Information Science, another considered the continued funding of the collaborative LACE curriculum