"The paradox of preservation is that it is impossible to keep things the same forever. To conserve, preserve, or restore is also to alter. Even if an object survives untouched, it will have changed just by virtue of aging or by a change in its surroundings." ~ Michele Cloonan
"Preservation is the art of managing risk to the intellectual and
physical
heritage of a community and all members of that community have a stake
in it.
...Preservation becomes an ever-changing assessment of value and
endangerment." ~ Abby Smith
"At its best, preservation can be defined as a part of the
infrastructure of the knowledge economy that is so fundamental it is
virtually invisible. And like most critical infrastructures -- the
electrical grid, the water and sewage system, or the Internet --
preservation is too often remarked only in failure. Now, a combination
of new information technologies and faltering business models in
scholarly communication and the entertainment industry is stressing
preservation to the breaking point." ~ Abby Smith
"In the past, ephemera such as playbills, advertisements, menus,
etc. have been conserved as vital witnesses to aspects of the past.
Today, these artifacts appear on the web for a matter of days, to
disappear in the twinkling of an eye, the flash of a pixel." ~ Marilyn
Deegan and Simon Tanner
"Paper is less durable than parchment; film and audio cassettes are less durable than paper; and digitized images, which become unreadable through technological obsolescence as well as media decay, are even less durable." ~ Deanna Marcum and Anne Kenney
"We simply do not know how long digital information stays stable." ~ Richard Ekman
"Due to the relentless obsolescence of digital formats and platforms, along with the ten year life spans of digital storage media such as magnetic tape and CD-ROMs, there has never been a time of such drastic and irretrievable information loss as now." ~ Stewart Brand
"While contemporary information has economic value and pays its way, there is no business case for archives, so the creators or original collectors of digital information rarely have the incentive --- or skills, or continuity -- to preserve their material." ~ Stewart Brand
"If you have only licensed material, what do you have at the end of time?" ~ Linda G. West
"Not to preserve is therefore always to silence a voice, which, in the opinion of a number of people in the past (authors, editors, publishers, librarians), has had something to say significant enough to warrant extended consideration." ~ Ross Atkinson
"In the past, Kahle and others argue, far-flung libraries could save copies of published material for posterity, and give the historical record a better chance of living into the future. But now, they say, publishers sometimes assert their copyrights, licensing access to their collections on line but forbidding local storage of electronic matter. Some say that leaves the publisher, and nobody else, responsible for saving the historical record of their publications."
Matthew Battles interviewed a colleague about a couple who survived
the
siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s. "They ran out of firewood and had
to
make choices about which books to burn in order to cook and stay warm.
Mr.
Battle's interlocutor explains how this forced the couple to think
critically: 'One must prioritize. First, you burn old college
textbooks,
which you haven't read in thirty years. Ten there are the duplicates.
But
eventually, you're forced to make tougher choices. Who burns today:
Dostoevsky or Proust?'"
"Preservation traditionally proceeds in fits and starts, with
extended periods of inactivity punctuated by bursts of intensive
effort.... The pattern is one in which materials are left to approach a
state of crisis, at which point the situation is remedied through
large-scale intervention." ~ Brian Lavie and Lorcan Dempsey
BBC, in 1996, created a digital copy of the famous Domesday survey
published in 1085. "But seventeen years after its creation the Domesday
Book Mark II cannot be read as the BBC computers used for the project
no longer work and the storage media are unable to be read by current
technology. The original version can still be read in the Public Record
office, 900 years after its creation." ~
A recent study found that "the average lifespan of a web page today
is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture."
"Information has never been as fugitive as it is today. Whereas
records were once written on media that could last hundred -- or even
thousands -- of years, electronic records are in danger of
disappearing, becoming physically unusable or legally inadmissible,
almost immediately. ... The very concept of electronic records
preservation is an oxymoron. The term preservation implies permanence,
yet such media are inherently unstable." ~ Michele V. Cloonan and
Shelby Sanett
"Stewardship is easy and inexpensive to claim: it is expensive and
difficult to honor, and perhaps it will prove to be all too easy to
later abdicate." ~ Cliff Lynch
"We engage in preservation, as individuals and as a society, to
influence the future. As we preserve, or choose not to preserve, we
shape the resource base that is our common memory, the playground of
what Thomas Jefferson called 'reason, memory, and imagination....'" ~
Abby Smith
The Abbey
Newsletter focuses on library and archival materials.
The Association of Moving Image
Archivists.
Association for Recorded Sound
Collections.
The Conservation and Art Material
Encyclopedia Online contains extensive information on a wide
variety of materials used to hold content. Good search engine.
Conservation OnLine at
Stanford is an excellent source of full-text information.
The Digital Preservation Coalition's "What's New in Digital Preservation"
is useful for keeping current.
