ALA Midwinter 2012: Preservation Administrators Interest Group Meeting Roundup

Written by Laura Bedford and woefully late in posting by me. Sorry Laura for the delay, and thanks for your notes. By sharing information like this, especially when travel budgets are so tight, we all benefit.

Preservation week  April 22-28, 2012

Two websites:

1.  ALCTS website (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alcts/confevents/preswk/plan.cfm)  – for institutions to grab materials off for their own sessions;  it will contain a map of events for preservation week – you input info and it’s updated. (thru ALCTS)
2. @ your library pass it on website (http://www.atyourlibrary.org/passiton)  – more for the public – what’s going on during the week, including  family focused events and activities.

@your library  will have different daily content focus:    AV, quilts, comic books, slides,  digital photos, family docs; it will include both video and print content.

There will be 2 webinars during Preservation Week  –  Tuesday : textile collections care;  Thursday:  digital photo conservation.

Also look to @facebook   facebook.com/preservationweek and @twitter.com/#/PreservationWk

Preservation week national spokesperson – Steve Berry.  He’ll speak on Monday 1/23 about his “ History Matters”  organization created by him and wife.

There’s a Preservation Week booth for the first time at ALA – will be continued through other meetings, staffed by volunteers.

IMLS Fellows

• Annie Peterson –  IMLS Fellow at Yale, MLIS at Urbana-Champ, intern at UCLA and George Blood
• Nick Szydlowski – IMLS Fellow at NYPL; IMLS at Simmons, works at MIT.
• Kimberly Tarr – NYU moving image program; prior A/V project at Smithsonian’s NMAH; auditing NYPL audio spaces.

All will be presenting at ALA Annual in Anaheim on their fellowships.  Also Evelyn Frangakis from  NYPL will be organizing a memorial for Jan Merrill-Oldham  at PAIG at Annual – contact her if you want to be involved.

Managing an efficient local book scanning workstation

Roger Smith – Head of the Preservation and Digital Library programs at UC San Diego

UCSD just completed contract with Google – selecting material for digitization to fill in gaps in rare materials that weren’t sent thru the google process.  Working through a rights checklist assessment process, determining what will be viewed at a local level or publicly.  Asking questions to find out what materials fall in private and public levels.   Why are we digitizing – for preservation, access, both? What costs are associated with collaborating with other institutions?  Focus on managing assets going forward.  He looked system wide in UC’s,  starting with combined metadata repository, in efforts to break down silos within UCSD.

Setting yourself up – currently he has one scanner, buying a second.  What level of work you expect to do  should drive what and how many scanners you purchase.  What special needs do the materials entail – what about automated features?  What is the budget?  UCSD chose manual page turning feature, to be able to send special collections material thru it.  What’s your time frame?  Important to get a loaner from a vendor first, or plan site visits to check it out and talk to other customers – like at ALA.

Proposal management –get buy in from other depts.; create a proposal mgmt process from the library to help other depts. go thru and manage their expectations; define the purpose, value, audience, timeline, collection description, number of objects, condition, metadata, staffing, funding and approval tracking.  Many depts. came with good ideas but didn’t have answers to questions at the offset – needed to go thru proposal mgmt process before beginning.

ALA Midwinter on Twitter

Late to the party as usual, but we want to share some of the hashtags on Twitter where we are finding info from this weekend’s sessions. We are also seeking volunteers to share their notes and observations from the PARS and RBMS sessions here on PCAN. Drop us a note either in the comments or through email if you want to share.

#digitization

#archives

#alamw12

#alamw

#ALCTS

LRTS Request for Grant Proposals

Library Resources & Technical Services (LRTS) announces the availability of grants of up to $1,000 (funded by an Association for Library Collections and Technical Services grant) to assist authors with preparing literature reviews. The purpose of the grants is to provide funds that will be used for clerical and research support, thereby allowing the author/s to concentrate on analyzing the resources and writing the literature review.  Possible support tasks might be collecting citations, sorting and organizing citations by themes and categories, locating and gathering resources to be reviewed, verifying citations, funding purchases of articles not owned by the home institution of the author, and so forth.  Funding also could provide a mentoring opportunity by funding assistance by a library school or information science student.

