ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

PRESERVATION NEWS

Prepared by Barbara Brown

College Libraries Committee Commission on Preservation and Access

• Andover, Massachusetts.From a recent Northeast Document Conservation Newsletter, a word of caution for those who are addicted to using “Post-It Notes”: the paper is potentially acidic, color can transfer to originals over time, and adhesive remains when the note is removed. All of these qualities will cause irreversible damage, according to the National Archives.

• Andover, Massachusetts.The Spring 1990 NEDCC News contains a brief article by Karen Motylewski on “Protecting Collections during Renovations” with a helpful checklist prepared to alert institutions to common sources of construction-related damage. Single copies of the NEWS are available free-of-charge from: Northeast Document Conservation Center, 24 School Street, Andover, MA 01810.

• Washington, D.C.‘Taking a Byte Out of History: The Archival Preservation of Federal Computer Records” (House Report 101-978) is a 30-page report submitted to Congress by the Committee on Government Operations which estimates that “75 percent of all Federal transactions will be handled electronically in the year 2000.” The findings of the study and suggested recommendations will be of interest to the broader preservation and access community. Check the holdings of your local depository library or send for a free copy from: House Document Room, HOB Annex 2, Room B18,2nd and D Streets, SW, Washington, D.C. 20515 (include a self-adhesive, self- addressed label).

New England ACRL conference report

“Creative Staffing in the 90s” was the topic of the New England Chapter of ACRL, held at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, on November 2, 1990. Each speaker challenged the 335 librarians present to rethink traditional patterns of library and personnel organization. Keynote speaker Sheila Creth, university librarian at the University of Iowa, warned that we cannot stay the same and survive. She said that knowledgeable, well-trained staffs must act quickly and provide timely communication (and cataloging), even if it means changing traditional library organizational structures. The most important issues facing us, she said, are the implications of electronic publishing and networking; we must redefine our roles in relation to those developments.

Creth’s challenges were developed by other speakers: William Uricchio, head of the Bibliographic Control Department at the University of Connecticut; Richard Kesner, chief information officer at Babson College; and Gerald R. Lowell, associate librarian at Yale, who has made some of the changes advocated by Creth. He dismantled the hierarchical structure and reorganized the 150- member Technical Services Department into autonomous teams of generally six to ten members working under the general supervision of four department heads. Although 100 desks had to be moved and everyone had to rethink everything about work, the experiment has resulted in a more aware and educated staff; the support staff has been empowered; and productivity has increased 20-40%.