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.

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