Highly cited, literature reviews provide an essential professional service to practitioners, scholars, and students by identifying the key themes and the most important publications appearing in successive two year periods.  Books and articles by accredited scholars and researchers, i.e., primarily peer-reviewed publications provide the basis for a literature review.  A good literature review is evaluative, selective, and critical, and goes beyond summarizing and quoting from the selected sources.   Literature reviews explain why the sources cited are important and valuable, may compare them to prior works, and create a structure that organizes the two-year body of content to make it comprehensible and to identify themes, not only for those who have followed the developments it describes, but to future researchers.  All sources referenced appear in the endnotes; a separate bibliography is not published.  Although commissioned, LRTS literature reviews go through the same double-blind peer review process as unsolicited manuscripts.

LRTS seeks authors for the following topical areas and coverage periods:

• Collection Development and Management literature published 2011-2012
• Cataloging/Classification/Metadata Management literature published 2011-2012
• Preservation and Reformatting literature published 2011-2012

Papers should be submitted not later than June 30, 2013. Grant recipients will be required to submit progress reports to the LRTS Editor in June and December each year.

The grant proposal must include:

1. Requester name, title, and contact information
2. The literature to be reviewed (see list above)
3. The requester’s credentials to write the literature review
4. Amount requested
5. Budget plan and rationale for how the funds will be expended

Proposals are due by January 31, 2012.

Applications and inquiries should be submitted to Peggy Johnson, LRTS Editor, lrtseditor@ala.org.

It’s Award Season, Get Your Nominations In!

The Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) of ALA has several awards and grants that recognize and reward achievement in the field of, you guessed it, preservation and reformatting. The deadline for all nominations is December 1, 2011. Be sure to check out all the other ALCTS grants that are available if preservation isn’t your thing.

The exciting news this year is we now have an award to specifically support people new to the preservation field. The Jan Merrill-Oldham Award was developed and approved this year, so we need as many people to know about it as we can so that ALCTS gets a big pool of applicants this year and in the years to come. Please forward this to anyone you think would qualify for the award, to faculty at library schools, to you Mom who may know someone…you get the idea.

Jan Merrill-Oldham Professional Development Grant  NEW AWARD

The Award is established by the Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) to honor the career and influence of Jan Merrill-Oldham, distinguished leader, author, and mentor in the field of library and archives preservation.

The Jan Merrill-Oldham Professional Development Grant is awarded by the ALCTS Preservation and Reformatting Section to provide librarians and paraprofessionals new to the preservation field with the opportunity to attend a professional conference and encourages professional development through active participation at the national level. The grant is to be used for airfare, lodging, and registration fees to attend the ALA Annual Conference.

Criteria

• Criteria for selection will be determined based on the following:
• Have five or fewer years of experience in the field of library and archives preservation.
• Currently work as a librarian or para-professional within a library or archives preservation department or who has preservation responsibilities within their institution.
• Have never attended an ALA Annual Conference
• Recommendations from colleagues
• Express desire as stated in a short essay (up to 500 words) on the following theme: How would receiving the Jan Merrill-Oldham Professional Development Grant further your professional development goals?
• Willingness to participate in designated conference events:
  • Work with a member of the jury to identify relevant programs and interest group sessions to attend
  • Attend the Preservation Administration Interest Group Meeting
  • Attend a least one PARS discussion group meeting
• Submit a summary of the recipient’s conference experience to the ALCTS Newsletter Online no later than 30 days after the conference

Members of the sponsor or its affiliated organizations are not eligible.

Deadline: December 1, 2011

Ross Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award

Given to recognize the contribution of a library leader through demonstrated exceptional service to ALCTS and its areas of interest (acquisitions, cataloging and classification, collection management and development, preservation and reformatting, and continuing resources).

Criteria

Nominees must be ALCTS members. Criteria for selection of the winner will be determined by the person’s accomplishments, as they relate to leadership including:

• Recognized leadership in professional associations at local, state, regional or national level, with emphasis on the Division;
• Significant contribution to professional literature;
• Exemplary research in ALCTS areas;
• Recognition of achievements, i.e., awards, citations, etc.

Deadline: December 1, 2011

Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award

This award was established to honor the memory of Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris, early leaders in library preservation. The award will be given to recognize the contribution of a professional preservation specialist who has been active in the field of preservation and/or conservation for library and/or archival materials.

Criteria

Criteria for selection of the winner will be determined by the person’s accomplishments, as they relate to preservation leadership in such activities as:

• leadership in professional associations at local, state, regional or national level;
• contributions to the development, application or utilization of new or improved methods, techniques and routines;
• evidence of studies or research in preservation;
• significant contribution to professional literature;
• training and mentoring in the field of preservation.

