About Collections Care

Introduction

The London Archive (TLA) aims to preserve its rich collections for the use and benefit of present and future generations, by developing preservation and conservation policies and practices consistent with its values and goals, whilst ensuring that the highest standards of conservation are maintained, and codes of ethics adhered to. We work closely with our Collections team and the wider conservation community to make considered, ethical decisions when providing interventive and preventive conservation for our collections. The studio provides support to a range of activities across the Archive not limited to but including workshops, training, exhibitions and loans, digitisation and access to fragile material to the public. Accessibility and engagement to the collection remains at the forefront of our work to help enrich the dialogue between London's rich History and the people within it.

Conservation

Interventive Conservation

At The London Archive we have a minimal intervention approach to our conservation work on any collection item. Our main priority is to help provide access to damaged or vulnerable items. All treatments are carried out to the highest conservation standards, reversable and using appropriate materials.

Preventive Conservation

The London Archives is responsible for managing multiple storage sites at our main site and Guildhall. We recognize preventive conservation as a key element in preserving the collection and monitor our sites with a comprehensive environmental monitoring and pest management programme. TLA aims to provide a stable environment for all its collections and adhere to BS 4971:2017.

The Collections Care team

The London Archives have a team of dedicated conservators who specialise in a wide range of mediums. It is this wealth of knowledge which provides the skill and understanding to effectively care for large and varied collection held across our multiple sites. The Collection Care team's priority is helping facilitate access to the collections and preserving them for future generations of visitors to some of London's most unique and interesting material ranging over 900 years of London's history.

Visiting the studio

We offer monthly behind the scenes tours which provide the public an opportunity to meet some of the team and see first hand the interesting and varied work which comes through the studio. Follow the link below to see when our next dates are!

Collections Care Services

Archival Box Making Service

Your collections are precious, but they are also fragile and prone to deterioration without proper protection. The London Archives offer a bespoke boxing service that supplies hand-finished, archival quality boxes to suit all packaging needs. Our on site, box cutting machine allows us to work flexibly with you to create a design that suits your unique collections. Alternatively, you can also browse our standard size units which cater for the most common volume and paper sizes. We use the same machinery, card, and designs that we sell to you, so you can be assured that you are housing your collections in the same way we box ours. We are proud to supply packaging made by Conservators for the Heritage Sector.

Mount Making Service

We offer a range of exhibition and display support using our in-house CMC machine. Bespoke book cradles, window mounts for framed works and a variety of slopes and mounts for 3D works can be made to order. We aim to create all our mounts with recyclable, reusable materials in a commitment towards sustainable exhibitions at TLA and other institutions with whom we work with.

Loans for Exhibitions Display

The conservators at TLA treat and prepare loans of a wide variety of items to a variety of organisations for use in public exhibitions and displays. The London Archives aims to provide as wide an access to its holdings as possible and therefore welcomes applications from other institutions, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, to borrow items from our collections for exhibition. We are very pleased that awareness of the value of the history and stories revealed within our collections is increasing in recognition for use in this way. We have supported past exhibitions at institutions such as the National Gallery, Tate Britain, The V&A, The British Library, The Foundling Museum and in museums in Switzerland, France and the USA.

Access to Unfit Material

An 'unfit' document is highly unstable, either the structure or its writing support is severely weakened, the text is compromised, and further handling could deteriorate and compromise the state of the document even more. In this situation the item is not available for general access and only conservators can handle the item to repair and stabilise its condition. A note is made on the catalogue so the item cannot be produced. There are currently over 38,000 items which are designated as Unfit.

If a reader wishes to see an item that has been classified as unfit, they may put in a request via the available forms. We ask that the reader gives as much details as possible - the more details they give the more likely it is that they will be given access to the information in some form. A member of Conservation staff will then assess the item. If the conservation work needed to stabilise the item can be done within a short period of time, the item will go onto our schedule. In certain circumstances where TLA does not own the item, we may have to ask the depositor before we can work on the item, or indeed ask them for funding to conserve the item. When the conservation is completed, we will contact the reader to say that the item is available. An alternative outcome may be that we can make the required information available to the reader – some items will be able to be viewed under close supervision, whereas for others it may be that we can take a photograph of the required information. Unfortunately, there will be some items where the damage is so extensive that we cannot carry out any work on them at present.

Working in the Conservation Studio

Volunteer with us

If you are in interested in volunteering with the team, get in touch!

Student Work Placements

We offer work placements for students enrolled in conservation training programmes. As a large, municipal archive, we can often offer experience working with specific materials or interests that are unique to archives, including stationery bindings, parchment, prints and drawings, rolls, maps and plans, and photographic material. We are happy to work with students to tailor their placement to one of three areas: books, paper, or preventive conservation.

In addition, all placements include experience shadowing other teams within the archive so that students can see how a large archive operates. This might include working in document retrieval, assisting in the public reading rooms, supporting digitisation work, helping an archivist and learning about cataloguing.

Student work placements are unpaid and can be arranged for up to six weeks and are generally four days per week. Please contact us to enquire about availability for upcoming placements.