Recorded sound preservation

The National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress commissioned the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to publish “The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States: A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age.”

The 169-page study describes the current situation of, and challenges to, the preservation of our audio heritage. It has four chapters, 1) Sound Recording Collections: An Overview of Preservation and Public Access in the Twenty-First Century, 2) Technical Issues in Digital Audio Preservation, 3) Development of Curricula in Recorded Sound Preservation and Archives Management, and 4) Preservation, Access and Copyright: A Tangled Web.

The study is a precursor to the National Recording Preservation Plan that is due for publication shortly. The plan was mandated by Congress in the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000.

The study is available as a free PDF (1 MB) or as a print publication for $30. To obtain a copy, go to www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub148abst.html. It is CLIR publication 148.

Papermaking history

Cathleen A. Baker’s long-awaited book, From the Hand to the Machine. Nineteenth-Century American Paper and Mediums: Technologies, Materials, and Conservation, has been published.

The 432-page book traces the history of the U.S. paper industry from 1690 to 1900, covering technical and production innovations especially during the 19th century. It also considers the technologies of printing, printmaking and drawing, and their relationships to the paper on which they were rendered. Lastly, it describes the characteristics of the paper, the deterioration it may suffer, possible treatments of the deterioration, and how to make the best conservation decisions. The book is available for $65 from Legacy Press, www.thelegacypress.com. ISBN: 978-0-9797974-2-2.

Connecting to collections report

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) released “Connecting to Collections: A Report to the Nation” in October 2010. The 48-page report describes the progress made in preservation outreach to the U.S. cultural heritage community since 2007 when IMLS launched Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action.

During the past three years, IMLS has supported five regional conferences, one international summit, 3,000 sets of essential texts about collections care distributed to U.S. institutions, and 107 awards through the American Heritage Preservation Grants program.

The report is available as a free PDF at www.imls.gov/pdf/CtoCReport.pdf. For more information about the Call to Action, go to www.imls.gov/collections/.

NDSA

The Library of Congress formed the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) in July 2010. It is a coalition of government agencies, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, and businesses to, as the Web site states, “preserve a distributed national digital collection for the benefit of citizens now and in the future.” NDSA is an outgrowth of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program of which the founding members of NDSA are also members.

For more information, go to www.digital-preservation.gov/ndsa/.