ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Preservation News

Jane Hedberg

ARL reaffirmation

The Association of Research Libraries issued a statement, “The Responsibility of Research Libraries for Preservation,” in May 2002. This statement reaffirms “preservation as one of the fundamental responsibilities of the research library community.”

It also describes the complexity of preserving all types of research materials, and the necessity for making “wise and economical choices among a spectrum of options from conserving an artifact in its original manifestation to preserving only its informational content in an alternative format that best facilitates its continued use.”

The full-text of the statement is available at http://www.arl.org/preserv/responsibility. html.

9/11 report

Heritage Preservation has issued “Cataclysm and Challenge,” a 26-page report about the destruction of cultural and historical artifacts resulting from the September 11 attacks.

The report includes both a study of the losses in New York City and Washington, D.C., and a survey of the disaster preparedness of 122 cultural institutions in Lower Manhattan.

Among the survey’s findings were that standard emergency preparedness activities proved to be most effective in protecting or saving materials, even in this unprecedented situation. It also found that only 46 percent of the institutions surveyed had a written emergency plan, and only 42 percent had staff trained in disaster response procedures. Only 60 percent had a current catalog or collection inventory, and more than half of those did not keep a back-up copy of holdings off-site.

The full-text is available as a free pdf at http://www.heritagepreservation.org/NEWS/ Cataclysm.htm. Printed copies are available for a shipping and handling fee from Lucy Kurtz at Heritage Preservation, 1730 K Street, NW Suite 566, Washington, D.C. 20006-3836; phone: (888) 388-6789; fax: (202) 634-1435; e-mail: lkurtz@heritagepreservation.org; URL: http://www.heritagepreservation.org.

Benchmarks

Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries in the United Kingdom, has published Benchmarks in Collection Care for Museums, Archives and Libraries: A Self-Assessment Checklist. This 92-page document helps institutions evaluate their collection care activities against basic good and best practices, then identify possible improvements and measure progress in making those improvements.

The checklist is available as a free PDF at http://www.resource.gov.uk/information/pub- lications/OOpubs. asp.

Technical metadata standard

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has released Data Dictionary— Technical Metadatafor Digital Still Images (NISO Z39.87-2002/AIIM 20-2002) as a draft standard for trial use. Jointly developed with AIIM International, this standard provides technical support for applications to validate, manage, migrate, process, and ultimately preserve digital still images. It utilizes MIX, an XML schema that defines the format for interchange and/or storage of the specified data.

The standard will be available for review and implementation from June 1, 2002, through December 31, 2003. Oya Rieger (Cornell University) and Robin Dale (Research Libraries Group) cochaired the Standards Committee AU that developed this draft standard so expeditiously.

The standard is available as a free PDF at http://www.niso.org/standards/dsftu.html. MIX is available free through a link on the standard’s page above, or at http://www. loc.gov/standards/mix/. Comments should be submitted to NISO headquarters by e-mail at nisohq@niso.org. ■

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