The Library of Congress has received a $540,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The grant will be used to evaluate the physical health of the national collection of books in American research libraries and to guide their archive retention and preservation decisions.
Over the next 40 months, the researchers will compare the physical, chemical and optical characteristics of a representative sample of bibliographically identical books held by the five participating research libraries.
The findings will help build a knowledge base in helping libraries decide which books should be maintained in national collections and a better understanding about how books age.
The five universities participating in the study are:
- Arizona State University
- Cornell University
- University of Colorado at Boulder
- University of Miami
- University of Washington
Source: Library of Congress via Library Journal.