User:LIS632-07JSC/preservation education

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o 1. Overview Preservation as an industry is the business of taking actions to conserve evidentiary records of a person place or thing for the discovery or reference by another now or in the future as far as can be realized.

Preservation is deemed so important to our evolution as people and as a country that an assertion statement on the homepage of United States government website, The National Archives, reads “Democracy Starts Here.”  Archiving is a form documenting the evidence of culture preserved.

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.

Different points of view are the result of differing knowledge venues.

Public Libraries: Simply it is easier to purchase more of what is actually being used than to preserve a 40 year old book that has outlived it’s immediate reference value for the possibility of an inquiring mind another 15 to 20 years later, say another generation. There isn’t a lack of concern about preservation; as much as, it is the decision as to what should be conserved or preserved, at what price, where, for whom, and for how long that stalls the preservation issue in practice in an institution dependent upon uncertain city government funds from fiscal year to fiscal year. However, there is a need for preservation of even the most common of literature for the most common of mankind.

Archival Repositories and Cultural Institutions: Perhaps, it is the archival repository whose charge it is to archive for a select collection, to teach its employees preservation techniques that go beyond what a public library can accomplish or library schools teach. It is in archive, and conservation preservation societies that can be approached with a more precise focus on meaningful approaches to safeguarding valuable manuscripts.

Library Schools: Conservation Preservation has often been a backroom intellectual endeavor by museums and collectors of rare manuscripts and perhaps the Vatican and therefore its deserved focus in library school diminished because of its marginal exposure as a science of high academic standing.

Information storage trends are another factor in constant flux with the advent of new data storage software, and hardware, shelving furniture, various sizes of books; have revealed an otherwise non-user-focused technology, basically predictable product of an industry, into a highly dynamic user-focused technocratic industry of unknown growth, potential and regulation.

o 2 Historic Inquiry into Paper Conservation and Preservation

2.1 William J Barrow In 1957 William J Barrow of the Virginia State Library, received a grant form the Council on Library resources to determine the extent and causes of deterioration of modern book papers. By testing paper from American books of 1900 to 1949 on the shelves of libraries, he learned that after forty years on the library shelf books had lost on average 96 percent of its original strength; after less than ten years, it had already lost 64 per cent of its original strength. The principal cause of this deterioration was determined to be, not the wood-pulp fibers, since rag papers of this period were also ageing rapidly, but the residual sulfuric acid produced in both rag and wood pulp papers by the manufacturing methods used after 1870 for sizing and bleaching the paper. The slower methods used earlier in the history of making of rag paper left it only mildly alkaline or neutral. Such paper has maintained its strength for 300 to 800 years, despite sulfur dioxide and other air pollutants. (2.  The Library, Edited by Rolland E. Stevens)

William J. Barrow's 1933 article on the fragile state of wood pulp paper predicted the shelf life of this paper was approximately 40-50 years. At that point the paper would begin to show signs of deterioration, and that research for a new media on which to write and print was needed.

In an online document Paul Conway, Head, Preservation Department Yale University Library states, "Preservation History in the United States, as an industry, has its roots in paper." "The introduction of wood pulp and acidic compounds to paper, required at the time by a manufacturing industry desperate to keep up with demand, started the "slow fires" of deterioration that preservation efforts are now attempting to squelch." 

2.2 A New Dawn In Preservation The 1966 Florence, Italy Flood awakened the cultural community to the importance of having a preservation plan. One of the worst disasters since the burning of the Alexandria Library in ancient Rome, created a resurgence and interest in the profession of preservation and conservation world wide and many new methods and conceptions of preservation were realized. 

2.3 Paul Banks

2.3.1 US Preservation Pgm

2.3.2 National Endowment of the Arts

2.3.3 Brittle books Pgm It is important to review the lessons learned from a nationally, coordinated preservation microfilming program. The library community has held different views about the best course of action to preserve brittle books, and the controversies have been public and sometimes contentious. Yet the progress in preserving the information recorded on the embrittled imprints of the past century and a half has been remarkable. In part as a result of the work done to address the brittle book problem, guidelines for preservation of library resources are well established and followed by virtually all libraries in the United States, as well as by other countries. (1.  CLIR President, Deanna Marcum on Abby Smith's 1999 CLIR Report)

2.3.4 RLG

o 3 Practice of Conservation and Preservation 3.1 Education In March 2007, the U.S. News & World Report , online voted the following three schools the best in the United States for preservation education with the University of Texas-Austin as number one.

