ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Preservation News

Jane Hedberg

NARA annual conference

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will hold its 17th annual conference March 21, 2002, at Archives II in College Park, Maryland. The title is Lessons Learned in Emergencies: Not Your Ordinary Disaster Conference, and the agenda promises practical, experience-based examples of how emergency situations are handled to minimize damage. Presentations will cover fire prevention, new techniques for fire detection and suppression, fire recovery, general recovery techniques, damage mitigation and recovery of magnetic media, recovery of film, recovery of objects, and disaster preparedness training.

Registration, including lunch, costs $75. For more information, contact Eleanor Torain, conference coordinator (NWT), 8601 Adelphi Road, Room 2807, College Park, MD 20740- 6001; phone: (301) 713-6718; fax: (301) 713- 6653; e-mail: eleanor.torain@nara.gov; Web: http://www.nara.gov/arch/techinfo/preserva/ conferen/2002. html.

Paper aging research

The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) has been conducting research into accelerated aging of printing and writing papers since 1994. The society tested three methods— elevated temperature, elevated light flux, and increased concentration of common atmospheric pollutant gas—against natural aging processes. All three methods were found to produce essentially the same chemical and physical changes in paper as natural aging and to be scientifically sound predictors.

The temperature studies were conducted at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa, Ontario. The light aging studies were conducted at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, and at KCL (Oy Keskuslaboratorio-Centrallaboratorium Ab) in Espoo, Finland. The pollutant gas studies were

Jane Hedberg is preservation program officer at Harvard University Library, e-mail: jane_hedberg@harvard.edu; fax: (617)496-8344 conducted at the Image Permanence Institute in Rochester, New York.

A report by R. Bruce Arnold describing the research results is available for free at http:// palimpsest.stanford.edu/byauth/arnold/astm- aging-research/.

IMLS guide for digital collections

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has issued A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. This report reviews the issues currently affecting the creation of digital collections with lasting value, including usability, accessibility, fitness for use, interoperability, reusability, persistence, verification, documentation, and intellectual property law. It offers general principles that define the idea of good for digital collections, objects, metadata, and projects. These principles are not prescriptive, but are intended to influence the development of projects submitted to IMLS and other federal agencies for funding consideration.

The report is available for free at http:// www. imls .gov/pubs/forumframework. htm.

Digital management handbook

The British Library has published Preservation Management of Digital Materials: A Handbook by Maggie Jones and Neil Beagrie. This 128-page paperback offers advice and practical tools for the creation, management, and preservation of digital materials. The authors discuss key issues, plus activities and strategies for sustaining access to these potentially transitory documents.

The book costs $24.95 and is available in North America from the University of Toronto Press, 5201 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada; phone: (800) 565-9523; fax: (800) 221-9985; e-mail: utbooks@utpress. utoronto.ca; Web: http://www.utppublishing. com. ISBN: 0-7123-0886-5.

Special issue of Spectra

Spectra,the newsletter of the Museum Computer Network, has published its special 2000 summer/fall issue about digital imaging online. The articles include “Digital Imaging: the New Photographic Research Tool,” “Building a Digital Archive,” “What are Digital Archive Managers?,” “Light Exposure to Sensitive Artworks During Digital Photography,” “Conservation Issues in Digital Imaging,” “A Holistic Approach to Digital Assets Management,” “Practical Approach to Color Management,” “Do You See What I See?,” “Issues in Digital Archiving,” and “Content Based Image Retrieval.”

The issue is available as a free PDF download at http://www.mcn.edu/spectra.htm. ■