Caring for America's Library
Preservation Office, 1967-89
As a result, in 1967 the Library undertook a new approach to preservation by centralizing all activities related to preservation, and the necessary funds to support these activities, in one office, under one administrative head. On May 15 that year, the position of the Assistant Director for Preservation was established, and the name of the Office of Collections Maintenance and Preservation was changed to the Preservation Office, located within the Administrative Department. This new unit was given the responsibility of comprehensively dealing with the Library's preservation programs.
The operation, led by Frazer G. Poole, created a preservation microfilming section, a research and testing laboratory, and a restoration group, and brought these together with the Binding Office (which came from Processing Services) and the collections maintenance function (that was transferred from the Stack and Reader Division). An agreement was soon reached in 1968 that the Government Printing Office would relinquish control to the Library on matters fundamental to preservation, such as staffing, development of technical standards and procedures for treatments and specifications for materials used in the preservation of Library collections; the only exception was that the GPO retained oversight on binding contracts.
Mr. Poole was succeeded by Norman Shaffer as Assistant Director for Preservation in 1978. That year the Preservation Office was transferred to Research Services. The preservation administrator's title was changed from Assistant Director to Director for Preservation when Dr. Peter Sparks was appointed to that position in the Preservation Office in 1981.