The State Library of South Australia has a primary role of collecting, preserving and providing access to South Australian publications, archival collections, images, audio visual and other heritage material and information media.

The Preservation Section has about 40 staff. They represent a diverse range of skills in collection maintenance, conservation, librarianship, reformatting (in the fields of microfilming, digitisation, photography, film and audio engineering), retrieval and storage.

The Section is responsible for providing a broad range of services to ensure the preservation of the library’s heritage collections, and works closely with Artlab Australia which provides complex conservation treatments for Library material.