Deadline: December 1, 2011

George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Award 

This award honors the memory of George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg, early leaders in cooperative preservation programming and strong advocates for collaboration in the field of preservation.

The award, sponsored by Hollinger Metal Edge, acknowledges and supports cooperative preservation projects and/or rewards individuals or groups that foster collaboration for preservation goals. Recipients of the award demonstrate vision, endorse cooperation, and advocate for the preservation of published and primary source resources that capture the richness of our cultural patrimony. The award recognizes the leadership and initiative required to build collaborative networks designed to achieve specific preservation goals. Since collaboration, cooperation, advocacy and outreach are key strategies that epitomize preservation, the award promotes cooperative efforts and supports equitable preservation among all libraries, archives and historical institutions.

Criteria

The award jury will consider:

• a project emphasizing collaboration or partnership
• collaboration extending the preservation vision beyond the circle of preservation specialists and foster action to raise awareness and set priorities, projects, and programs into motion
• nomination of an individual or group for cumulative achievement as a mentor or advocate of collaborative preservation.

Any person or group is eligible for this award; membership in the ALA organization is not required.

Deadline: December 1, 2011

New Professional Development Award Announced

Announced widely in the preservation community today.

A new professional development grant named in honor of Jan Merrill-Oldham has recently been approved by the Association of Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) and Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) of the American Library Association (ALA) and will be awarded in 2012.

For over 30 years, Merrill-Oldham has been a recognized leader in the field of library and archives preservation. She has served on key committees within ALA, the Association of Research Libraries, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the National Information Standards Organization and many others. She has educated and mentored countless preservation librarians and conservators and her support for students and dedication to the field serves as a model to all of us. This award recognizes Merrill-Oldham’s wide ranging contributions, deep commitment to the field, and her undying support of young professionals by supporting participation in an ALA conference. In September of 2010, Merrill-Oldham announced her retirement after a long and notable career.

Each year, the Jan Merrill-Oldham Professional Development Grant will consist of $1,250 to support travel to the ALA Annual Conference for a librarian, para-professional or student new to the preservation field.  The intention is to provide the opportunity to attend an ALA conference and encourage professional development through active participation at the national level. The recipient will have the chance to work with a member of the jury to identify relevant programs and interest group sessions to attend, must attend the Preservation Administration Interest Group meeting, and must attend at least one PARS discussion group meeting.

In order to make this grant a reality, the Library Binding Institute (LBI) has graciously agreed to sponsor this grant on an annual basis.  Debra Nolan, Executive Director of LBI, responded to the sponsorship request by noting that, “Jan, who has played such a significant role in library binding and with LBI, holds a very special place in our hearts.”  In addition to working with LBI, Ms. Merrill-Oldham co-authored the Guide to the ANSI/NISO/LBI Library Binding Standard with Paul Parisi.

Also assisting in making this grant possible is Hollinger Metal Edge, Inc. by agreeing to sponsor the George Cunha and Susan Swartzberg Award that LBI previously sponsored.

Thank you to LBI and Metal Edge for sponsoring the awards that recognize our colleagues, to PARS Executive Council, ALCTS and the ALA Awards Committee for approving the proposal, and to the grant initiators:  Heather Caldwell, Head of Conservation Services in the Harvard College Library; Beth Doyle, Head, Conservation Services Department, Duke University Libraries; and Hilary Seo, Head, Preservation Department, Iowa State University Library.

An announcement with more information on eligibility, application and selection will be made available in the next month or two.  This information will also be on the ALCTS awards web site in the near future.

