Caring for our archival heritage: online
Our Preservation and Collections Management (PCM) section has responsibility for the care and storage of archival collections held at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). By caring for documents from the past, we are helping increase both their accessibility and longevity, so that we can learn from and enjoy our cultural heritage now and in the future.
Preventative preservation has become vital in caring for collections at PRONI - prevention is better than cure. We carry out many preservation activities, such as
- making sure documents are clean and stored in acidic free and suitable enclosures;
- keeping storage rooms clean;
- ensuring the storage environment is controlled and monitored,
- ensuring there is a suitable fire suppressive system in place
- developing a Business Continuity/ Disaster Plan.
Preservation and Collections Management (PCM) section are also currently busy preparing documents for decant to our new accommodation in the Titanic Quarter.
The role of the Conservation team
One of the key aspects of conservation is understanding how things deteriorate and indeed coming up with methods and ideas of how to slow down this deterioration. However, although prevention is always better than cure, sometimes it is still necessary to conserve documents.Within PCM, a dedicated Conservation team
- carries out repairs to documents;
- makes digital or microfilm copies of documents;
- undertakes ongoing research into conservation best practice.
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PRONI Conservators at work
PRONI has so many documents - how does the Conservation team decide what to conserve?
At PRONI we have a policy of minimal intervention, therefore it is only as a last resort that a document will make its way to the conservation studio. Because of the large amount of documents which we house, most of the documents which are brought to the conservation workshop are from our grade 1 archives - these are our most important documents.
Before we can carry out conservation treatments to our documents a number of factors have to be considered.
Factors which can help determine how a document is to be treated:
- Do we have the time, funding, skills and staff to carry out the treatment successfully?
- What use/ future will the object have?
i.e. Will it be digitised? Will it be exhibited? Is it a frequently handled document? - What storage conditions will it go back into?
- How will a conservation treatment affect its value (historical, social, artistic, legal, and financial)?
- How badly would an object deteriorate if it wasn’t conserved?
- How will it react to different treatments?
When all these factors are considered a suitable conservation treatment can be decided upon, and then conservation work can begin.
