ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Preservation News

Jane Hedberg is preservation program officer at Harvard University Library, e-mail: jane_hedberg@harvard.edu; fax: (617) 496-8344

LC preservation Web site

In celebration of the Library of Congress’s bicentennial, the Library of Congress Preservation Directorate has launched Bach to Baseball Cards. This Web site spotlights some of the library’s treasures and the preservation treatments used to protect them. Each of the more than 100 objects selected for inclusion has a description of its historical importance and preservation treatment, along with a thumbnail image that can be enlarged. Among the objects are the January 4, 1800, issue of the Ulster County Gazette, which published John Marshall’s address on the death of George Washington and his words “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his country”; an album of albumen prints that depict the construction of Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina; a drawing of Max, the blue meany from the Yellow Submarine; Helen Keller’s raised letter Book of Psalms, and a deck of playing cards that conceals escape maps smuggled during WWII to Americans in German POW camps. The URL is http://lcweb.loc.gov/ preserv/bachbase/.

NEDCC digital handbook

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has published Handbook for Digital Projects: A Management Tool for Preservation and Access. It is intended as a primer and covers up-to-date information on topics such as the rationale for digitization and preservation, selection of materials, technical issues, digital longevity, project management, vendor relations, and Copyright. The handbook is an outgrowth of NEDCC’s School for Scanning conferences, with most chapters written by current or former conference faculty. Authors include Howard Besser of the University of California at Los Angeles, Paul Conway of Yale University, Stephen Chapman of Harvard University, Diane Vogt-O’Connor of the National Parks Service, Melissa Smith Levine of the Library of Congress, Stephen Puglia of the National Archives and Records Administration, Franziska Frey of the Image Permanence Institute, Janet Gertz of Columbia University, Eileen Gifford Fenton of the University of Michigan, Steven Smith of AMIGOS, and Charles Rhyne of Reed College.

Copies are available for $38 from Juanita Singh, NEDCC, 100 Brickstone Square, Andover, MA 01810; phone: (978) 470-1010; fax: (978) 475-6021; e-mail: juanita@nedcc.org. An order form can be found at http:// www.nedcc.org/digord.htm.

CLIR migration study

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has published a report based on work conducted at Comell University Library. “Risk Management of Digital Information: A File Format Investigation” reviews the process of migrating data from one hardware and Software platform to another and assesses the inherent risks at each stage of the process. It is formatted as a workbook, with each section summarizing a separate issue and containing questions that frame a risk assessment. It also inciudes two case studies, one about migrating image files and another about numeric files.

The report is available for free on the Web at http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/ pub93abst.html or for $20 from CLIR Publication Orders, 1755 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20036-2124; phone: (202) 939-4750; fax: (202) 939-4765; e-mail: info@clir.org.

DLF newsletter

The Digital Library Federation (DLF) has begun Publishing a quarterly online newsletter. It is intended to facilitate the sharing of information about Digital Library activities. The first issue contains an editorial entitled “An Evolving Form,” a feature article entitled “Accessing the Invisible Digital Collection: A Library School Student’s Perspective,” reports from ten member libraries and the DLF Office of the Director, a list of events and a technical report entitled “Documenting the Digital Library.” The URL is http://www.clir.org/diglib/pubs/ newsOl/index.htm. ■