Hilary Seo

Heather Caldwell

Beth Doyle

ALA Notes: PARS Forum – Preservation of Modern Digitally Printed Materials

Daniel M. Burge, Senior Research Scientist, Image Permanence Institute

• a report on the IPI DP3 project (DP3 = digital print preservation portal)
• Phase I (2007 – 2010) – survey materials and decay forces; build the DP3 website
• Phase 2 (2011 – 2014) – refine / extend experimental work; deve final care recs, complete DP3 website
• website describes the print processes, how to identify the various processes, information about deterioration and care of these materials, as well as a glossary, bibliography, and newsletter on the project
• funding (for both phases) from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and IMLS
• MANY types of print materials … just a few: continuous vs. drop on demand vs solid ink jet, laser jet ..
• Analogy time:  typewriter:inkjet and laser :: offset lithography:digital press :: silver halide photo:inkjet
• only talking about two here:
• electrophotography (aka, EP or laser print)
• photocopiers!
• follow the link for an excellent illustration and explanation of the six basic stages of EP printing
• digital color presses: dry toner vs. liquid toner (Indigo prints)
• digital presses have many advantages over offset — don’t have to make up plates (can be on-demand / short-run)
• paper options (plain vs. treated vs. coated) plus the materials those papers are composed of (pulp (virgin vs. groundwood) vs. recycled content: the substrate plays the major role in the long-term viability of the EP print (“it is ALL about the paper”)
• drop-on-demand inkjet (95% of what you see)
• actually invented in 1867 by Lord Kelvin …
• follow the link for an excellent illustration and explanation of the printing process
• dye vs. pigment inkjet: dyes are organic and soluble (think plants … which die); pigments are made from rocks (last a little longer than plants, right?)
• again, the substrate (the paper type) plays a role: plain vs. coated vs. photo-coated (see link above for fantastic illustrations of the absorption of ink on the various paper surfaces)
• there are a great variety of inkjet papers
• Survey of institutions: types of prints in collections, types of deterioration observed
• [and here my heart breaks because of course I was typing these notes directly into the WordPress online dashboard and suddenly I lost my wireless internet connection.  I'm an idiot.  However, I can say that the website does a great job documenting identification (especially the online Print Comparison Tool), deterioration mechanisms, and preventive measures and care of digitally printed materials.]
• check out the IPI consumer guides
• subscribe to the DP3 newsletter
• two great book recommendations:
• The Digital Print: Identification and Preservation by Martin C. Jürgens (2009). Available for purchase online from The Getty.
• The Office Copying Revolution: History, Identification, and Preservation by Ian Batterham (2008). Available for purchase online from the National Archives of Australia.

ALA Notes: Have Metadata, Can Collaborate: Putting the MARC21 583 Field to Use in Cooperative Preservation Efforts

PDA Documentation
Debbie Funkhouser - Head of Collection Services, Published Materials, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University

• Debbie provided a wonderful primer on the 583 field to which bullet point notes here just won’t do justice, laying the foundation with a bit of a crash course on MARC for those of us who did not pay attention in our cataloging grad courses (or who instead took archival arrangement and description, like me!).
• Preservation & Digitization Actions: Terminology for MARC 21 Field 583  (this “serves both as instructional guidelines and as data dictionary”)
• four required subfields:
• action
• time/date of action
• souorce of term (pda)
• Institutiion to which field applies (institutional code)
• other fields that are not required but useful:
• materials specified (describes the part of the collection or item on which you took action)
• some fields require standard terminology (see PDF above), others do not
• you can have multiple or “sequential” 583 fields to cover, for example, the reference desk requesting review, the conservator then performing the review, then the conservator performing the conservation work.  Each event would be documented through a sequential 583 entry
• use macros to allow the non-cataloging-specialist to record preservation events into a MARC record
• once you enter information into the 583 field, you can then harvest that data via reports — how many items have been identified as brittle?  how many items have been repaired with heat-set tissue in 2008?  Great potential to be used for statistics keeping

Development of local terminology at Harvard
Heather Caldwell - Head, Conservation Services, Harvard College Library, Harvard University

• choose not to use the word “repair” as defined in the PDA — felt that the definition did not do justice to the expertise of the collections conservation program (used conserve instead)
• other term of note: “mold damaged” — not going there (not going to use it @ Harvard) due to implications of long-term or ongoing damage / hazard
• Used Etherington & Robert’s Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology and developed in-house set of terminology
• a few examples of the terms developed: damaged, defaced, mutilated, flattened, guarded, hinge tightening, interleaved, pages cut, pages opened, recased, sewn, resewn, etc.
• not all labs at Harvard are using the 583 field (Widener is not yet) — matter of staffing and resources.  Weissman using ACORN (to store written and photographic documentation).

