The problems of conservation and use of archive belonging to the Italian theatre scholar, Gerardo Guerrieri, acquired recently by the University of Rome, La Sapienza. The collection consists of tranlations of theatrical works, critical essays and biographical studies, all on paper that has been damaged to some extent. The precarious state of conservation, incomplete cataloguing and the previous curator's barely decipherable notes, makes both the task of reconstructing the owner's original concept in forming the collection a difficult one and pose the ethical problem of how much access should be allowed to such fragile original material. -- ICCROM