The NIU Anthropology Museum is gaining help this week from 18 Elderhostel International participants.

The Boston-based Elderhostel International is an organization that offers planned travel packages for senior citizens. NIU has been working with Elderhostel International since 1979.

Coming from New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, California and northern Illinois, the Elderhostel participants show a delight in coming to NIU to assist in the conservation of more than 1,000 textiles in storage at the museum.

The NIU Elderhostel “Textile Conservation” event started Sunday and ends Friday.

Listed as a service program on Elderhostel events calendar, this will be the program’s second year.

“Volunteers such as this group provide an invaluable service to small museums with limited budget and staff,” said Ann Wright-Parsons, NIU Anthropology Museum director.

Throughout the week, Wright-Parsons will teach the group curatorial and conservation methods that they will use to examine textiles, record its current conditions and make each piece better suited for storage.

Each textile will be unrolled, have a fresh acid-free tissue put on it, rolled back up and covered with a clean piece of muslin. Each piece will be measured, examined, photographed and recorded for inventory.

Last year, the group inventoried about 100 textiles. This year the goal is to do more than 100, Wright-Parsons said.

Work is not all that this group will be doing. The week’s schedule includes lectures on Southeast Asian textiles and weaving on a Navajo loom. On Thursday, the participants will visit the Freeport Art Center.

An interest in fabrics is one of the main reasons participants chose to come to NIU for the program.

New York resident Rita Oronato said she works with textiles at a museum and would like to compare and contrast conservation methods.

The sense of benefiting others have kept these Elderhostelers participating in the organization’s service programs, said Elderhostel participant Charlotte Smith, a quilter from Maryland. Along with her husband, Howard, the conservation event will be the couple’s 24th Elderhostel adventure.

Some group members have been out west to help paleontologists clean dinosaur bones, while others have made crafts for a school of handicapped students in Wisconsin.

Last year, Elderhostel International sent more than 170,000 participants all over the world.

“I highly recommend it,” Smith said.