Abstract:
A small number of businesses in the country specialize in rescuing and preserving rare books and other documents. Don Etherington's Greensboro-based company, Etherington Conservation Services, is the largest one. Etherington began his training in his native London at age thirteen and earned an international reputation following a two-year project restoring rare, flood-damaged books in the national library in Florence, Italy. He has worked at the U.S. Library of Congress and the University of Texas. His company in Greensboro opened with a staff of three and now employs thirty. Their current high-profile project is restoring the North Carolina Museum of Art's four-volume edition of Audubon's The Birds of North America.