Velson Horie joins the British Library
The distinguished conservator, Velson Horie, has been appointed as Project Manager for two conservation research projects funded by a grant from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation. The first is to assess copies of the same books held in different libraries, and to relate their condition to differences in their storage environments, and the other to analyse the volatile organic compounds emitted by books and to relate them to the degree and mechanism of paper degradation.
Velson has a long and distinguished career in conservation. After a degree in chemistry and training as an archaeological conservator at the Institute of Archaeology, he worked at the North of England Museums Service before joining The Manchester Museum as Keeper of Conservation, a post he held for 28 years. He is probably best-known to conservation students as author of Materials for Conservation (Butterworths, 1987), which has been the standby for many an essay, currently being revised.
Velson said “It is satisfying that various threads of my career have come together in these projects: care of collections; applying scientific research techniques; cost effective project management; involving a wider range of workers for conservation; and improving professional standards. Because of the scale of book stocks, libraries have to make large, long term, decisions. Data from these projects will improve those decisions. This team of institutions with such excellent collections and staff will be exciting and rewarding to work with. I look forward to making new friendships and cementing existing ones.”
Barry Knight, Head of Conservation Research at The British Library, said “This appointment will be a great boost to conservation science at The British Library and in the library and archive sector generally. We are confident that, together with our partners, we will be able to deliver first-class research results that will be of real practical benefit improving preservation and thus access to the collections.” Two of the most visible outcomes will be a publication and a conference, tentatively scheduled for May 2009.
The other partners in the projects are the National Libraries of Wales and Scotland, Oxford and Cambridge University Libraries, the library of Trinity College Dublin, The National Archives (Kew) and the National Archives of Scotland. Academic partners are the Centre for Sustainable Heritage at University College London and the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde.
Further details about the projects can be found at www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/ccare/introduction/research/index.html.
Velson starts working at the British Library on 9th October 2006 and the appointment is for 2½ years.
Further information
For further information, contact Barry Knight at barry.knight@bl.uk.
Notes for editors
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world’s greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world’s largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library’s collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation. It includes: books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Further information is available on the British Library’s website at www.bl.uk.
Trinity College Library is the largest library in Ireland. Its collections of manuscripts and printed books have been built up since the end of the sixteenth century. In addition to the purchases and donations of over four centuries, since 1801 the Library has had the right to claim all British and Irish publications under successive Copyright Acts. The bookstock is now over four million volumes and there are extensive collections of manuscripts, maps and music. It serves the needs of the College's students and academic staff, is recognised as a national research resource to scholarship and the wider community and is a research library of international repute. Further information is available at http://www.tcd.ie/Library/.
UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government’s most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence.
UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2005 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi(Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954 – former Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s – inventor of the telephone); and members of the band Coldplay.
The National Archives of Scotland (NAS), based in Edinburgh, exists to select, preserve, and make available the national archives of Scotland in whatever medium, to the highest standards; to promote the growth and maintenance of proper archive provision throughout the country. NAS also actively supports research, advises on record keeping, and seeks to enhance the learning and teaching of history. Historical records created by businesses, landed estates, families, churches and other corporate bodies are also held by NAS. The National Register of Archives of Scotland (NRAS), compiles a record of collections of private papers in Scotland, to encourage their care, and to make information about them available to researchers and others. Contact the National Register of Archives Scotland via NAS.
Cambridge University Library has been central to the support of teaching and research at Cambridge for over 600 years. More than seven million books and periodicals, one million maps and many thousands of manuscripts occupy more than one hundred miles of shelving, which extends by a further two miles every year., Cambridge University Library is the only Legal Deposit Library with 2 million of its volumes on open shelves, giving its readers the largest open-access collection in Europe.
The National Library of Scotland is a major European research library and is the world’s leading centre for the study of Scotland and the Scots - an information treasure trove for Scotland’s knowledge, history and culture. The Library’s collections are of world-class importance. Key areas include rare books, manuscripts, maps, music, official publications, business information, science and technology, and the modern and foreign collections. The Library holds well over 13 million items, including printed items, approximately 100,000 manuscripts and nearly 2 million maps. Every week it collects approximately 6,500 new items via Legal Deposit. The National Library of Scotland’s Map Library is one of the world’s largest map libraries. NLS holds many of Scotland’s literary treasures including the last letter of Mary Queen of Scots, written six hours before her execution; the Order for the Massacre of Glencoe 1692; the world’s greatest collections of Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle manuscripts; works of Robert Burns; Robert Louis Stevenson papers; a Gutenberg bible (1455); the Murthly Hours (late 13th C); and modern collections of Scottish writers. Further information about the Library and its collections.