In the preservation of cultural heritage items, the use of polymeric materials for the consolidation and protection of artifacts with historical and artistic value is widely accepted. This area is vast and includes studies of various objects made of different materials such as wood, stone, textiles, and paper. The aim of this article is to establish the most suitable copolymer for cellulose-based-material restoration according to its properties, as evaluated by several techniques such as H-1-NMR spectroscopy, size exclusion chromatography, differential scanning calorimetry, and dynamic mechanical analysis. In addition to the mechanical property evaluation, an investigation of fungal de- terioration has been carried out. Because, in the literature, no complete study concerning the characterization of ethyl acrylate/methyl methacrylate and butyl acrylate/methyl methacrylate copolymers is available, a detailed and full investigation of these polymers is required before the best copolymer is selected for grafting polymerization onto cellulose. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.