Demonstration of macros used at Schlesinger
Amy Benson - Librarian/Archivist for Digital Initiatives, Schlesinger Library, Harvard University

• Pretty cool!  Video forthcoming (permission of the presenter pending), and don’t even try to read what’s on the screen — just know that the macro selector is on the right, and you can watch the 583 field being “built” on the left.  (~2:00 minutes)

583 used with WorldCat Local Holdings
Jacob Nadal - Preservation Officer, UCLA Library

• In 2010, Mellon Foundation supported the UCs and partners in WA, CA, and OR to start to plan for journal archiving — Western Storage Trust (WEST).  Archives Builders aggregate complete journal runs for a designated time period so that WEST member feel ok de-duping and withdrawing their print collections.
• important to know about condition for these ‘master’ copies held by Archives Builders — that’s where the 583 and condition notes comes into play
• Various rankings (bronze, silver, gold — there is a WEST platinum level, but it exists only on paper) are based on:
• validation (shelf checking the item (bound volume) for presence (silver) vs. verifying the volume and issue (gold).  No validation required for bronze.
• risk level
• optimal copies eligible
• environmental condition requirements (for example, for silver, preference expressed for storage facility over open library stacks and TWPI (time weighted preservation index) of 50-75 years; for gold, annual TWPI of 70 or better, 100 preferred)
• WEST includes in the Local Holdings Record (LHR) condition, completeness, and commitment
• completeness — if materials circulate, WEST members re-validate
• commitment — lingo: “committed to retain” instead of “to preserve” or “to archive”
• condition — ad hoc group of PARS working of this — let Jacob know if you want to get involved!

ALA Notes: Planning for the Worst: Disaster Preparedness and Response in High-Density Storage Facilities

Roberta Pilette, Head of Preservation, Yale University Library

• FM Global has just released the final report to consortium members and will be posted soon
• “The Harvard Model” based on the Harvard Depository high density storage facility is defined by concrete building, no windows, 30 ft. or so bays with books in trays (boxed according to size) and retrieved by cherry picker
• FM Global had based their models on warehouse storage scenarios (open shelving, materials on pallets)
• in-rack sprinklers are effective in reducing the temperature of the racks
• big surprise: by adding face sprinklers, you can expect 50% less damage
• other discoveries:
• narrow aisles make fire fighting difficult
• amount of material affected in even a small fire can be large (thus “high-density” — one rack = 400 linear feet x 10 books / linear foot = 4,000 books)
• trays: cardboard trays absorbed water very quickly, and as the books contained inside absorbed water, they overgrow the tray and fell (sometimes from 30 feet) from the shelf.  FM Global strongly encouraged the consortium to find another material for their trays; did some tests on acrylic coated board (results not in yet) — resisted absorbing water for about 30 minutes (not enough time).  Covered trays did help to reduce (but not prevent) the amount of water coming into the tray / onto the books

Beatriz Haspo, Collections Officer, Library of Congress

• Ft. Meade is the offsite, high-density storage (based on Harvard model) at Ft. Meade military base (50 minutes away from the Library’s Capitol Hill complex)
• First incident in Module 2 in 2009 during testing of fire suppression system
• 11:00 a.m. on a work day — fire engineers and architects present for testing
• Initial reports: not much water, boxes barely wet, books not very damp.  Shut down the fire suppression system
• Removed 157 boxes, 2067 books (not many by LC high density standards)
• Damage to containers (cardboard with a lid) from bottom up as water from the rack was absorbed
• Books removed and organized according to the container location
• “very successful failure” — this event happened before special collections started moving into Modules 3 and 4
• Library then initiated series of collaborative meetings to refine water incursion protocol
• hoping for funding for Modules 5, 6, and 7

Jacob Nadal, Preservation Officer, UCLA Library

• EARTHQUAKE AND MOLD!
• in SRLF, the high-density storage facility for the Southern UCs, possible earthquake solutions:
• shelves packed as tightly as possible
• building within a building so that the stacks are suspected within the exterior shell to dampen vibration
• shelves only ~7 ft tall — books don’t have far to fall
• damage to the shelving itself is a concern — using the retrieval lift (cherry picker) could be impossible if the closely specified clearance between shelving bays was impacted
• More info: http://www.jacobnadal.com/176
• see also IPI’s Mold Risk Factor and dew point calculator
• recovery advice:
• get a freezer –a chest freezer (or a Wei T’o, if you can keep it running) or park pallets in a cold storage warehouse
• Use PPE (personal protective equipment like respirators and eye protection) and HEPA filters rated for small particulates

Janet Gertz, Director, Preservation and Digital Conversion Division, Columbia University Library