The European Commission on
Preservation and Access has a helpful website.
The Image Permanence
Institute. Note the "preservation calculator."
Those interested in the longevity, especially of digital media,
should
browse on the Information
Longevity WWW site.
International
Preservation News.
The National Archives has a good collection of preservation materials including disaster preparedness.
The National Library of Australia has an excellent collection disaster plan.
The Northeast Document Conservation Center has an excellent Preservation 101 course that is well worth your time.
The Regional Alliance for Preservation is a major force in preservation and conservation work in the U.S. The website includes links to other conservation/preservation organizations.
A Simple Book Repair Manual includes excellent illustrations and clearly tells you how to mend torn pages, repair spines and the like without damaging the book.
SOLINET's Office of Preservation Services provides access to a variety of preservation publications.
A collection of about 14 research library disaster plans is available on the WWW.
Disaster Central does a good job of providing access to late-breaking news about emergency and risk management.
NISO Standards are now available on the WWW via PDF files. Some files, such as "Environmental Guidelines for the Storage of Paper Records" are related to preservation.
Risk World provides good coverage of current news and events.
The Smithsonian Institution Archives has an excellent disaster planning, prevention, and recovery manual.
The Western New York Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Manual for Libraries and Archives is available on the web.
The Association of Research Libraries has published two excellent resource guides. Collection Maintenance and Improvement by Sherry Byrne [Z 701.3.R48C65 1993] and Collections Conservation by Robert DeCandido [Z 701.3.R4805 1993]. As you might expect, the Z 701s are a good place to browse if you are looking for books on this topic.
The American Library Association [Barbara Higginbotham and Judith
Wild's
The Preservation Program Blueprint provides clear and
useful
instruction for responsibilities and tasks by library function.
The ACRL Security Committee has issued [2003] "Guidelines Regarding
Thefts in Libraries" and all concerned with preservation should be
familiar with it.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology's Care and
Handling Guide for Preservation of CDs and DVDs.
The Northeast Document Conservation Center's Assessing Preservation Needs: A Self-Survey
Guide by Beth Patkus. It should be in every professional
collection.
Protecting Your Library's Digital
Sources [Z 679.7 .K385 2004] is current and useful.
Traditionally, preservation was the responsibility of memory
institutions such as the church, the library, and the museum.
Preservation was an integral part of the managing owned collections. In
a sense, it was asset management. Today, access and ownership are
often divided. The memory institutions own an increasingly smaller
portion of
important intellectual content. Those who own content, usually
publishers, may not see the
importance of preserving content that has little market value.
Documents and publications in for-profit and not-for-profit
agencies, including government at all levels, far exceed the
items held in memory institutions. In most cases, these items have
received little attention and many will be lost. The preservation
problem goes far beyond the memory institutions.
Nicholson Baker's Double
Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper in 2001 created much
controversy in library land with its strong attack on preservation as
the destruction of original paper content and its replacement by
microfilm. He
also argued that the brittle book problem was not nearly as serious as
portrayed in our professional literature. Preservation can have serious
consequences for the original artifact and we need to be aware of that
as well as the importance of positive publicity.
"The fundamental questions of stewardship [are] -- what are to
collect and preserve, for whom, for how long, and who should assume
responsibility for it." As Brian Lavoie says: "Hard choices must be
made, and all too often, only a portion of the materials at risk -- and
not always the most valuable -- are selected for preservation, leaving
the rest to be nibbled away over time." Lavoie again on a crucial
point: "Partly as a consequence of its significant cost, preservation
has frequently been characterized by procrastination. This in turn has
led to sporadic bursts of preservation activity and funding, often
taking the form of large-scale, Manhattan Project-type programs aimed
at
retrieving a situation that has already reached a state of crisis."
Preservation via crisis management is not likely to be successful in
the 21st Century, especially with the short time available to preserve
digital content before it becomes unreadable.
At the heart of preservation/conservation work is selection,
the need to select those few items that need to be preserved or
retained. Selection typically uses the same selection criteria
used to
make the initial decision to add an item to the collection. Value and
likely
use were important then and remain important here. Preservation
decisions may
focus on collections that have intellectual coherence. Preservation
decisions also focus on individual items in current use that are in
poor
physical
condition. Abby Smith notes that libraries "do not know for
certain
for whom they preserve, what that future user might really need, and
for how long a resource must be preserved and kept ready for use
in order to meet that unknown user's needs." Forecasting is essential,
but exceedingly difficult.
The growth of ever larger collections, related to the rapid increase in the number of published items in a variety of formats, in all types of information agencies means that the number of items worthy of preservation consideration continues to grow rapidly. At the same time, media stability has declined as have funds for preservation and conservation.
