Managing Preservation for Libraries and Archives: Current Practice and Future Developments

Citation

Dorner, D.G. (2004), "Managing Preservation for Libraries and Archives: Current Practice and Future Developments", Online Information Review, Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 464-465. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520410570625

John Feather, who is well known as a preservation management educator, has put together a volume that will be of value to anyone involved in managing the preservation of digital or analogue information resources. The authors of the various chapters in this book come from a variety of backgrounds, including preservation microfilming, systems librarianship, audiovisual archiving and preservation management.

After an introductory chapter by Feather about principles and policies for preservation management, there are three chapters that focus specifically on preservation management of digital information resources, an area that is evolving very rapidly. Colin Webb, the Director of Preservation Services at the National Library of Australia, leads off by providing an insightful overview of the nature of digital preservation with a focus on the major challenges involved – challenges that are technical (e.g. unstable technology and obsolescence, migration), organisational (e.g. assigning and understanding responsibility) and societal (e.g. awareness). Webb also provides some basic conclusions that must be heeded if we are to preserve digital information resources for the long‐term. Two of the most fundamental ones are as follows: “Keeping digital information requires action, not benign neglect”; and “While those with an interest in the long‐term accessibility of digital information resources may not have the means to take full action yet, there is much they can do to assess and improve the preservation readiness of their resources.”

In the next chapter, Majlis Bremer‐Laamanen, Head of the Centre for Microfilming and Conservation at the University of Helsinki, and Jani Stenvall, a systems librarian at the same institution, examine a range of dilemmas, issues and solutions involved in selection for digital preservation from a national perspective, using Finland as an example. They discuss the conceptual differences involved in:

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  selecting resources to be digitised primarily to improve access to the content; and

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  selecting electronic publications for preservation.

They also provide models of action for both. While Finland provides the examples of developments related to digital collections, the approaches to, and selection criteria for, preservation projects are drawn from international sources, for example the National Library of Australia's selection guidelines for physical format electronic publications.

The third chapter on preservation of digital resources is by Adrienne Muir, Department of Information Science at Loughborough University. Focusing on the long‐term management of digital resources, she points out that whereas preservation management of traditional media has well‐developed tools, techniques, standards, guidelines and benchmarks, the same cannot be said for preservation management of digital resources; and indeed some (but not all) traditional tools and techniques, such as condition surveys, are of no value in the digital realm. The chapter subheadings give a strong indication of the thrust of the chapter: New Types of Publishing and Access versus Ownership; Discovery and Acquisition Of Digital Material; Intellectual Property Issues; Maintaining Authenticity and Integrity over Time; Preservation Management in the Digital Environment; and Metadata. There is much valuable information in this chapter that will help librarians and information managers with new responsibilities for preservation management to understand the breadth of key issues involved.

While the above three chapters focus specifically on the preservation of digital resources, some other chapters also include content relevant to the area. For example, in his chapter on the problems of preserving sound recordings Dietrich Schüller discusses issues surrounding what he calls the changing paradigm from a focus on preserving the carrier to preserving the content through the use of digital mass storage systems. The concluding chapter, by Marie‐Thérèse Varlamoff, is about the future of cultural heritage preservation. After presenting regional summaries of the present situation in Europe, North America, Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America, and Russia and the CIS, Varlamoff asks questions such as “What to preserve in the future?” and “How to preserve in the future?” Her responses to both questions inevitably include valuable discussion of where digital resources fit into the mix.

While this book would not make a good textbook, because it does not provide a comprehensive overview of preservation management, I would nonetheless recommend it to those with an interest in preservation management. In the penultimate paragraph in the book, Varlamoff comments that “trying to consider what preservation will be like in the future is not an easy task.” While her statement is no doubt true, Managing Preservation for Libraries and Archives goes some way to doing so, and anyone involved in managing the preservation of digital resources would do well to pick up a copy and read through the relevant chapters.