• share disaster planning from the perspective of the ReCAP facility (NYPL, Columbia University, and Princeton University) — located on Princeton’s campus and operated by Princeton staff and facility management
• “Harvard model” high density facility
• five modules at present containing bound volumes, manuscripts, photographs and a/v, plus 3D objects
• no in-rack sprinklers — just ceiling
• decision tree for on-site staff to evaluate wet materials for recovery need (see image at right)

Jennifer Hain Teper, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Oak Street Library facility will be first to have MOBILE high bay shelving
• no in-rack sprinklers — only ceiling sprinklers, but they are “ginormous” extinguish (i.e., meant to deluge and put out a fire) sprinkler heads … terrifying to preservation folks
• collaborated with the Industrial and Enterprise System Engineering (IESE) Program for assistance in risk planning, aid in designing recovery plan (focusing on layout, retrieval, and physical recovery) and also to recommend building improvements for future expansion of modules.
• tested a variety of materials in a variety of trays and boxes in a controlled scenario, designed prioritized extraction (which materials to salvage / save first)
• going to recommend that special collections in future modules will not be stored above a human retrievable method (no higher than 10 ft)
• using colored label savers to distinguish between general and special collections

ALA Notes: Book and Paper Interest Group

Overview of 2007 Survey of Conservation Practitioners

Whitney Baker, University of Kansas
Liz Dube, University of Notre Dame

“Identifying Standard Practices in Research Library Book Conservation”

Library Resources and Technical Services 54:1 (2010), 21-33.

“The Impact of Training and Institutional Context on Book Conservation Practices”

Book and Paper Group Annual 29 (2010), 143-160.

Factoids:

• as you might expect, “special collections only” conservators employ more complex treatments than do hybrid conservators that do “general collections only” conservators.
• practitioner training most strongly predicted complexity of treatments performed as standard practice
• hybrid conservators and hybrid facilities represent middle ground
• from the discussion: time to do another survey (already?)

Panel Discussion: Conservation on the Move 

Kara McClurken, Head, Preservation Services, University of Virginia Library

• needed more space for quickly growing preservation activities
• limitations of what was possible to the current facility (no venting, no renovations, etc.)
• plans began for a shared conservation facility (collaboration btw. University Library, University Art Museum, Office of Architect, Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Museum)
• collaborative facility planning slow, so University Library went ahead with planning
• had to re-think plans for hybrid lab when promised lab size slashed from 2400 sq. ft. to 700; also decided to do only special collections in this new facility and leave general collections on-site in a fabulous but unwanted room.
• overall, eight spaces in four buildings on Grounds
• challenges: too far away to be included in development tours, no standard University services (recycling), and Dell is not a permanent home (swing space)
• created a “Faces and Spaces” outreach poster to help library staff know which staff worked in which space (and what they did)

Cathy Martyniak, Head, Preservation Department, University of Florida

See Cathy’s article (not online yet) in Library Resources and Technical Services 54:4 (2010).

• preservation moved off-site to make way for a coffee shop in the main library
• surveyed ARL libraries in 2008-2009: 75 libraries still on campus with no plan to move; 5 thinking about moving; 4 with plans underway to move; 10 who had already moved
• follow-up interview of those who had already moved offsite
• service levels did not change (were able to provide the same level of treatment, boxing, etc. as previously, with the exception of the first or second year start-up negotiations on transport, workflow, etc.)
• pay student assistants $1-$2 more per hour with longer shifts and fewer days
• advantages: clean, purpose-built space
• 7 of the 10 were near / next-to high density or offsite storage
• challenges: out of touch, fewer tours and visits, out of sight / out of mind, wasting time going back and forth to campus for meetings

Evelyn Frangakis, Chief, Preservation Division, New York Public Library

• new offsite lab is three times as large as old
• 12 conservation staff when merged and moved; plan was that there would be 32 eventually
• planning for 30 years of growth — doing their best to have the people that succeed current staff to be able to meet needs and growth
• wonderful (huge) light table with multiple, dimmable lights and frosted glass tops
• photo doc studio with adjustable tables, overhead and stand lights, 3D setups, and digital imaging and printing capabilities
• disaster recovery room with its own HVAC system, biological fume hood, freezer, drying and pressing stations
• separate dirty room for leather work, wood, metal, dye or color work, tool storage
• collections storage vault with flat, 3D, oversize, and vertical storage with separate HVAC with backup generator
• adjustable benches have locking casters, hydraulic cranks, and phenolic resin table tops
• custom drying racks fit under tables, board shears have table extenders with storage underneath
• heavy presses stored on moveable tables with locked casters
• collections care lab grew 2.5 times size; Kasemake machine got its own room
• registrar’s office with dedicated loading docks

Live from ALA in New Orleans, It’s PAIG!

