Cultural Heritage Conservation

It's been a big couple weeks for news stories about my field. Today's NYTimes has an article about audio recording conservation at the Metropolitan Opera, and last week they had an article about how poorly cultural heritage institutions are dealing with their conservation needs.*

I don't remember seeing this many articles on conservation before, but I also can admit to not having been looking before. It's an interesting quandry. Did they just not exist before or was I just oblivious to them?

*The second article has been archived and cannot be read without paying for it. If you want a copy I can LexisNexis it for you, just email me. Additionally, the first article will fade into archived obscurity fairly soon.