Schools for Preservation

I have some great information everyone. If you are interested in obtaining a Masters Degree in Historic Preservation, I provided a link below to the National Council for Preservation Education, which provides a listing of all the Universities within the Unites States that offer programs in various areas of the preservation field.

http://www.uvm.eduhistpres/ncpe/chart.html#grad

Collaborating Through Preservation

"The National Library of Australia (NLA) believes that the key to developing successful models of digital preservation lies in corporation: sharing information as well as sharing responsibility" (Berthon, 2002, p. 4). This quote was said due to the fact that Australian libraries have been archiving and preserving their digital national bibliographic databases which has laid the foundation for other libraries to follow.

One of the ways in which Australian libraries preserve and archive their resources is through a system called PANDORA. PANDORA is a selective National Collection of Australian Online Publications established by the National Library of Australia. They use this system to archive their digital resources as well as to share information with other libraries and organizations around the world. "Although most users of the PANDORA program do not utilize all the aspects it has to offer, it still provides collection managers in each of the partner agency to gather web publications and to manage access to them" (Berton, 2002, p. 4).

SOUND OFF!!!!!!!!!

What are your feelings about agencies collaborating up with other countries to develop a national database of information?


References

Berton, H. (August, 2002). Nurturing our digital memory: digital archiving and preservation at the National Library of Australia. International Preservation News, 27, 4-7.

Fire and Ice!!??!!

I just found another very interesting article that discussed the problems that a county records office in Utah experienced when a fire ignited in their attic causing damage to their historic courthouse record books. The fire, that happened on May 2, 2006, quickly ignited and blazed through the crawl spaces of their air conditioning vents. The fire showed no mercy and the horrific outcome was witnessed 15 minutes later when the flame burned itself out. Although no one was hurt during the fire, everyone felt that they had lost something precious to them. "It was the 300 nineteenth and twentieth century full leather spring back stationers' bindings, many covered in protective white canvas jackets, were untouched by the fire but impregnated with a layer of soot and reeked of smoke" (Silverman, 2006, p.20).

So now it was time to find a way to save their precious historic treasures. Learning from other commercial disasters firms that have dealt with fires ruining their collections, Servier County Records office knew that they had to remove the soot by adhering to the current standards of sooth removal. So they began by wiping down the books with a natural sponge. Even though the sponge removed most of the soot, there was still some soot that was trapped in the books fibers. So they tried another technique which vacuuming. With the HEPA-vacuuming they basically vacuumed all the books that still had residue left, but soon realized that this was not the most effective way to help rid the books of the soot. This is because a week later effects from the soon began to resurface again.

Then they tried dry ice blasting. "Dry ice blasting proved the most effective of the three methods and caused no detectable abrasion" (Silverman, 2006, p.24). The technique was faster than wiping down books. It only took 1 hour to blast each book with ice compared to the sponge technique that would last much longer.

Now everyone knows that things have limitations. But as of now the County Records Office feels that the technique is the best because it helped o preserve the books for more years to come.

SOUND OFF!!!!!!!!!

Do you know of any other standards that are used in preserving books and other materials?

Reference

Silverman, R. (2006). Fire and ice: a soot removal technique using dry ice blasting. International Preservation News, 39,20-24.

Preservation Websites

I found some interesting websites that deal with preservation of materials and websites.


Digital Preservation Coalition

Their main goal is to provide secure access on the preservation of digital resources in the UK and internationally. They want to secure a global memory and knowledge base for everyone.

www.dpconline.org

California Digital Library

The CDL's mission is to provide services that aid in the long-term retention of digital objects.

www.cdlib.org

The National Archive

The National Archive is a collection of documents that record important events in American history. It saves items that proved events occurred.

www.archives.gov

SOUND OFF!!!!!

Do you know of any other websites that offer information on preservation?

Issues Surrounding Website Archiving

Have you ever visited a website only to find that a page no longer exist? Well that has happened to me on several occasions.

I found an interesting article that discussed the issues surrounding website archiving. The article was primarily focused on the university level setting and discussed how it is important to preserve websites for future use. The author expressed in great detail reasons as to why archiving websites had many faults. One fault that stood out the most to me was the fact that since archiving is still relatively new it presents problems that print resources don't.

For example, since websites evolve and change day to day or even month to month, there is no guarantee that documents from the website would be preserved forever(Flugstad, 2007). And even though most universities have backup systems in which its sole purpose is to run updates to capture the changes that websites make, they will still fall into many problems because their backup systems are not meant to run for long term purposes. This means that the system will not be able to capture the true metamorphose of a particular site.

SOUND OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are your feelings about archiving websites? Do you think that it should be held in the same respect as archiving print and/or digital resources?

Reference

Flugstad, M.(2007,Fall). Website Archiving: the long-term preservation of local born digital resources. Arkansas Libraries,64(3),5-7.

Meet Some People In Preservation

I found an interesting article that showcased two women from the Library and Information Science field that have been promoted to higher positions in the preservation field. The first woman goes by the name of Diane Vogt-O'Connor. Diane is a double major graduate who holds a degree in Library Science/Archives and Art History/Museums. She was the senior manager of conservation activities at the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Park Services and the Smithsonian Institution (Library of Congress, 2006). In each one of these jobs she served different roles.

Her Roles

National Archive -was the manager of extensive holdings in the regional archives and served as the affiliated archives liaison.

National Park Services - produced several works on preservation, wrote grants, and provided on site consultations to help the staff.

Smithsonian Institution - She served as the director of the Photographic Survey Project and surveyed its 13 million photos from the massive collection.

Through her extensive work she was recognized and promoted to the overseer of the Conservation Division for the Library of Congress.

The other women who was promoted goes by the name of Jeanne Drewes. She was the assistant director for access and worked at Michigan State University. Her duties at Michigan State included overseeing the binding of preservation and collections conservation, stacks maintenance, microfilming, enviornmental monitoring, and management of personnel (Library of Congress, 2006).

Among those jobs Jeanne has also made personel achievements. She has co-authored many books and as also been an asset to many committees that dealt with preservation. That's why she was given the position of cheif binding and collections care.

SOUND OFF!!!!!!!!!!

Who do you know that has made it big in the preservation field?


Reference

Library of Congress. (Jul/Aug, 2006). New Faces in Preservation. Library of Congress Information Bulletin. 65(7/8),190.

The Value of Preservation

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.