ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 147 Santa Cruz, will lead a session on electronic point- of-use instruction; • and Mignon Adams, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Sciences, will address evaluating the instructor. Registration details will be published in a future issue of C&RL News. The chair of ACRL’s BIS Pre conference Committee is Jane Kleiner, Louisiana State University. Perfect preservation: A lesson from the past? By Philip H. Young Library Director University of Indianapolis The library profession is leading the way in iden­ tifying an impending crisis which threatens the very roots of modern culture—I refer to the acidic destruction of books. For the last century, the p a­ per used in books, magazines, and newspapers was made with acids which are now causing it to be­ come brittle and to crumble into dust, bearing with it society’s recorded knowledge of the last several generations. Librarians are attem pting to avert the cultural suicide of our era by preserving their library collec­ tions with the assistance of high technology. De­ acidification programs are underway, as are m i­ crofilming projects to photograph key items in research collections. Even new er technologies promise other methods of saving the w ritten record of the 20th century, including digitizing it for elec­ tronic storage in traditional, magnetic formats or using the new optical w izardry of CD-ROM. U n fo rtu n a te ly th ese e ffo rts, th o u g h w ell- intentioned, have proven costly, slow and (worst of all) not really perm anent. A deacidified book will still face the mechanical rigors of usage, including dog-eared pages and accidental drops into mud- puddles during a rush to catch a bus. Microfilm, microfiche, and other photographic processes will greatly extend the print’s life but are themselves vulnerable to chemical decay of image and file w ith the eventual loss of viability. Electronic me­ dia are also susceptible to long-term decay, as well as to short-term damage. (Who hasn’t heard of someone accidentally typing D EL *.* on their com puter keyboard?) No one seems to know w hat the shelf-life of CD-ROM will be, but it is already a p p a re n t th a t surface scratches in terfere w ith image-processing. Is our effort to preserve the records of our age in vain? Is there no incorruptible medium to which to entrust the essence of our era? Perhaps examining the methods used in earlier ages might provide an insight for us. Since antiquity, writers have used parchm ent, vellum and other skins, and non-aeidic paper for preservation of their m usings, but these media, while stable when stored in a monastery or public archives, do not guarantee a lasting record. In ancient times records w ere also w ritte n on bronze, wood and stone. Although wood is clearly im perm anent, metal and stone present the desired characteristics of virtual indestructibility. We can read a 6th-century B. C . treaty of the Greek city Sy- baris w ritten on a bronze plate or any of the thou­ sands of imperial Roman tomb inscriptions carved into stone (and now cluttering the w orld’s muse­ ums) just as well as at the time of their creation. The w ritten record has been preserved! U nfortu­ nately, however, metal and stone are not inexpen­ sive, easily obtained, rapidly inscribed, or effi­ ciently stored in quantity. Who w ould w ant to chisel War and Peace into blocks of m arble (or store the result in their library!)? Happily, research tells us th at there is yet an­ other medium used for w riting by ancient civiliza­ tions which overcomes these problems—the clay tablet. H um anity’s earliest surviving documents were im printed in soft clay, baked to rock-like hardness, and stored for systematic recall (or, as of­ ten happened, for posterity.) Do clay tablets meet our needs for w riting permanence? They do, in­ deed, approach indestructibility. G ranted, if you drop one, it breaks—but the text is not lost because any archaeologist worth his or her salt can piece it back together, good as new. (Try th at w ith acid p a ­ per!) Furtherm ore, clay is easily and quickly in­ scribed, unlike metal or stone. It can be found al­ most anywhere and molded into manageable units for efficient handling and storage. And, most im­ portantly, the w riting lasts forever! My fellow librarians, I submit to you that our preservation efforts have been misdirected. Instead of expensive deacidification, microphotography, electronic or optical conversion, we should be tra n ­ scribing our hallowed texts onto clay tablets! ■ ■ IT WOULD TAKE YOU AROUND fo u r minutes to boil this egg IT WOULD TAKE YOU AROUND s ix ty seconds to access o u r million title database via o u r LIBTEL system So w hy m ake a m eal o u t o f acquiring B ritish academic books? John Menzies has the perfect recipe. 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