ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

SAA's Preservation Management Training Program is a huge success

December 1994 marked the close of a truly pathbreaking educational initiative, the Society of American Archivists’ (SAA) Preservation Management Training Program. In 1991 the SAA received a grant worth about $650,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Division of Preservation and Access to launch the SAA Preservation Management Training Program. It was a three-year nationwide program that trained 44 archival administrators in establishing and maintaining comprehensive archival preservation management programs. The program was conducted through four regional series, Northeastern, Midwestern, Western, and Southeastern. Each series met independently for three one-week institutes spread across a one-year period. Its audience was mid-career archival administrators targeted to integrate preservation administration into their management perspectives. Participants were selected competitively within their region according to the strength of their application.

The program’s pioneering aspects will profoundly effect the future of preservation education and training in libraries and archives. Its underlying philosophy addressed moving archival preservation away from ad hoc decisions based on restoring documents in an advanced stage of deterioration to well-planned management strategies aimed at preventing deterioration across a repository’s entire holdings.

The curriculum advocated integrating preservation administration into all facets of the management of archives, not necessarily operating as a separate functional element in the same way as reference or collection development. The program’s assignments were also exceptional because they were designed to build elements of a functioning, tailor-made archival preservation program for the student’s employing institution prior to graduation.

Another unique characteristic was the program faculty’s work with a professional educator/training expert to develop modern instructional methods based on interactive adult learning strategies that have been successfully applied by educators and trainers elsewhere. The SAA Preservation Management Training Program leaves us with a legacy of being the nation’s most ambitious preservation education program undertaken to date.—Tyler O. Walters, Iowa State University