Welcome to New Orleans where it is a fantastic 85 degrees and the Morial Convention Center (aka “the MCC” — the hub for ALA activities) is a mere 2.0 miles in length, which will be useful in walking off all the good food and drink I plan on consuming.  Always first on most every preservation -nista / -ninja’s schedule: the Preservation Administration Interest Group (PAIG).  Feel free to contribute comments and your notes in the comments field.

From Baby Steps to Full Strides: Preservation Week Update

Jeanne Drewes, Chief Binding and Collections Care Division, Program Manager, Mass Deacidification, Preservation Directorate, Library of Congress

• In its inaugural year in 2010, Preservation Week consisted of 66 events in 22 states.
• In 2011, 100+ events in 32 states
• Events took place mainly in academic libraries and public libraries … and three webinars!
• April 22 – 29, 2012
• Visit the Preservation Week website
• Success stories from the field:
• Harvard University could not participate during the official Preservation Week dates (due to final exam schedules), but they had a slightly later Preservation Week to great success
• Yale University Library did a visual demonstration of what it would be like to have a major preservation [Tara has promised to post images to the new Yale Library Preservation website soon], tagging books with green bands to note an item that has received preservation attention (bound, repaired, reformatted) and orange bands for items that need preservation.  Collections subject areas included: science, humanities (history), “Old Yale” (old call number series of 19th century materials).  Lesson learned: took some work to find sections that were not overrun with bound serials.

Also of note: the Library of Congress has re-designed the website of the Preservation Directorate, with a lot of new content including a model contract for emergency response services.

A New Tool for Prioritizing Collections for Emergency Plans

Tara Kennedy, Preservation Field Services Librarian, Yale University Library

[Tara has promised to put template spreadsheet up soon on the Field Services / Emergency Planning and Response area of the Yale Library Preservation website]

• assign value to materials in call number ranges or locations (i.e., unprocessed audio collections in the closet next to the reference desk)
• Questions: vital records?  high importance to readers?  irreplaceable?  format difficult to salvage?  high monetary / scholarly value?  etc.
• high priorty = score 1 (must be salvaged)
  medium priority score 2 – could be replaced, but cost of replacement exceeds cost of salvage
  low priority – score 3
  the lower the score, the higher the priority
• color code into spreadsheet, then color code a map
• can’t just hand over a questionnaire to collection manager — best in-person interview in order to prompt
• Takes a day or two
• Maps held by Preservation Dept, library administration, and library collection manager  (i.e., won’t be online).
• Haven’t done the high density storage yet (problem: stuff doesn’t always go back to same place each time).

Validating Quality in Large-Scale Digitization
Jackie Bronicki, Associate Librarian – IMLS Project Coordinator, University of Michigan:

• Researching quality in Hathitrust (currently 52 partners, 8.8 million volumes, 3 billion pages)
• Hathitrust will eventually will be 3rd or 4th largest collection of library materials (per the ARL Stats)
• Hathitrust is so much more than just a digital repository: lots of user tools (newest: page turner, various page views, a section on copyright data)
• OCR is what it is: some mistakes
• Paul Conway: has there been a knee-jerk reaction about poor quality digitization in the blogosphere? (here’s looking at you, Roy Tennant, Paul Duguid, and Robert Darnton)
• interesting CLIR report to check out: The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship (2010)
• a lot of error is source error, not error created during the scanning process — for example, the text is printed incorrectly and runs off a page; or, source (print) blur vs. scanning blur
• other types of error: traces of human error (seeing the scanning processors hand) which the vendor then attempt to clean up and creates another layer of error; scanning effects (“periodic tiff-i-cation”)
• Phase One of project: define metrics (define what an error is).  Second phase: measuring, Third / final phase: use-cases (reading online, reading volumes print on demand, processing full-text data, managing library print collections)
• “Qualitative coders” (MLIS graduates with graphic / visual arts backgrounds look at error at three different levels:
• 1: data / information
• 2: entire page
• 3: whole volume
• Created an error severity scale (0: no error through 5: original content in affected area of the page cannot be unambiguously deciphered).  Focuses on readability.
•  So far: 59 full volumes reviewed (19,000+ pages; 57,000+ pages tripe analyzed by coders).  Limited to Google digitized volumes in English.
• Final thoughts in the slide capture below:

