Brittle Books Program - Timeline

Timeline

  • 1987 - A subcommittee of the House of Representatives during the 100th Congress (1st session) addressed the problem of "brittle books in our nation's libraries."
  • March 17, 1988 - Patricia Battin, president of the Commission on Preservation and Access (CPA), testified before the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies (Committee on Appropriations). She proposed a collaborative approach to the preservation of the nation's brittle books and asked the House to increase federal funding for preservation microfilming.
  • October, 1988 - An appropriations bill for fiscal year 1989 gave the National Endowment for the Humanities $12.5 million. Eight million dollars of that sum went to instituting a twenty-year program for the microfilming of endangered volumes.
  • 1995 - The program was assessed to be on schedule and 25% complete.
  • Roughly 50,000 brittle and endangered volumes are microfilmed each year.

Read more about this topic:  Brittle Books Program