Preservation (library and archive)

Preservation is a branch of Library and Information Science concerned with maintaining or restoring access to artifacts, documents and records through the study, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of decay and damage.

History

Main article: History of preservation

Antecedents

1. Oral tradition or oral culture, the transmission of information from one generation to the next without a writing system.
2. Antiquarian practices, including scribal practice, burial practice, the libraries at Pergamum, Alexandria and other ancient archives.
3. Medieval practices, including the scriptorium and relic collection
4. Renaissance and the changing conception of artists and works of art
5. Enlightenment and the Encyclopedists
6. Romantic movement’s imperative to preserve

Significant events

• 1933: William Barrow publishes paper on the acid paper problem
• 1966: The Flood of the River Arno in Florence, Italy
• 1987: Terry Saunders releases the film Slow Fires: On the Preservation of the Human Record

Significant preservationists

• William Barrow
• Paul Banks
• Pamela Darling
• Carolyn Harris
• Peter Waters

Banks/Harris award winners

• Sarah Buchanan 2001
• Ellen McCrady 2002
• John F. Dean 2003
• Jan Merrill-Oldham 2004
• Paul Conway 2005
• Gary Frost 2006

Practices

Care and handling

1. Exhibitions
2. Circulating collections
3. Special collections

Library binding

One method of preserving a library collection is to rebind paperback items in hard cover library binding. There are commercial companies that work exclusively in library binding.

Branches

Functional areas

• Collections Care refers to the general maintenance and preventive care of a collection as a whole. This can include activities such as security, environmental monitoring, preservation surveys and more specialized activities such as mass deacidification.
• Conservation refers to the treatment and repair of individual items to slow decay or restore them to a usable state. Conservation is occasionally used interchangeably with preservation, particularly outside the professional literature.
• Digital Preservation refers to the maintenance of digitally stored information. This should not be confused with digitization, which is a process of creating digital information which must, in turn, be digitally preserved. Means of digital preservation include refreshing, migration, replication and emulation.
• Disaster Preparedness refers to the practice of arranging for the necessary resources and planning the best course of action to prevent or minimize damage to a collection in the event of a disaster of any level of magnatude.
• Reformatting refers to the practice of creating copies of an object in another type of data storage device. Reformatting processes include microfilming and digitization.

Media specific

• Paper
  • acid-free paper
• Books
• Visual materials
  • color photography
  • architectural reprography
• Recorded sound
• Moving image

Education

One of the biggest challenges in the field of preservation today is educating a library's community, especially librarians and other staff, in the best ways to handle materials as well as the conditions in which particular materials will decay the least. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that preservation is a peripheral element of most library science curricula; indeed, there are few places where one can receive a specialized education in preservation.

Educational resources available to preservationists are the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). This institution was founded in 1973 as a reaction to the growing problem of paper deterioration occurring in repositories in the New England area. Since its inception, the Center has provided institutions and organizations, as well as librarians, conservators, preservationists, and museum professionals, with help in learning proper care and procedures to better preserve the integrity of their collections. They provide a variety of services such as imaging, surveys and consultations, digitations, as well as disaster planning and assistance. Their educational opportunities include the provision of workshops, conferences, and specialized trainings. Additional online courses are available, as well. Some of the workshops include basic preservation, collections care, rmergency preparedness, integrated pest management (IPM), identification and care of photographs, basic and intermediate book repair, basic paper repair, preservation of scrapbooks, preservation technologies, holdings maintenance, creating and maintaining digital collections, scanning training, and grant writing.

Some organizations and schools offering training, courses, education, and aid in preservation:

• Amigoes Library Services Preservation Service
• Books at Virgina: Rare Book School
• The Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record
• Education in Preservation and Conservation in SOLINET Preservation Service
• Buffalo State College. Art Conservation Department, Buffalo, NY
• New York University. Conservation Center, Institute of Fine arts, New York, NY
• North Bennet Street School. Boston, MA
• Queen’s University. Master of Art Conservation Program, Ont, Canada
• George Eastman House. School of Film & Video Preservation Rochester, NY
• University of Denver. Rocky Mountain Conservation center, Denver, CO
• University of Delaware. Winterthur art Conservation Program, Newark, DE
• University of Texas at Austin. Preservation and Conservation Studies, Austin, TX
• American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, AIC>
• American Library Association, ALA
• Association for Information and Image Management, AIIM
• Library Binding Institute
• Society of American Archivists

Legal issues

Reformatting, or in any other way copying an item's contents, raises obvious copyright issues. In many cases, a library is allowed to make a limited number of copies of an item for preservation purposes.

Criticism

There is a longstanding tension between preservation of and access to library materials, particularly in the area of special collections. Handling materials promotes their progression to an unusable state, especially if they are handled carelessly. On the other hand, materials must be used in order to gain any benefit from them.

In a collection with valuable materials, this conflict is often resolved by a number of measures which can include heightened security, requiring the use of gloves for photographs, restricting the materials researchers may bring with them into a reading room, and restricting use of materials to patrons who are not able satisfy their research needs with less valuable copies of an item. These measures can seem intimidating to less experienced researchers who might feel that these preservation measures are in place solely to keep materials out of the hands of the public.

See also

• Preservation, Wikipedia's disambiguation page listing articles associated with the same title.
• Art conservation and restoration, part of the allied field of Museology, also called "Art preservation"
• Film preservation, rescuing aging film stock and preserving recorded images
• Historic preservation, the theory and practice of creatively maintaining the historic built environment
• Architectural conservation, the process through which the material, historical, and design integrity of mankind's built heritage are prolonged through carefully planned interventions.
• Archaeological site conservation

External link

Northeast Document Conservation Center