The problems of fire and human beings are mostly common to all countries but humidity and high temperature, dust, insects and climate problems which create particular difficulties for librarians differ from country to country. Insects, fire and human beings are particularly difficult problems. The preservation of manuscripts and documents and their protection against damage occurs due to climatic conditions. Whereas, some of the problems of the manuscripts and documents in libraries and museums have been duly solved yet a few of them still need to be investigated in detail. Naturally their deterioration also differs and accordingly methods used cannot be generalized. We are facing today a complex problem since the materials used are complex. Some of these are on palm -leaf, whereas a bulk of them is on paper. Most of the manuscripts which are housed in libraries and museums are, as usual either hand written or illustrated. Even though the manuscripts have specific problems which need to be adequately solved not on theoretical basis but in practice also. For conservation of unattended manuscripts of Ladakh and North-East, The National Mission for Manuscripts has set up special field laboratories in both the region in collaboration with the National Research Laboratory for conservation of Cultural Property (NRLC), Lucknow. No doubt, the National Museum has a conservation laboratory of its own since the year 1957 and the conservation laboratories of the Rampur Raza Library is one of the best laboratory in India in the field of conservation and restoration of manuscripts and other art objects. There are only few laboratories in our country for this purpose. Similar is the case with technical assistance regarding conservation and preservation of this material. Unfortunately, very few persons are available now a day. The decipherment of old scripts, their translation, microfilming, Xeroxing or photography etc need technical knowledge. Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna has over 7000 manuscripts in Arabic obtained from distant corner of the Islamic worlds including parts of Europe and same is the case with other Indian Libraries and Museums. Rampur Raza Library has a remarkable collection of 17000 manuscripts including 175 illustrated ones, 205 palm-leaf manuscripts, 5000 miniature paintings, 3000 specimen of Islamic calligraphy and 75000 old rare printed books. The Arthashastra, an ancient account of state craft and military strategy, written by Koutilya (Chanakya) dates back to 3rd century BCE. Mysore Oriental Library is a world-renowned with a collection of more than 70,000 manuscripts and 40,000 rare books. As an example the National Museum has a total collection of twelve thousand manuscripts and one thousand documents which is quite a problem to maintain. Mostly, these manuscripts and documents are either on palm-leaf and birch-bark. In the absence of any kind of thorough and intensive census it is difficult to guess the total number of manuscripts preserved therein. Manuscripts collection are scattered in several places allover India like Archives, Universities, Temples, Mathas, Mosques, Churches, Jain Bhandaras ,etc., particularly, all the major libraries and museums of India have a fairly large collection of manuscripts and other documents in their possession. India probably has the largest number of manuscripts in the world. India possesses a rich and enormous cultural heritage of manuscripts since the ancient period.
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