Preservation News
Security for special collections
ACRL recently released Guide to Security Considerations and Practices for Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collection Libraries. This 380-page softcover book addresses specific concerns in providing security for the most valuable collections in academic libraries. It covers general administrative considerations, background checks, reading room design, access control systems, burglar alarms, closed circuit TV systems, security guards, management and processing procedures, audit trails, marking and weighing materials, thieves and their methods, dealing with a theft, and recovery of stolen materials. It also includes copies of relevant guidelines and information about individual thieves, particularly Stephen Blumberg. Compiled and edited by Everett C. Wilkie Jr., it contains contributions from Anne Marie Lane, Jeffrey Marshall, Alvan Bregman, Margaret Tenney, Elaine Shiner, Richard W. Oram, Ann Hartley, Susan M. Allen, and Daniel J. Slive.
The book costs $65 and is available from the ALA Online Store. For more information, go to www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=3560. ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-8592-2.
Media preservation
Indiana University (IU) Bloomington released “Meeting the Challenge of Media Preservation: Strategies and Solutions.” The current 128-page report is the result of a yearlong project by the IU Media Preservation Task Force to address the challenges identified in a previous report published in 2009. Although specifically about the IU Bloomington situation, the process used and the solutions recommended may be of use to other academic institutions. The report covers the provost’s charge to the task force, guiding principles, preservation planning, preservation transfer, prioritization, strategies for film, planning facilities, providing access, analyzing technology infrastructure and needs, encouraging campus engagement, and next steps.
The report, a 12MB PDF, is available for free download at http://www.indiana.edu/~medpres/.
“Permanence Matters”
The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) have mounted video of “Permanence Matters: Inaugural Conference in Topics on Book Permanence for Cultural and Academic Institutions,” which was held May 2011. The conference focused on paper, covering the history of advocacy for permanent paper, trends in paper manufacturing, the science of paper, development of the Canadian standard for permanence of records, books, and other documents, fighting brittle paper, the culture of paper, transforming research into an action agenda at the Library of Congress, and digital options for collections. Speakers included Scott Mingus from Glatfelter; David Grattan, formerly of the Canadian Conservation Institute; Jeanne Drewes from Library of Congress; Winston Tabb, Sonja Jordan-Mowery, John Baty, and Jonathan Pevsner from JHU; and Kathleen Keane from JHU Press.
For more information and to view the conference, go to www.library.jhu.edu/departments/preservation/hcs/permanence%20matters.html.
Handling special collections
The Harvard College Library has released a video tutorial, “Handling Harvard’s Special Collections.” In the video, James Capobianco of Houghton Library explains and Pamela Spitzmueller of the Weissman Preservation Center demonstrates basic handling procedures for bound, unbound, and oversized collection materials.
The 4 minute, 28 second video is available on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOv0SOQ8B68&hd=1.
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