Conservation actions include treatment and repair of book and paper items in the Libraries' collections. Our approach to treatments follows the American Institute for Conservation Code of Ethics. Primary principles followed are slowing decay or restoring individual items to usable form, and the ability to reverse any treatments (permanent alterations are not made to items).

Work performed is tracked and assigned an ARL-defined level according to the time spent actively working:

• Level 1 - less than 15 minutes
  • Examples: page tip-ins, page repairs, hinge tightening
• Level 2 - 15 minutes to two hours
  • Examples: spine replacement, endsheet replacement, recasing
• Level 3 - two hours or longer
  • Examples: flattening, surface cleaning, resewing