Durham County Record Office: the official archive service for County Durham and Darlington

Conservation service

Our conservation service ensures that the archives in our care are preserved for future generations. We also provide advice and a conservation service for private individuals and outside agencies. If you would like further information on this please contact us.

Archive material often requires the skilled attention of our conservator. We can repair and conserve most damaged and fragile documents in a well-equipped conservation studio. We repair paper and parchment documents using traditional and modern techniques and undertake all forms of book binding.

There is an ongoing programme of microfilming to allow our most heavily used documents to be made available on a self-service system. This prevents popular documents from deteriorating due to overuse and is also used to protect fragile documents from further damage.

Documents which have been microfilmed are, of course, still protected and preserved to the same standards as unmicrofilmed documents.