Author: Jacob Nadal

Planning for Worst: Disasters in High Density Storage Facilities

I am speaking at “Planning for Worst: Disaster Planning and Response in High Density Storage Facilities” on June 26, 8 am in the Morial Convention Center, Room 343. While disaster planning in libraries is well established, very few libraries have plans specific to the challenging environment of high-density storage.

Simple activities such as removal and tracking of materials become more complicated by barcoded storage trays on 30+ foot high shelves. This program will focus on current disaster research ranging from fire protection and recovery, recovery in shared repository environments, case studies of recovery from water disasters, and perspectives on recovery from non-water events.

Earthquake Info:
US Geological Service
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/
Southern Clifornia Earthquake Data Center
http://http://www.data.scec.org/chrono_index/northreq.html

For Your Library:
FEMA E-74 Reducing the Risks of Nonstructural Earthquake Damage
http://www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/earthquake/fema74/
Techniques for the Seismic Rehabilitation of Existing Buildings
http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=2393
Designing for Earthquakes: A Manual for Architects
http://www.fema.gov/library/viewRecord.do?id=2418
For You: Los Angeles Fire Department Emergency Preparedness
http://lafd.org/eqbook.pdf

Preservation of E-Reference Sources

I’ll be speaking to the Reference Publishers Advisory Committee of RUSA on the afternoon of June 25th, 1:30-3:30 in room 342 of the Morial Convention Center. Slides, links, and follow up information will be posted here. My centers on Craig Mod’s ideas about pre- and post- artifactual
publishing practices and around that core, builds a framework for determining what is possible in preserving materials.

Craig Mod’s essay on post-artifactual publishing: http://craigmod.com/journal/post_artifact/

The California Digital Library Model License Agreement: http://www.cdlib.org/gateways/vendors/guidelines_licensing.html

SpringerReference: http://www.springerreference.com

HistoryLink: http://historylink.org

Portico: http://www.portico.org

ALA Annual 2011: Common Sense Preservation Assessment

I’ll be leading a session called “Common Sense Preservation Assessment” for Rural, Native, and Tribal Libraries Of All Kinds (RNTLOAK) at ALA Annual 2011, on Monday, June 27, from 10:30am-12:00pm.

I’ve done a few sessions for RNTLOAK and it’s one of the most interesting groups for me. I personally benefit from thinking through what really matters and trying to find a way to give some useful guidance to libraries that aren’t anchored in a major research university. More than that, the librarians and archivists in these institutions do exceptional work in support of critical resources. Every time I do one of these sessions, I find out about wonderful troves of local history and cultural property, and hear moving stories of how libraries and archives are vital parts of our memory and sense of community.

This should be a lively presentation. I plan to show a few simple tools that have been used successfully in the field and I have a store of examples from a decade of preservation crises that I’ll intersperse with some “do this first, that second, and the rest can wait” kind of advice. My plan is to talk for about 10-15 mins about the tools right up front and then take a break for questions. After that, I’ll do 30-40 mins or so on “from the field” examples and then turn it over to the group for an open discussion.

Some follow-up from the session:

Here’s a link to the Kansas Cultural Heritage Emergency Resources Network

More information about the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme and a related article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Next Age of Discovery“.

And the big hit, the Council of State Archivists Pocket Response Plan.

ALA Annual 2011: Have Metadata, Can Collaborate: Putting the MARC21 583 Field to Use in Cooperative Preservation Efforts

I’m speaking at an ALA Annual Program called “Have Metadata, Can Collaborate: Putting the MARC21 583 Field to Use in Cooperative Preservation Efforts.” The session is on Sunday, June 26, 2011, 1:30–3:30pm, in the New Orleans Morial Convention Center, Room 342.

This program will showcase a variety of ways that libraries are communicating about their preservation and conservation activities. My section will focus on using metadata to support cooperative print archives projects.