Besides making retention decisions, what to keep, selection also
involves
the format to be used. Nicholson Baker's Double Fold:
Libraries and
the Assault on Paper attacked library preservation practices
which
microfilmed documents, including newspapers, and they discarded the
originals
because of their condition. Baker argues that the originals should have
been
kept.
The Research Libraries Group suggests that four questions are at the
heart of selection for preservation:
While we often associate "preservation" and "conservation" with
relatively
unique and valuable items, preservation is simply
asset management. Most organizations, whether for-profit or
not-for-profit, manage their assets so that they last as long
as
possible. Here we focus on intellectual property, but in other
organizations
we may need to preserve dump trucks or an older building. We will not
deal
with it here, but depreciate with some items appreciating while
others depreciate. It is often most
difficult to establish current and future worth. While
eBay, Bibliofind, ABebooks and other auction sites are useful for
establishing the value of particular items, establishing the value of
thousands of items is much more of a challenge.
Risk management is concerned with risk reduction to reduce loss and
the several costs associated with risks. Risk management insures the
survival and continued operation of the information agency. Risks might
include flood, fire, theft, liability issues, work-related accidents,
and the like. Risks to the collection are several. Besides preventing
accidents, risk management is concerned with restoration of damaged
items and the replacement of items that can not be restored. Insurance
is part of risk management. Risk management typically involves these
steps:
An important part of risk management is to make certain that
the
collections are insured at current replacement value so that if a
disaster
strikes, the collection (as much as possible) may be rebuilt.
Insurance trades "unpredictable, unbudgeted losses for a known
budgetable insurance premium. Insurance may
be by commercial insurer or self-insurance by the agency or its parent.
I
am not entirely comfortable with self-insurance because it may be under
funded or unavailable when needed. Do verify the insurance arrangements
for
your collections to be certain that they reflect
current
replacement value. All risk insurance is better than named
peril
coverage because it is more inclusive. Deductibles will reduce
premiums. Some preventive action will also reduce premiums such as
increasing the number of fire extinguishers, and installing
sprinklers. Insurance for collections falls into the property and
casualty insurance category and within a subset for particular
facilities. Sprinkler systems reduce premiums as does proximity to
fire stations, alarm systems, and proper risk management policies and
procedures.
The value of library collections may be computed by the
capitalization method which cumulates annual materials
costs. This
ignores appreciation and depreciation, but is easy to compute. The unit
cost approach divides the collection into appropriate segments
and
then mean costs are computed. Unit costs are adjusted annually to
reflect changes. They insure replacement, but involve considerably more
time and effort. Note that replacement cost includes likely processing
costs plus an index number for inflation.
Some past preservation and conservation attempts have actually harmed items in the collection. As a rule, the less treatment the better. Ideally, all treatment should be reversible. Many commonly available repair materials, "scotch" tape for example, damage materials. For example, microfilming books and periodicals often involved destruction of the original binding.
With the wide-spread availability of digital material, preservation
and
conservation becomes more difficult. It is easy to accidentally destroy
a
digital file. It is more difficult to accidentally destroy a book.
Preservation of digital items requires continued refreshing
to
insure that intellectual content is usable with currently available
hardware
and software. Without appropriate hardware and software, preserved
digital
files are of little value. For example, Landsat satellite data from the
1960s
and early 1970s is preserved on countless reels of now unreadable
magnetic
tape. The "fragility of digital storage media, combined with a high
degree of technology dependence considerably shortens the 'grace
period' during which preservation decisions can be deferred. While
there are technological issues, the lack of a stable source of funding
for digital preservation initiatives and the overwhelming volume of
digital content present overwhelming problems. Large-scale cooperative
initiatives involving a variety of stakeholders are required for
success. A crucial problem is the fact that access and ownership are
separated in many cases so that libraries, for example, provide access,
but are unable to preserve because the intellectual content is owned by
another.
Richard Wiggins has identified nine modes of "digital death:"
It is estimated that over 90 percent of new information is created in digital form or "born digital" so digital preservation is an immense problem. Here, preservation likely requires:
Acid has been the major cause of deterioration in paper publications since paper making was industrialized a few centuries ago. Alkaline substances preserve and strengthen paper. Acid-free materials have a PH of 7.0 or higher. Alkaline material also has a PH of 7.0 or higher. Magnesium carbonate and calcium carbonate are the most common alkaline buffers used to strengthen paper.
The pH Scale measures acidity or basicity on a scale from
0 to
14. Each number indicates a 10 fold differential. A pH of 7 is neutral
and 1
is acid. A pH of more than 7 means the solution is basic. pH
stands for the power of H, or the amount of H+ ions acids or bases take
or
contribute in solution. pH equals the negative log of the concentration
of
H+. pH below 5 is highly acidic. For example, lemon juice has a pH
close to
2. Milk of magnesium has a pH of 9. Library material--paper, binding
material, adhesives--that has a pH below 7 is likely to self-destruct.
