ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Preservation News

Jane Hedberg

Assessing preservation needs

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) has published Assessing Preservation Needs: A Self-Survey Guide by Beth Patkus. This 96 -page workbook is intended to help people with limited preservation experience design a preservation program tailored to meet institutional needs. It contains step-by-step instructions and worksheets for surveying collection conditions and guidance for analyzing the results and determining preservation priorities. Worksheets provide a framework for detailed assessment of the institutional overview, building environment, external threats and water protection, security and access, storage, preservation microfilming and facsimiles, digital imaging, reformatting photographs and audiovisual materials, and repair and treatment They also facilitate examination of common collection formats, such as bound volumes and pamphlets, documents and manuscripts, photographs and negatives, oversized and framed materials, newsprint, scrapbooks and ephemera, and audiovisual materials. Amigos Library Services, Inc. and OCLC have created a 30-minute companion video that will be available separately.

Copies of the guide are $15, including shipping and handling, and may be purchased from NEDCC, Attn: Juanita Singh, 100 Brickstone Square, Andover, MA 01810; phone: (978) 470- 1010; fax: (978) 475-6021; e-mail: juanita® nedcc.org; URL: www.nedcc.org. For more information about the video, contact Amigos, 14400 Midway Road, Dallas, Texas 75244-3509; phone: (800) 843-8482; fax: (972) 991-6061; e-mail: amigos@amigos.oig; URL: www.amigos.oig.

IPM electronic list

There is a new electronic list about integrated pest management (IPM), created to continue the discussion that began at the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections’ 2003 conference. Several papers and a special interest group meeting at that conference generated ideas worthy of further consideration. Possible topics for discussion include: database models for storing and mapping monitoring data, an image database to aid pest identification, pros and cons of trapping versus daily monitoring, and practical tips for using freezing or C02 treatments. Leon Zak, of Zak Software Inc. and a member of the Image Permanence Institute team that developed the Climate Notebook software, is hosting the electronic list.

To subscribe, send an e-mail to listserv® zaks.com and put “subscribe pmd your_full_name” in the body of the message.

Color photo book free

Henry Wilhelm has made his classic book, The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures, available for free download on his Web site. This 758-page “bible” of color photography contains 20 chapters that cover which products last longest, accelerated aging tests, light fading, dark fading, yellowish staining, monitoring, permanent preservation of color motion pictures, print mounting, handling and matting photographs, materials for storage and display, display illumination, storage environments, and much more.

The book is available as a high-resolution PDF at www.wilhelm-research.com.

Nitrate film

The International Federation of Film Archivists (FIAF) has published This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film‚ edited by Roger Smither. Its 720 pages include editorials and endorsements, papers from the June 2000 FIAF Congress, essays and anecdotes about nitrate film, accounts of nitrate restoration projects, plus a bibliography and filmography.

The book costs 60 Euros, plus shipping and handling, and is available from FIAF, 1 Rue Defacqz, B-1000 Brussels Belgium; e-mail: info@fiafnet.org; URL: www.fiafnet.org/. ISBN: 2-9600296-0-7.

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