Preservation Management for Libraries, Archives and Museums

Polona Vilar (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Journal of Documentation

ISSN: 0022-0418

Article publication date: 5 September 2008

937

Keywords

Citation

Vilar, P. (2008), "Preservation Management for Libraries, Archives and Museums", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 64 No. 5, pp. 781-784. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410810899772

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2008, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


The collection of 11 essays prepared by a very international group of authors brings an insight into some of the issues of preservation management and tries to show that some of them are common to all institutions from this area (libraries, museums, archives and galleries, which the authors have named memory institutions). It tries to offer guidance from a range of international experts on preservation methods for the sustainability of collections. As the editors put it, these institutions in their collections deal with a wide variety of material and documentary cultural artefacts as well as contemporary digital material, both digitized and digitally‐born; and the management of this wide range of traditional and new media formats is very challenging for all of them. The topics covered in the book range from collection management to the relationship between access and preservation, issues such as relevance and use, heritage, funding and sustainability, legislation and government directives, promotion, userpays and free access, ethics and training, and the impact of digitization and resultant status of the artefact.

In Chapter 1 John Feather deals with the theme of balancing access and preservation when he speaks about the management of our documentary heritage. He pays much attention to documentary heritage and especially to the duty of its interpretation by archives and libraries so that it can reach the widest possible public.

Chapter 2 deals with preservation policy and could be of use to anyone who wishes to establish and execute it. Author Mirjam Foot builds on her extensive experience and argues how important it is to have a firmly shaped preservation policy. In her words, preservation policy needs to be a living document, constantly being updated, monitored and reviewed. It must also be robust, realistic and comprehensive, taking into account all resources. Her essay is backed up by an extensive bibliography.

The content of Chapter 3, written by David Grattan and John Moses, is at first glance somewhat different from the rest of the essays, namely, they deal with the preservation of intangible cultural heritage, such as customs, traditions, ceremonies, language, alongside with contextual information on their creation and use. In spite their intangible nature, they by default need to be documented on some video or audio medium, could be in digital form, which places them in the same group of objects to be preserved as in other cases in libraries, archives, etc. This is also the common ground which makes this essay as relevant as any other in this collection.

Chapters 4 and 5 are in a way similar, as they both discuss the relationship of surrogate records to the originals. In Chapter 4, Marilyn Deegan deals with digital surrogates in digital and analogue format and covers issues such as authenticity and the different strategies for assuring it, acceptability of surrogate records for the users. Interestingly, she also discusses when and why a surrogate may substitute the original to the extent where the original is no longer needed. Yola de Lusenet in Chapter 5 discusses digitization of photographic materials, and in this context also touches the issue of acceptability of surrogate records. Another preservation issue she deals with is reformatting of different materials, such as digitization of dual microfilm copies of paper materials, with the purpose of improving access or reformatting audiovisual materials. Digitization seems to be the strategy she favours, arguing that today's and future generations may soon start to rely solely on digital materials and therefore any other preservation technique may become useless.

Another interesting contribution is the essay in Chapter 6 by Henk J. Porck, Frank J. Ligterink, Gerrit de Bruin and Steph Scholten which is rather specific in scope, but nonetheless interesting. The authors are dealing with the ever relevant issue of economical allocation of resources for preservation. They have developed a model for ranking research proposals on the basis of three aspects: preservation, access and economy. The essay includes an invitation for the audience to participate in the evaluation of the model, since it is relatively new and has not yet proven its worth in practice.

Reformation of audiovisual materials is the subject of another essay by Bob Pymm in Chapter 7. He discusses digital as well as analogue formats, issues and problems connected with maintenance, storage, monitoring of their condition, and makes a strong point of how continuous and intensive the preservation process needs to be. Copying and digitization are emphasized as long‐term maintenance strategies for the material which is often found in poor state which endangers their very existence.

Digitally born objects are discussed by Barbara Reed in Chapter 8. She discusses many aspects, ranging from problems with obsolescence of hardware, software and storage media, to metadata, and different techniques for preservation, e.g. emulation, migration, digital repositories. She also touches the issue of the enormous amount of digital data which is being generated today.

An intriguing, and again rather specific, issue of the effect of war upon cultural heritage is dealt with in Chapter 9 by René Teijgeler. The author gives numerous examples of armed conflicts which also resulted in destruction of cultural heritage, such as former Yugoslavia and Iraq, and argues that the destructive effects of war are no smaller that those of natural disasters, although often underestimated. The author strongly recommends advance preparation of worst case scenarios and provides a range of good examples stemming from real war situations. He also gives an overview of some of the international preservation initiatives in this area.

Chapter 10 by Helen Forde at first sight does not directly relate to preservation, as it discusses access to information as an absolute human right and part of the so‐called “social contract”. However, the author argues that access to information is also a duty for cultural heritage institutions, which have been slow in complying with this “contract”. In recent years the conditions are improving, and the author gives many examples of good practice in enabling access to cultural heritage collections, digitization projects, freedom of information acts, etc. According to her, it is important to balance access and preservation, enable access also for future generations, plan and appropriately fund preservation, and last but not least, advocate its importance at any possible occasion.

The final chapter, written by the editors, is looking into the future. The future memory institutions are seen as part of the new coordinated multidisciplinary approach to collection management, supported by strong national bodies, such as Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Institute of Museum and Library Services. Part of this multidisciplinarity is also the changing nature of such institutions from museums, libraries and archives into kind of hybrids between all of these. The authors also advocate the global approach to preservation, as the only perspective for the growing demand for access to these materials.

On the whole we could say that the collection is rather comprehensive, providing insight into main preservation issues which emerge in the twenty‐first century. It even goes beyond everyday themes by presenting extreme situations, such as war, or turning attention to the more unusual topics, such as the intangible cultural heritage. It makes an interesting point by redefining the nature of the memory institutions and trying to project their future role. I believe that one of its best points is turning attention to the very relevant and needed balance between the need for preservation and the need for public access to information which is likely to become even more important in the future.

One of the things one notices when reading this book is that although it covers a very wide range of issues and themes, it does not go into great depths about any of them. This is somewhat compensated with extensive bibliographies which can be a good guide for the reader who might be interested in more detailed study of a certain topic. There are some more apparent drawbacks, the rather modest index being one of them. There could also be more written on the economic aspect of preservation, which is left somewhat scattered between other topics, although it is one of the biggest problems the area is facing today.

But nonetheless we could say that the book is an interesting and worthwhile reading for, as it is said on its cover, “anyone working in the library, archive, museum and heritage sectors”. I think we could add to this group also people involved in shaping preservation policies, financing it or even representatives of the authorities.

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