We can
add basic (high pH) material to paper to counter the acid.
Mass production of books and periodicals since the mid 1800s
resulted in highly acidic paper that soon became brittle. Thus, a
substantial percentage of older books and periodicals held in libraries
are rapidly decaying.
Acid-free publications should have the infinity symbol (a prone figure eight) or a statement on the verso of the title page. Some books will contain the following statement on the verso of the title page: "The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences--Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. The minimums in this standard are:
Today, about 80 percent of the imprints from the U.S. and Northern
Europe
are printed on acid-free paper. Works that publishers consider to be
ephemeral need not be on permanent paper.
Binding paper editions, rebinding older books, and binding
periodicals is
the most common form of preservation. The Library Binding Institute
(LBI) is
the trade association for commercial binders. Their Standard for
Library
Binding, when followed, creates binding of substantial quality.
Lower standards may be good enough and reduce cost. The advantages of
binding are:
Immediate steps taken to keep collections in good order. Activities may include:
A collection condition assessment is an examination of a collection by qualified staff to identify and evaluate physical condition and storage/use conditions. Condition is a summary statement of an item's physical state. Such a survey normally includes information on:
Collection maintenance includes all of the housekeeping activities associated with keeping a collection neat and clean. It might include inspection of shelves and individual items, item by item dusting, vacuuming, and removal of items for mending and repair. Ideally, this is a systematic on-going process that results in a collection likely to last longer and be more attractive to the user. Evidence suggests that users take better care of items when collections appear to be in good condition.
These are collection surveys intended to identify and describe the physical condition of the items in the collection. Normally, a sample of the collection is surveyed. For example, condition surveys might show that about 25 percent of the book collection has embrittled paper. Paper embrittlement is probably the most serious preservation problem facing research libraries. One recent survey found that about 33 percent of volumes returned from circulation were mutilated.
Conservation treatment includes a variety of treatments of valuable items in the collection to extend the useful lives of the original artifact or container. The focus is on the physical item rather than the intellectual content. Items to be conserved ordinarily have intrinsic value or qualities and attributes that make the intellectual content in the original carrier the most acceptable form of preservation. Treatment examples:
Conservators combine craftsmanship, science, and artistic skills to restore and stabilize highly deteriorated items. For example, they might use deacidification treatments to reduce acidity and to deposit an alkaline buffer to protect paper from future exposure to acid in the environment. They also do the repairs mentioned above. Formal educational/training programs exist in the U.S. for this profession. It is more established and visible in Europe, especially in the U.K.
Deacidification is the chemical process of treating acidic materials
via
an
alkaline agent which is either dissolved or suspended in an inert
liquid to
which the book is exposed or the agent is dispersed via gas vapor that
penetrates the book. The Library of Congress has been the major leader
in
developing and supporting these technologies. "Bookkeeper" is the
current
technology that LC supports and seems to be effective if somewhat
expensive.
Mass deacidification treats several books at once and
reduces the
treatment cost per volume. However, treatment of a larger collection
remains expensive.
Use of a digital scanner or camera to capture a picture of an analog object. Here, such capture is used for preservation purposes. Digital preservation and digital archiving may be used for this process, but these phrases are usually associated with the preservation of digital objects.
Digital Preservation and Digital archiving
include
the several steps involved in maintaining continued access to digital
items.
Institutional mission, imaging opportunities, market factors, costs,
and
user issues come into play here. There is some question about
the
effectiveness of digital preservation initiatives. This is the first
media
designed to be reused and it deteriorates rapidly. Obsolescence in
retrieval
and playback technology is also an important problem. Finally, there is
a
lack of established standards, protocols, and best practice for
preserving
digital information. Curiously, one method of preserving digital
information
is to print page images on archival quality paper or microfilm.
However, digital
preservation
reduces use of the original item and enlarges the audience available to
use
that item.
Digital facsimiles have advantages:
A disaster is an unexpected event that damages materials in the
collection. This might include a burst water pipe on a holiday weekend,
an
earthquake or a tornado. Disasters tend to arrive unannounced and at a
time
when libraries are least prepared to deal with them. For example, "a
clogged pipe at the Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Library sent
water seeping through five floors of historic books, damaging as many
as 8,000 volumes from the 17th to 19th centuries...."
A key ingredient is risk assessment. Typical risk factors include:
Disasters have the potential to destroy collections in any information agency. The two major parts of disaster mitigation are preparation and salvage. Preparation includes prevention and planning designed to minimize the impact of a disaster. Salvage includes response and recovery.
There are some excellent disaster planning manuals available on the WWW and you should be familiar with at least one. Disaster planning normally involves these steps:
Several emergencies or disasters will need to be considered according to their probability.
