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PRESERVATION NEWS

C&RL News, January 2007
Vol. 68, No. 1

by Jane Hedberg

NARA conference
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will hold its 21st annual conference, “Managing the Intangible: Creating, Storing and Retrieving Digital Surrogates of Historical Materials,” April 30–May 1, 2007, in Adelphi, Maryland. It will cover the basic goals of reformatting, conversion processes for static and dynamic media types, tools and workflows to increase efficiency, managed storage, retrieval of digital surrogates, infrastructure costs, and implications of digitization for preservation programs and cultural organizations. The 2007 conference will last two days and be convened at a hotel, unlike the previous one-day conferences held at a NARA facility. It is hoped that the new format will encourage discussion and interaction among speakers, attendees, and NARA staff members.

The registration fee is $275. For more information, contact Richard Schneider, Conference Coordinator (NWT), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, Room B-815, College Park, MD 20740-6001; phone: (301) 837-3617; e-mail: richard.schneider@nara.gov; URL: www.archives.gov/preservation/conferences/2007/.

Florence flood video
The University of Utah has mounted The Restoration of Books, Florence 1968 as a free streaming video. This rare 39-minute film was shot in 1968 by Roger Hill for the Royal College of Art in London to aid U.S. fundraising for the Florence flood salvage operations. It shows library collections devastated by the November 1966 flood and several of the restoration techniques employed by the conservators who went to the rescue. In particular, it shows Peter Waters covering a book in leather and Christopher Clarkson making a limp vellum binding.
The URL for the streaming video is data.scl.utah.edu/fmi/xsl/stream/details.xsl?-recid=354&a::v=21y4272i9i. Streaming video requires a recent model computer (less than three years old) and a DSL or faster connection. If you encounter problems in viewing, please contact Randy Silverman, Preservation Librarian, Marriott Library, University of Utah; phone: (801) 585-6782; e-mail: randy.silverman@utah.edu.

E-journal archiving
The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has published E-Journal Archiving Metes and Bounds: A Survey of the Landscape by Anne R. Kenney, Richard Entlich, Peter B. Hirtle, Nancy Y. McGovern, and Ellie L. Buckley.

The authors reviewed the archiving activities of 12 e-journal programs (Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, LOCKSS Alliance, CLOCKSS, Koninklijke Bibliotheek e-Depot, Kooperativer Aufbau eines Langzeitarchivs Digitaler Informationen, Los Alamos National Laboratory Research Library, National Library of Australia PANDORA, OCLC Electronic Collections Online, OhioLINK Electronic Journal Center, Ontario Scholars Portal, Portico, and PubMed Central).

They concluded that current license agreements do not protect long-term access to e-journals, that libraries are not able to address the preservation of e-journals unilaterally, that much of the scholarly e-literature isn’t covered by archiving agreements, and that currently there is no obvious means of preserving most e-literature. The report concludes with specific recommendations for academic libraries, publishers, and e-journal archiving programs to address this situation.

The report is available free-of-charge at www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub138abst.html. Paper copies are also available for $30 each at the same URL. ISBN 1-932326-26-X or 978-1-932326-26-0.

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