Housing single-sheet material: ‘Fishering’ at the Bodleian Library, Oxford

Abstract

This paper describes the review and reinterpretation of a type of conservation treatment carried out within the Conservation & Collection Care department of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The treatment is known as ‘fisherizing’ and is one approach to the housing of single-sheet material that has been adopted at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It is a system of binding modern papers of predominantly uniform format, typescripts for example, which are unsuitable for either fasciculing or other binding methods and which require more protection than that offered by archive folders. The technique was named after H.A.L. Fisher, a twentieth-century Oxford historian, whose papers were donated to the Bodleian Library in 1958. Fisherizing was developed between 1985 and 1987 when Fisher’s papers were treated. The technique has been used in the library over the past years and has recently been reviewed. The results of this review are presented here alongside further refinements which have been introduced to the technique. This work is particularly important for the Bodleian collection where the technique has been used extensively. Therefore assessing and refining it, is crucial for conservation management within the specific library. Moreover, the use of the technique outside the library makes this publication more important as not only does it communicate the assessment results but also it proposes improvements to the technique. The quality of this work is ensured by the large number of examples of the technique examined in one of the most important libraries in Britain both in terms of collection and in terms of quality of conservation work.