It is particularly important that those who work in the information agency, often clerical or paraprofessional staff, know exactly what to do, what not to do, and whom to call when there is an emergency.
By the numbers instruction sheets need to be prepared and properly
distributed. A telephone call list [tree] with home and work numbers is
widely distributed with instructions for use. Format specific rescue
and
packing instructions are distributed with instructions for use.
Workshops and
training sessions bring staff up to speed on how to respond to an
emergency. For example vacuum freeze drying of wet materials needs to
take place as soon as possible before books and bound periodicals begin
to expand.
Depending upon the situation, specific plans are implemented to rehabilitate the facility and then the collection. Selecting items to be replaced and ordering replacement copies is also important.
The final steps in this process will be a thoughtful appraisal of
the
agency's disaster performance with some sense of what might be improved
for
next time.
Durability refers to the degree to which the material used to
capture content retains its mechanical and physical properties under
constant use.
Easy repairs can be performed in most information agencies by those with minimal conservation training. However, some instruction is needed to insure that proper materials and techniques are used. Mending torn pages with archival quality tape is an example of an easy repair. Simple repairs usually involve the circulating rather than special collections. Slitting uncut pages, tipping in inserts, making pockets for loose parts, repairing pages, and strengthening hinges are examples of easy repairs.
Environmental monitoring is the systematic visual
observation
of the conditions of collections and materials. It might include
checking on
shelving practices, temperature, humidity, and presence of particulate
matter. Typically, scientific instruments are used to measure
conditions.
The notion that preservation practice should be good enough to meet
immediate challenges rather than the best possible solution for long
term retention. Many involved in preservation have high standards and
their work is labor intensive and thus expensive. Good enough is a cost
reduction measure and also an effort to have more items preserved.
Lamination is the process of reinforcing fragile documents, usually paper, with archival quality thin, translucent sheets that protect the original surface while allowing intellectual content to be viewed. Laminating material must not be bound to the paper, but only to itself beyond the edge of the paper. If the paper is not properly treated before lamination, it will degrade within the lamination.
With proper manufacturing quality, micro formats can be an excellent preservation medium and reduce collection size by 90 percent or more. There have been serious quality control problems with some commercially produced products and especially with those issued by the GPO. Microfiche on cellulose nitrate or cellulose acetate film stock decays as it ages. Users dislike micro formats because they are not easy to use or copy. Libraries often do not provide an attractive facility for users with well maintained hardware. Still, microfiche and reel microfilm remain useful for preservation work. The Association of Research Libraries has a WWW site that contains the National Register of Micro form Masters--the largest source of preservation micro format masters in the U.S.
It is interesting to note that Bell & Howell, which owns
microfilm
masters for most large U.S. newspapers. has a "near-monopoly" on the
their
reproduction rights. They "own" the past as found in our newspapers.
Microformats have substantial preservation assets:
Mutilation is the intentional, although not necessarily malicious,
destruction of library material. Removing pages is a frequent example.
Writing in and high lighting passages is also be included.
Permanence refers to the chemical stability of the container, paper
for example.
Preservation includes a wide variety of tasks and approaches designed to insure the permanence of the intellectual content found in the collection. Preservation activities may be preventive or retrospective. Preventive activities, housekeeping for example, reduce the need for retrospective activities such as repairing, replacing, reformatting, or discarding. Preservation, because of its content orientation, may include discarding the original container and replacing it with another. For example, hard copy periodicals might be replaced by micro formats.
Some include conservation as part of preservation.
Phased preservation is a conservation approach using inexpensive, available materials, acid free containers, for example, to buy time until other treatment is available. This approach assumes that there are a relatively large number of items to be treated, but that resources only allow for a few items to receive treatment at the moment. Perhaps, conservation will be easier or less expensive in the future.
The preservation department is responsible for coordinating a variety of programs and initiatives. These may include:
Preservation microfilming is the process of preserving intellectual content by creating archival quality microfilm. The process includes:
Preservation microfilming is expensive and time-consuming if a relatively large collection is involved, such as a run of newspapers. External funding is usually required. Because of the cost and the need to have a complete set of the items filmed, preservation microfilming is normally done as a cooperative project involving several information agencies. Filming requires technical knowledge, appropriate equipment, and good personnel. Silver halide microfilm is the best for preservation use. University Microfilms is the firm most widely known for this activity. It is a full-service vendor.
Preservation photo duplication or printed facsimile is
the duplication
(copying) of
deteriorated material onto acid-free paper. Quality acid-free paper in
proper
storage conditions has a life of 100 to 200 years. Print on permanent
paper can be an excellent preservation medium.
There are several advantages:
Protective enclosure is a container or enclosure to protect an object from deterioration or further deterioration. Examples might include boxes, wrappers, portfolios, and envelopes made of acid-free archival material and designed to protect the item from the environment.
