When a library has to make a decision on determining what needs be to preserved they have a very important decision that has to be made. They have to determine the community's need for the item, its over all importance, and most importantly libraries have to determine the value in the item that is being preserved.
So just how do they determine the value of something? Well one way is to asses the item to see if it holds cultural value of some sort. They have to see if the item is held in high standards by the community as a whole. Another way is to examine the range of public policy issues that arise in light of the social values identified (Smith, 2007).
According to Smith, in order for librarians to understand the value in information they need to understand how crucial preservation is by looking at the following factors:
-the usefulness of content
-the value of content as constitutive of our human nature, including its importance for ensuring biological homeostasis (special value) and its ability to give pleasure (hedonic value);
-the value for re-use (secondary value).
Overall one must look at the bigger picture before they try to start preserving information. We as librarians need to be able to look deeper into the facts and understand the real reason why we need to preserve.
Reference
Smith, A. (2007, Summer). Valuing Preservation. Library Trends, 56(1), 4-25.
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1 comment:
I am one of those that never throw anything away so the concept of discarding books, journals, etc. is difficult for me to envision. However, I understand that libraries must make decisions on whether a source is being used or just taking up shelf space. I suppose one way would be to copy the actions of Frederick Kilgour and monitor how frequently a source is checked out.
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