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Conservation Activities
One of the basic functions of the National Library is to conserve
the printed heritage to the future generations. For this purpose
the library has separate divisions for physical, chemical, reprographic
and digital conservations.
Physical Conservation
All the books damaged by human error or by the natural reasons
are mended, repaired and bound in the Binding division. Journals
are bound volume wise.
Chemical Conservation
Laboratory Division of the library, established in 1968, is taking
care of the chemical treatment of the books. Advanced system
of chemical treatment is being adopted to restore the brittle
and damaged books. The library is in the process of developing
non-chemical treatment system for the preservation of printed
materials . Indigenously developed fumigation chamber is being
used to destroy the eggs and larvae of insects and termites.
Encapsulation is another method of preservation developed by
the National Library, India.
Reprographic Preservation
Most of the 19th century newspapers, Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit
manuscripts have already been microfilmed 5000 rolls of microfilms
are already produced so far by the Reprography division.
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The Chemical Laboratory |
Old books are being
scanned |
Digitisation
The scanning and archiving or rare and brittle books and other
documents on compact disc is under taken. English books and documents
published before 1900 and Indian publications of pre 1920 are
considered for digitisation. So far 6,600 selected books in Indian
and English languages have already been scanned and stored on
548 CDs -- a total of over 25,00,000 pages. |
