TAPPI brings librarians and paper industry together.

This article provides information on the Paper Preservation Symposium held by the Technical Association for the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI) at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C. in October 1988. The symposium had very clear objectives: to describe the deterioration of paper, to describe techniques in production and process that would halt that deterioration, and to enable the scientists and manufacturers to communicate with the library profession and vice versa. The concept of bringing together in one place librarians, conservators, and paper industry personnel to talk about paper was the elegant brainchild of Richard D. Smith, president of Wei T'o Associates, one of the organizers of the symposium. The conference was preceded by a meeting organized by Ellen McCrady of Abbey Publications, which brought together a panel of librarians, conservators, and paper industry people to talk specifically about what each institution represented was doing for the cause of permanent paper. A cluster of other potentially divisive issues was raised around the concept of deacidification. The various deacidification processes halt the deterioration of paper by removing acid. They do not improve the paper but merely arrest its further deterioration.