Plastic containers are harmful if they are made of vinyl which produces gases that can destroy media, especially magnetic tapes. Polypropylene, polyester, and polyethylene are safe.
This is the process of moving the intellectual content from one content to another. The most common reformatting is from paper to micro formats, either reel microfilm or microfiche. Preservation photo duplication is another reformatting process.
Refreshing is the process of preserving digital intellectual content by moving it to another carrier where it may be read. Migrating is an alternative word for the same process. Refreshing is required as hardware and software to read digital files becomes unavailable. The copying process, while preserving intellectual content, is an opportunity for errors to be made that could harm content. Medium Refreshing is copying data from a physical carrier to another physical carrier of the same type. Medium conversion is the process of copying intellectual content to another carrier type where it may be read.
These consider which items in a collection are valuable enough to warrant replacement so that they will be available for future users. Periodical issues with missing pages will need replacement pages before they can be bound. Variant editions, microfilm or digital for example, might be reasonable replacement candidates.
Restoration binding is an attempt to reproduce the original appearance of the item as nearly as possible.
Retention is the determination of how long an item in the collection needs to be retained. Typically, there are three retention categories. Temporary retention includes ephemeral material soon to be discarded, superseded or reformatted. Permanent retention includes material to be kept for a long time. Archival retention includes those few items to be kept forever. Usually, these items are found in a special collection. Preservation and conservation effort focuses on the archival and permanent collections. Obviously, determining which items are valuable enough to warrant preservation/conservation is difficult.
Reversibility is the ability to undo a process or treatment with no change to the object which has been treated. Ideally, all conservation techniques should be reversible. Adhesive tape is a prime example of repair that damages the material that it touches and is not reversible.
Barrow in 1958 found that 97 percent of the nonfiction books published between 1900 and 1939 will be unusable by 2000 [this turned out not to be true, but a high percentage of these books are acidic and failing]. The University of Illinois (Urbana) found that 37 percent of the items in its collection were seriously deteriorated, 34 percent were moderately deteriorated and 29 percent were in good condition. Similar studies found that most research libraries had a large proportion of books and periodicals that will not be usable in the future. Those items issued between 1870 and 1920 are most likely to be the worst physical condition.
The information environment has changed dramatically. "The growth of
digital information technologies, the
explosion in the production and dissemination of information, the
constraints imposed by expanding copyright monopolies, the static or
shrinking resources devoted to preservation, the destabilization
of
cultural and intellectual canons, and the escalating demand for
unmediated
access" have dramatically changed the preservation environment. As
access becomes the most important element in content use,
memory institutions [such as libraries and museums] cannot manage
preservation by themselves. "It is the scale of distribution of the
Web, the richness of its content, the diversity of its genres, formats,
and authors, and its unpredictability that lead to skepticism about the
feasibility and desirability of selecting Web-based materials for
long-term access." Change in academic study and research makes it
more difficult to predict what content will be needed in
the future. Use is not always a good predictor of value or popularity.
For example, OP materials that have been digitized and place on
university websites
have seen substantial use while the print volumes languished on the
shelf.
Originally, paper was made with a process that created long, strong fibers buffered by alkaline substances. As the demand for paper dramatically increased, the methods and materials used changed. Instead of rags, ground wood with its unstable elements was used as the source material. Industrial processes resulted in short, weak fibers. Acids and oxidizing agents used to whiten the paper and properly capture the ink from the printing press, especially the alum rosin sizing, eventually turns into sulfuric acid which eats away at the paper itself. For the last four centuries, most manufactured paper was self-destructive. Within the last two decades, most book publishers have used acid-free or alkaline paper for books thought to be of permanent value. Such paper, with a life span of more than 100 years is usually identified on the verso of the title page with a symbol consisting of a side wise 8 in a circle. Recycled paper often contains acidic paper and should not be used for manufacturing books likely to be kept.
Book construction remains a problem. Although most publishers disagree, there is some evidence that modern trade books are more poorly constructed in order to reduce cost. Spine lining is often weak. Cover material may not be durable. Adhesive bindings, especially the hot-melt types, lack the long-term flexibility/holding power of the traditional sewed binding and are much more difficult to open and hold open. They become brittle quickly. The tear strength of paper may be inadequate for several circulations. Poor quality cardboard in bindings is easily bent or damaged. In defense of the publishers, they manufacture books for individual rather than institutional users so that books are good enough for a few uses in the home.
Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems rarely provide proper conditions for collections. The temperature in user accessible areas should be about 70 degrees with relative humidity of 50 percent. In storage areas, a temperature of 50 degrees and 35 percent relative humidity would be best. This should not vary much. Consistency is important. High temperatures and high humidity are very destructive.
