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I remember the first time I saw the CoOL web page (Conservation Online). It was about 1995 and I was a student working in the Lilly Library’s Book Conservation department when Jim Canary told me to check it out.
I really can’t think of a topic that isn’t covered at CoOL. I can remember spending hours digging around all of the pages when I first saw it. It seemed to answer all of my questions about my interest in the profession and point to ones that I hadn’t thought of. Have a look at all of the “Conservation Topics,” or look at the number of national and international organizations who have their home pages associated with CoOL. Dig around there. It’s amazing.
Perhaps most importantly, though, look at the ConsDistList, an e-mail distribution list that at last count had just under 10,000 subscribers. This dist list has been going strong since 1988 and has been one of the most important ways for conservators to share and find information on a truly international level. It has been the central hub for information sharing within the conservation community.
Yesterday that changed when Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources announced that Stanford is no longer going to support CoOL and that the ConsDistList had produced its last instance. Bang. It’s over.
Filed under: Conservation, Current Events