Continue reading ALA Annual 2011: Have Metadata, Can Collaborate: Putting the MARC21 583 Field to Use in Cooperative Preservation Efforts

Scarcity and Preservation Decision-Making

I’ve been working on a number of projects to incorporate holdings data into preservation decision-making at UCLA Library. The first paper from that, co-authored with Dawn Aveline and Annie Peterson, is forthcoming in an ALCTS Monograph, Shared Collections: Collaborative Stewardship.

The current pre-print draft and supporting materials are available below, along with links to presentations and related work that draw on our study. All links cited in these documents were checked and copied to an archive file on January 7, 2015, and access is available by request. You can use the comment form to contact us about the work.

Preservation Week Posts

For Preservation Week 2011, I wrote a series of posts for the UCLA Library Preservation Department Weblog. Those are linked here and archived after the fold.

  1. Monday, April 25: Tangible Records
  2. Tuesday, April 26: Projects versus Progress
  3. Wednesday, April 27: Data!
  4. Thursday, April 28: Preservation Education
  5. Friday, April 29:Preservation Administrators and Conservators

Continue reading Preservation Week Posts

Fundamentals of Preservation

The next installment of Fundamentals of Preservation runs May 16-June 10. You can contact me for more information through the comment form (nothing is posted publicly; it just sends me an email) or you learn more and register for the course at the ALCTS website.

I co-developed Fundamentals of Preservation with Karen Brown (SUNY Albany) as part of the ALCTS continuing education series. This course is part of the three-course series that makes up the Library Support Staff Certification ProgramCollection Management elective. Fundamentals of Preservation was recently mentioned in the American Libraries Winter Digital Supplement (Pages 11-12) on e-learning.

 

 

Assoc. for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Workshop

On May 11, I’ll be co-leading “Audio Archives 101: Identification, Organization, and Preservation,” the pre-conference workshop for ARSC 2011. The conference is in Los Angeles, downtown at the Westin Bonaventure. Audio archives are a fascinating part of the library, archive, and museum sector. As a preservation librarian, the media in these collections pose a lot of challenging problems.

Aaron Bittel (UCLA) and Karen Fishman (Library of Congress) deserve the lion’s share of credit for putting this workshop together. I’ll primarily be talking about assessment, but audio archives require a diverse set of expertise, and Aaron and Karen bring that in spades. I expect to learn just as much as I teach. There will be some lecture, plenty of time for discussion, but most importantly, a significant amount of hands-on examination of materials.

Fundamentals of Preservation

I co-developed Fundamentals of Preservation with Karen Brown (SUNY Albany) as part of the ALCTS continuing education series. This course is part of the three-course series that makes up the Library Support Staff Certification Program Collection Management elective. Fundamentals of Preservation was recently mentioned in the American Libraries Winter Digital Supplement (Pages 11-12) on e-learning.

You can contact me for more information through the comment form (nothing is posted publicly; it just sends me an email) or you learn more and register for the course at the ALCTS website. The next installment runs April 4-29, and the course is taught 3 or 4 times each year.

Collections of Record

Some remarks related to two recent snippets from reading about the evolving landscape of shared collections:

From Rick Lugg (http://sampleandhold-r2.blogspot.com/2011/02/misspent-funds-or-strategic-reserve.html)

A strategic reserve of both print and digital scholarship seems an obvious choice. But like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, this should be coordinated at the national or regional level, and the costs should be borne by the entire community which depends upon that reserve. As a community, we have begun to move in this direction, through participation in trusted print repositories and trusted digital repositories such as Hathi Trust. Investment in these programs, through both dollars and contributed collections, will gradually assure that “misspent funds” are converted to something more lasting and cost-effective.

From Gary Frost (http://futureofthebook.com/2011/01/booknotes-74/)

From remote storage to high density storage to shared print archive, the revamp of the status of print continues. The preservation perspective is in revamp as well. At first the attractions of security and more optimal storage provided benefit. Then the dissolve of classified shelving, more sweeping relocation and disaster risk caused pause. Now systematic discard is pending.

I will add a few notes for preservation management in this context.

Continue reading Collections of Record