Air
pollution, especially sulfur, ozone, and nitrogen, contains
chemicals
that
attack paper. Particulate matter in the air such as dust, ash, smoke,
dirt,
and mold spores damage paper and bindings.
Poorly designed, but externally attractive, buildings often
contain harmful features such as considerable natural light. As Michael
Trinkley said, "
...designing for human comfort, most of the time, will result in
premature aging and deterioration of collections." Inadequate attention
to temperature and humidity often creates problems especially in
low bid HVAC systems. Water pipes need to be accompanied by water
detection devices. A reasonable investment in air filtration is
essential. In construction and furnishing, use materials that will not
produce harmful vapors. Avoid carpet. Heat and moisture speed the
chemical reactions through which acid destroys cellulose fibers so that
the key again is temperature and humidity control.
Photo chemicals are also an important problem. Ultraviolet or near ultraviolet light causes bindings, inks, and dyes to fade, darkens and yellows paper and bleaches and oxidizes paper fiber. Collection managers should use incandescent lamps or florescent lamps which emit little UV, shield fluorescent tubes and widows with UV filters and use window blinds to control sunlight from outside. As much as possible, lights should be off in areas where collections are stored. A UV monitor and a light meter plus fade strips should be used to test light problems, especially in areas where longer term preservation/conservation is important.
Biological substances such as Fungi--mold or mildew -- harm library materials as well as to people. Mold outbreaks have damaged many books and caused the evacuation of librarians and users in several libraries in recent years. High humidity and warm temperatures cause fungi to grow and rapidly multiply (temperatures about 70 degrees with humidity above 50% are a problem). Relative humidity and temperature should be monitored on a regular basis. A proper heating/ventilation/air conditioning system and humidity control should solve the problem. It is important to avoid temperature and humidity fluctuations since such change harms most containers. Basements and walls below ground level should be carefully water-proofed.
Insects and rodents can also be a problem. Cellulose (the major component of paper) is a food source for a number of living things. Spilled food and drink attracts insects. Rodents also eat cellulose and make nests with. A quality extermination firm should be able to control insects and rodents. It is better if staff and customers do not bring food and drink into the areas where collections are stored.
Water damage is a fairly common hazard and one that should be anticipated in most disaster prevention/planning programs. Poor maintenance of old plumbing, leaks in the roof, and careless placement of air-conditioning or ventilation ducts are often problems in older buildings or newer buildings with design problems. For example, the Hodges Library roof has leaked for years. Paper materials that become wet often become moldy within 48 hours of water damage. Unless moved into a cold-storage facility immediately, it is likely that the mold will never be totally eliminated.
Photocopying frequently damages bound volumes. With over sewing and narrow margins, volumes must be forced open on the machine, damaging the binding and the paper.
Shelving is often a problem in libraries, especially those without adequate space. Leaning books cause undue strain on the spine, sewing, and pages. Tightly packed books are harmed with shelving and removal. Poor quality metal shelving may cause substantial wear and tear as material comes into contact with the metal.
Book drops often damage material as it falls through the chute and lands on the bottom. The longer the fall, the greater the damage.
Normal wear and tear will eventually degrade an item so that it will need to be discarded. In some situations, abnormal wear and tear is a problem. Educational initiatives with users can often substantially reduce such problems, but there will always be some problem users. Information agency staff should identify items that need mending or repair when charging/discharging and shelving. Prompt identification and mending substantially prolongs the life of material.
Limitations on use are likely to create some problems. Building use material is more likely to be stolen or mutilated than items that may be borrowed. Limited hours, an unattractive environment, expensive, poor quality or time-consuming photo duplication result in damage to materials that cannot be borrowed.
Theft is a problem, especially those with
relatively
rare or valuable items. Security systems, vigilant staff, and special
collections for more valuable items make a substantial difference.
Often,
material in circulating collections is valuable and the collection
manager is
unaware of that. For example, large format art books with color plates
or books with maps
have
been stolen or mutilated for years since there is quite a market for
the
individual images. In the recent past, national theft rings have
taken
orders for books to be stolen. In a few cases, agency staff have stolen
items
from the collection. While used book stores and websites work with
libraries on this issue, stolen books are sold on eBay.
Preservation is a problem with all formats. Ironically, newer digital formats are much less viable than the older traditional ones. For example, under proper conditions, a clay tablet will last for thousands of years. In contrast, many digital products may be unusable within a decade because the software and hardware required for playback is no longer available. For example, large portions of the 1960 Census are readable only with a Univac type II-A tape drive, which was a museum relic just 16 years after the Census. The 1979 Landsat satellite data is inaccessible since it was recorded on Xerox computers that can no longer be operated. Thus, digital information requires periodic refreshing to deal with hardware/software obsolescence. Information professionals are particularly concerned with the long-term retention of information found in commercial databases and servers. Most for-profit information providers do not believe that they are responsible for longer term preservation of their products. It is also relatively easy to delete or corrupt digital files. Micro formats may develop spots. Magnetic media may lose metal oxide particles. For example, early videotapes of TV shows show substantial deterioration due to separation of the magnetic particles from the base. Compact disks may delaminate or become unreadable.