Library and Information Studies Specialties: Archives and Preservation Ranked in 2006*

University of Texas–Austin Courses offered here separate Conservation 				(Certificate in Archival Studies (CAS) in 					       Conservation of Library and Archival Materials) 			         from Preservation (Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) in Preservation Administration of Library and Archival Materials). These advanced 			certificates are award on top of the Master of Science in Information Studies degree: 

University of Maryland–College Park  Courses offered here are referred to as 					Preservation and are awarded on top of the Master of Science in Information: 

University of Michigan–Ann Arbor  Courses offered here focus on Preservation 				(Preservation of Information (PI) Specialization) on top of the Master of Science in Information: 


 * This ranking was computed in January of the year cited, based on data from a survey sent out in the fall of the previous year.

The area of conservation and preservation education varies in its emphasis on either conservation or preservation. At times the two are distinct disciplines, at other times they are indistinguishable. The American Institute for Conservation (AIC)  introduces their program as follows: “Conservators are highly trained professionals with specialized knowledge and skills in sciences, humanities, and studio art, which enables them to undertake the study and treatment of cultural property,” and  “…restoring the structure and reintegrating the appearance of deteriorated cultural artifacts and establishing the controlled environments necessary for preservation.”  Clearly at AIC a conservationist is the professional you are, and preservation is enabled by the conservation efforts of a conservationist. Further the AIC has a focus on conserving cultural artifacts. “To improve the conservation efforts of libraries, archives, historical organizations, museums, and other repositories; to provide the highest quality services to institutions without in-house conservation facilities or those that seek specialized expertise; and to provide leadership in the preservation and conservation fields,” this is the mission on the home page of the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)  However, there Center is heralded on their homepage as “a national and international resource for preservation education” not conservation. 3.2 Associations 3.2.1 Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) 3.2.2 National Council For Preservation Education (NCPE) 

3.3 Certification AIC is reviewing its 2006 Certification Needs Assessment. 

o 4 Associations Association For Research Libraries

o 5 Technology: Help or Hindrance

o 6 Legal restrictions

o 7 Criticism: 7.1 Has conservation specialized itself out of general usage? 7.2 Beyond the 1850's: In this, the Information Age, the future of the book may be electronic. Should the cover art of the of the book, a marketing tool, be forsaken for the knowledge within? Thus giving the ideological book "cover" or "cover presentation" in the digital age new context in its marketing.

o 8 References 8.1   The Future of the Past: Preservation in American Research Libraries by Abby SmithApril 1999 (FREE WEB) http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub82/pub82text.html

8.2. The Library Edited by Rolland E. Stevens, The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Mar., 1967), pp. 164-166 (JSTOR FEE BASED WEB)doi:10.2307/1979270 

8.3

8.4 U.S. News & World Report, online 

8.5 The National Archives of the United States

8.6 http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/conway2/] pg 2 of 22 para. 4 - Author’s Preface; Conway, Paul, Head, Preservation Department Yale University Library.

See Also References http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/rusaprotools/referenceguide/guidelinespreservation.htm

Preservation: Issues and Planning by Paul Banks & Roberta Pillette ISBN-13:978-0-8389-0776-4 ©2000 http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/alctsconted/presentations/kaufman.pdf

Conservators and/or Pgms to watch: Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Award http://www.ala.org/ala/alcts/alctsawards/banksharrisb/banksharris.htm

ALA - Disaster Preparedness and Recovery http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/woissues/disasterpreparedness/distrprep.cfm

Council on Library and Information Resources http://www.clir.org/pubs/film/film.html

Links to Preservation Resources Compiled by Pat Turpening, University of Cincinnati Law Library. Please forward changes to Pat at pat.turpening@law.uc.edu. http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/techlinks/preservation.htm

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