Preservation Management for Libraries, Archives and Museums

Citation

Thornton, K. (2007), "Preservation Management for Libraries, Archives and Museums", Library Management, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 175-176. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435120710728045

Gorman and Shep are to be congratulated for assembling such a well qualified group of experts to contribute essays to Preservation Management for Libraries, Archives and Museums. The volume opens with a useful overview of documentary heritage and its relationship to other varieties of heritage. This essay then grapples with the principle of what should be preserved and how to make what is preserved continually meaningful, an issue the author feels lies at the heart of preservation management.

It is followed by an excellent essay on preservation policy and planning, which I found to be one of the most useful and immediately practical discussions in the whole book. Anyone who is responsible for writing or maintaining preservation, conservation or disaster plans and policies for cultural institutions would find this section of interest. Mirjam Foot covers the totality of preservation planning, starting with basics like why a preservation policy is necessary and how it needs to fit within the core functions and activities of the institution. She then points out how the policy will then potentially inform and enable any preservation activities that are undertaken, and includes practical advice about how to select and prioritise items for preservation. She then leads on to risk assessment and disaster prevention and planning.

The following essays are more specific, and deal with issues such as intangible heritage, surrogacy, reformatting, audio‐visual preservation, digital artefacts, access and preservation of heritage in times of armed conflict. There are some very interesting discussions in several of these essays concerning the tension between accessibility and preservation.

Although it could be argued that books which try to be of use to everyone end up not helping anyone very much, I do think that museum, library or archive workers will find much in this book that will be of interest and practical use. Those in museums may find a bias towards two‐dimensional objects rather than three‐dimensional ones, but the vast majority of the principles outlined will be helpful to any custodian of cultural material. However the title is appropriate – the book is aimed at those who are responsible for policies; it's not a “how to” book on constructing archival boxes.

The book as a whole is extremely well designed, with a neat and clear layout – each essay has an introduction which serves as an abstract, logical sub‐headings and a list of interesting and relevant references. There's even an index! I highly recommend this book.