Investigating Library and Archives Conservation Education Needs: a Preliminary Study
Jennifer Hain Teper, Head, Preservation and Conservation Units, University of Illinois Libraries

• very preliminary announcements of results
• prompted by demise of UT preservation / conservation program, Mellon funding for development of programs at Winterthur, NYU, and Buffalo, and the ongoing discussions at conferences on the importance of library science / information studies in the training of future preservation and conservation professionals
• 145 responses
• Interesting initial results — remember, still a lot of number crunching to follow:
• lots of graduates from 2000-2010 who are working in the field at present (39% of respondents)
• 52.7% received graduate degrees with specialization in conservation; 44.5% identified their area of concentration as book and paper
• percentage of respondents who had “a traditional conservation apprenticeship” (what is that?!?): 24.7% — one person had an eleven year apprenticeship …
• 17% of respondents were grant funded in their first full-time job, while 6% went into private practice
• average length of time that a conservator stays in their first professional position: 6.1 years
• 23% of respondents (who self-identified as having conservation training by virtue of participating in this survey) admit that their primary responsibility is preservation administration; 1% claimed their primary responsibility as hybrid conservation (both general / circulating and special collections conservation)
• value of respondents degree (not necessarily an MLIS degree, remember!) to their day to day job: 51% responded very useful
• 43% of respondents have written successful grant applications
• only 33% of respondents have published in peer-review journals
• 49% publish “web content” … blogs?  websites?  what does this mean?
• … also examined participation in analytical research, teaching, outreach, professional organization membership and activity …
• might compare with other conservation fields, with preservation professionals

Library Collections: Results from the Ithaka S+R Faculty Survey 2010
Matthew Long, Analyst, and Ross Housewright, Senior Analyst, Ithaka S+R

• for the sake of live blawgin’ … can I just saw that anytime I see the fellows from Ithaka that I just want to hollar YACHT ROCK?  And that I’m a bit punch drunk at this point from lack of food and sleep.
• This survey asks library directors similar questions to the recent faculty survey plus a few additional questions on the future and how they’ll plan.
• in short, library directors think everything that they do is important, but most especially their roles facilitating teaching, supporting undergraduate information literacy, and research support.  To contrast, faculty had a much different perspective — greatest difference in the same top 3 (teaching support, undergrad literacy, research support). What faculty want from library is purchasing — “new things”
• and fancy this: if library directors were given 10% more budget this year, what would they want?  1) more online or digital journals and 2) more tools for discovery (OPACs, federated search, etc.).  Print preservation ranked very low … just above more administrative staff and more money for print journals.
• library directors plan to spend less on print journals (51% less) and print books (31% less) in the next five years, bringing the balance of print to digital to 12%/81% for journals and 54%/46% for books
• library directors are much more “completely comfortable” than faculty with their library’s journal subscriptions ceasing to be available in print and publishing only in electronic form: 70% of library directors vs. 39% of faculty
• file under they haven’t lost their minds yet: only 7% of library directors believe that within the next five years the use of electronic / online materials will be so prevalent among faculty and students that it will not be necessary to maintain library collections of hard copy books
• library binding alert!  About 70% of libraries have ceased binding new print issues
• So then Ithaka proposed the dream scenario (for books!): there’s a super awesome and trustable digital repository for books with third party administered and again super trustworthy digital preservation plans in place.  How will would you be to withdraw your collections of print books?  29% of library directors would be very likely, 38% ambivalent, 33% not likely at all
• now, if they could get on-demand access to a print version via a sharing network, 90% would be more likely to withdraw print book collections

I have to hand it to the Ithaka guys: they’ve listened to us.  This presentation very clearly split the analysis of “print collections” (a term they’d been taken to task for using too eagerly in the past when they truly only meant journal collections) into books and journals.  Bravo!

Announcements:

• MIT Libraries: Jennifer Banks is retiring and the job (Head, Curation and Preservation Serivces) has been reconfigured and posted.
• The NYPL and Yale IMLS Preservation Administration fellows will be giving a presentation of their projects at ALA Annual 2012.