ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


C&RL News ■  July/A ug ust 2001 / 737

P r e s e r v a t i o n  N e w s Jane Hedberg

Resp o n ses to  Double Fold
The Association of Research Libraries is com­
piling a list of materials related to Nicholson 
Baker’s book, D ouble Fold: Libraries a n d  the 
Assault on  Paper. The list includes citations 
for Baker’s book, his July 2000 New Yorker 
article, reviews, articles, interviews and docu­
ments written in response to Baker’s attack on 
library preservation activities. The list of re­
sponses also contains comprehensive descrip­
tions of several major research library preser­
vation programs (e.g., National Library of 
Medicine and Harvard University Library), pro­
viding a snapshot of the current state of pres­
ervation at those institutions. The URL for this 
site is http://www.arl.org/preserv/baker.html.

D ig ita l p re se rv a tio n  W eb site
OCLC and the Research Libraries Group (RLG) 
have created a Web site called Digital Preser­
vation Commons, which is devoted to pro­
moting discussion about digital preservation 
and archiving issues. In March 2000, the two 
organizations announced a partnership to iden­
tify and support best practices for long-term 
retention of digital objects. They formed two 
working groups, one to investigate preserva­
tion metadata and the other to investigate the 
preferred attributes of a digital archive. Preser­
vation M etadata f o r  Digital Objects: A Review 
o f  the State o f  the Art is a 50-page white paper 
produced by the metadata working group that 
is now available on the Web site as a PDF file.

The URL for Digital Preservation Commons 
is http://www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/.

A L A  p u b licatio n
ALA Editions has published The Preservation 
P r o g r a m  B lu e p r in t  by B arbra B u ck n er 
Higginbotham and Judith Wild as the sixth 
number in its series, Frontiers o f  Access to Li­
brary Materials. This 168-page book advocates 
decentralization and integration of preserva­
tion activities into all library functions. Each of 
the 12 chapters addresses the role and duties 
of a different position or functional area. The 
chapters cover the library director, building 
manager, collection development and acqui­
sitions, circulation and stack maintenance, bind­

ing, repair and reformatting, cataloging and 
materials processing, access services, interli­
brary loan, reference and information services, 
special collections and archival materials, mi­
croforms, sound recordings, video formats and 
new media, and library systems.

The book is available in paperback for 
$37.00 ($33-30 for ALA members) from the ALA 
online store (http://alastore.ala.org/). ISBN: 0­
8389-0802-0.

P re se rvatio n  o f so u n d  re co rd in g s
The Council on Library and Information Re­
sources (CLIR) has published Folk H eritage 
Collections in Crisis, a report about preserving 
20th-century sound recordings. It is a synop­
sis of a December 2000 meeting that brought 
together folklorists, sound engineers, preser­
vation experts, lawyers, librarians, and archi­
vists to consider the challenges of preserving 
folk heritage collections. The report contains 
the three keynote presentations, the formal 
responses, summaries of the discussions and 
the 27 recommendations made to ensure ac­
cess, preservation and rights management for 
these fragile sound collections.

The report is available as a free PDF file or 
a $15 print copy at http://www.clir.org/pubs/ 
abstract/ρub96abst.html. ISBN 1-887334-82-3.

J A IC  o n lin e
Back issues of the Jo u r n a l o f  the A m erican 
Institute f o r  Consem ation (JAIC) are available 
online. The JAIC is published three times per 
year and contains scholarly articles about sci­
entific research, current issues, and technical 
procedures in the conservation of many types 
of cultural materials, including books and pa­
per. This new Web site provides full text and 
images of all the articles published between 
1977 and 1999- The articles may be browsed 
by title or searched by keyword. There are 
plans to update the database annually with 
more recent issues and to add issues from the 
earlier publication, AIC Bulletin. The URL is 
http://aic.stanford.edu/jaic/.*

Jane Hedberg is preservation program officer at Harvard 
University, e-mail: janejiedberg@harvard.edu; fax: (617) 
496-8344

http://www.arl.org/preserv/baker.html
http://www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/
http://alastore.ala.org/
http://www.clir.org/pubs/
http://aic.stanford.edu/jaic/.*
mailto:jane_hedberg@harvard.edu