As a rough rule of thumb, the higher the level of technology used to create an intellectual product, the shorter the life expectancy of the container. For example, a clay tablet in the right environment may last for thousands of years and be easily read. A digital file may be unreadable just a few years after it has been created. Here is the ordinary life expectancy of common storage media:
Previously, in creating intellectual property, a variety of drafts were created that could be saved and provide insight into the creation process. Often, with digital tools only the final copy is preserved and it may not be viewable in the future. Another example might be the digital camera where only the "good" shots are kept in the camera and only the "better" shots are saved on the computer.
While digital objects have the potential to be a relatively
permanent medium, problems with specifications, deterioration
of the covering, and poor manufacturing standards makes these objects
unsuitable
for preservation purposes. A recent survey of 54 Research Library Group
members, found that 36 had digital materials and 15 of these said they
lacked
the ability to read some of these materials. digital objects require
constant and perpetual maintenance and they depend on complex systems
of hardware, software, data to be refreshed and available for current
use. "No acceptable methods exist today to preserve complex digital
object that combine text, data, images, audio, and video and that
require specific software applications for reuse."
If we ignore some of the longer term problems, newer formats do make fragile materials much more widely available. Filming or scanning a fragile item and then making the image widely available substantially improves access while eliminating the need to use the item itself. The Library of Congress is now filling ILL requests for some small, fragile items by scanning the items and making the images available via the Internet.
Traditionally, librarians and other information professionals have given little notice to the physical condition of their collections. In recent years, there has been a decline in preservation funding. There is no coordinated national or regional effort or strategic plan for preservation. Even disaster planning, which should be part of everyday agency management, is often ignored in many information agencies.
Increasingly restrictive intellectual property restraints create a variety of preservation problems for research institutions with a need for copying and migrating for archival purposes.
Given likely resources, it is likely that most items in a collection or their intellectual content will not be preserved. Thus, from the beginning selecting for preservation is a disagreeable task. No one will be happy with the result.
Obviously, those involved with special collections in libraries and those in museums and galleries have done much better because of the considerable investment involved in these collections. Typically, these collections are relatively small, the items in the collection represent a considerable investment and are obviously valuable.
Collections of ordinary materials, books, periodicals, maps, files
and
records, paper, micro formats, and digital, in many organizations, have
not
been well-treated. Preservation is most likely to occur in
large,well-funded
research organizations. Conservation is largely limited to a few
collections
that focus on valuable or primary source materials. The growing
dependence of
information professionals on ephemeral digital files and collections
clearly indicates
that preservation will be much more difficult in the future
than in
the past.
The key to preserving intellectual content for future generations is
the
selection decision. Someone must decide what items are to
preserved
and how they will be preserved. Since there are far more items that
might be
preserved than can be preserved, this is a most difficult decision. The
selection decision may be made by information professionals, usually on
the
basis of past use, or by subject specialists. A notable problem is that
most
information agencies do not have enough funding to acquire all of the
new
items requested by users so it may seem dysfunctional to spend scarce
monies
to preserve items that are much less likely to be heavily used or may
be used by those at another institution.
Substantial preservation efforts require funding. Current business
and economic models do not provide the monies needed for even minimal
levels of preservation. While libraries, museums, and other information
agencies have historically been responsible for preservation, the
burden is far too great for them to handle. Who will take
responsibility for preserving our cultural heritage now that it is
increasingly digital? Market forces and Federal legislation work
against long-term preservation by placing a barrier between access and
ownership while denying responsibility for preservation.
It is increasingly clear that preservation cannot be solved at the
local level. National and regional solutions are urgently needed. This
requires renewed and expanded cooperation between a wide variety of
stakeholders. While top-down approaches are often favored, beginning at
the community or state level seems more likely to succeed. For example,
well regarded recommendations include:
Select an information agency, review the causal factors mentioned above, and discuss which threats would most likely affect your collections. Why?
Encouraging users to properly handle materials in the collection is a problem for some libraries. Discuss initiatives you make take to reduce normal and abnormal wear and tear.
Digital files and collections present special preservation problems. Select an information agency and discuss what action might be taken to insure that more digital content is preserved for future use.
You are the collection development/management manager in a research oriented information agency. Your preservation/conservation funding is limited. How would you determine which works are to be preserved?
You are the collection development/management manager in a small public or a school library media center. Should you be concerned with preservation/conservation issues? With preservation/conservation for items in your collections? Why?
