Preservation Conf Notes 2002–03

University of Michigan

March 7–8, 2002

 

Approximately 150 persons attended this conference. The conference website is at http://www.lib.umich.edu/conferences/preservation/

These informal conference notes were taken by Tom Peters, one of the attendees. They are not intended to serve as an adequate substitute for actually having attended the conference. Because the conference included several breakout sessions, these notes do not cover the entire conference. Errors may have been introduced through inattention, misperception, misunderstanding, ignorance, poor typing skills, or other failings. Please send comments, questions, and corrections to tpeters@cic.uiuc.edu.

 

Bill Gosling from Michigan

 

The issues are much broader than brittle books and digital preservation. We’re not leveraging as much as we should the opportunities for partnerships and collaborative activity. Where do we need to go with the entire range of preservation services and needs? Gosling has a growing concern that the volume of material that needs attention is growing, and much may be lost. Collocating research materials can be the engine of preservation, or an opportunity for massive loss.

 

Nancy Gwinn from the Smithsonian

Preservation lives! Gwinn is the Chair of the ARL Committee on Preservation of Library Materials. The daily activities of individual repositories ultimately will determine the viability and accessibility of cultural materials. The draft statement on research libraries’ responsibility for preservation reaffirms that preservation is one of the fundamental responsibilities of the research library community.

Jan Merrill-Oldham from Harvard

 

What are we trying to accomplish? What do we want to know that we don’t know right now? She revisited where we were in 1985, when her action agenda article was published in American Libraries. Back then she stated that preservation librarianship had come of age. Have we been able to sustain the national dialogue on preservation and conservation issues? See the recent back-page article in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Deanna Marcum on preservation. We’ve never established a preservation institute or a unified national preservation agenda. The general public’s interest in preserving our cultural heritage continues to rise.

Preservation is an expensive undertaking, replete with contradictions and compromises. For example, library binding is strong and durable, but it also changes the object and, in some cases, restricts its usability. End-processing by libraries also entails some compromises. Conservation restores stability and usability to objects, but it also covers up historical evidence. Reformatting captures threatened information, releases texts from material objects, and enables added accessibility and functionality, but also changes the quality of objects and destroys historical evidence. High quality storage conditions retard decay in a cost-effective manner, but they inhibit use and browsing.

What type of preservation world would we like to create? Merrill-Oldham shared her wish list. Environmental controls, remote storage, disaster preparedness, and disaster response are four key areas. Controlling the storage environment remains the most effective way to extend the usable life of information materials. The Image Permanence Institute’s guidelines have been very beneficial.

Her vision of the future: Smart library buildings that monitor environmental conditions are cropping up all over the world. Living library collections—having only materials at hand that are likely to be used—will make storage of materials more rational. Brittle books will be treated before they are put into person’s hands. A new method for drying wet books will be established, enabling 10,000 volumes to be restored in 24 hours. Microchips can be embedded in objects to monitor their environmental conditions, retard theft and mutilation, and record both in-library use and circulation. Although the amount of information produced in digital format continues to increase, printed information objects remain popular, because humans are fundamentally lusty. People will embrace all formats. Fore-edge stamping and internal page stamping will continue, as a clue to all that this is not personal property. New inks will dry instantly, be crisp and clear, and be environmentally friendly. Library binders will have taken on more short-run printing and scanning as their businesses evolve. People have tired of objects that are strictly functional, saturated fats, and nasty wars.

Conservation continues to be a vital combination of ancient craft and high tech processes. The field of hand papermaking will be robust. Adhesive will be vastly improved—permanent, but also easily reversible. No more toxic solvents and products will be used. Deacidification will be more important than it is today. Deacidification processes will be combined with paper strengthening. Digitization will make the study of information objects (e.g., bindings) possible. We now can predict the aging behavior of paper and other physical information-bearing objects.

Copying will continue to be done for many purposes, and paper-to-paper copying will continue to be a common practice. Right-angle copiers will be perfected, to protect bindings. In the future, most book copying will be done face-up. Imaging services will be available in all libraries to make copies from one format to another. Liberal new copyright legislation will facilitate collection management and use. The features “arms race” for digitization technologies will be over, and simple interfaces will prevail. Closed books will be able to be photographed in layers, page by page. Information sequestered in fragile objects will be freed from its confines and released to the world.

Standards for audio and video reformatting will be in place. No objects will be retained in proprietary formats. Libraries will have international backups and mirrors.

 

Humans do not want to trade one technology for another. We want them all to be available. Centralization can be good and efficient. Collaboration among campus units and across multiple institutions avoids unnecessary redundancy. Libraries need to be places where people are engaged in meaningful, joyful work. Cross-training keeps life interesting.

Deanna Marcum from the Council on Library and Information Resources

 

What do we mean by preservation? What are we really prepared to do about it? We tend to think in terms of institutional programs? Can we think collaboratively about the nation’s preservation needs? What role will institutional programs play in this national agenda?

 

Abby Smith from the Council on Library and Information Resources

What do scholars expect from us? What do we expect from scholars? In 1998 the CLIR Board asked the staff to look at the preservation of artifacts. They examined the problems along genre lines (e.g., manuscripts), not along disciplinary lines. A task force on the Artifact was convened, resulting in the writing and publication of The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task force on the Artifact in Library Collections. Scholars fear that library collections are becoming more homogeneous. Foreign language materials are perceived by scholars to be especially at risk. Scholars want more intellectual access to scholarly information, which they see as the main promise of digital technologies. Scholars need to participate in the philosophical and policy issues here. Scholars are not technophobic, nor do they fear that librarians are ruining collections through digitization efforts. Scholars are worried about the fragility of digital collections of scholarly material.

Scholars refused to speculate about what information collections will gain and lose value in the future. Less duplication and more diversity of digitized collections should be the goal, according to scholars. Funding remains a conundrum. We should continue to convene diverse groups of scholars to discuss these issues. See the March 14, 2002 issue of the NY Review of Books, where Robert Darnton and Nicholson Baker discuss preservation issues. Text (on pages and screens) usually receives most of the attention from most scholarly communities. The issue of disappearing digits is now being appreciated by scholarly communities. Scalable, affordable solutions will involve preventive maintenance and acceptable surrogates. Access to original, un-reformatted artifacts is essential for only a small group of scholarly needs. For many needs, scholars are happy to work with surrogates.

The next generation of scholars will be using computers in more fundamental, diverse ways to conduct their research. Scholars will continue to rely on preservation librarians to be attendant to preservation issues. We should enlist ambitious young scholars to advise us on new preservation program development.

 

Ross Atkinson from Cornell

We still have an objective view of information. We focus on maintaining objects over time. This is the thermodynamic ideal: to move all information en masse into the future without touching or altering it. Do we really want to maintain our current access over time? Three main drivers of the preservation agenda: economic, political, and ideological. Each driver collides with the other two. Democratic, pluralistic, post-modern (no definitive answers), and idealistic: these are the values of this culture, and these values are reflected in research libraries. The utilitarian imperative always is haunted by the specter of the inversion (i.e., what now has little value may have great value in the future). The future will work with the information we choose to preserve. The subjective reality of preservation is that the benefits for various stakeholders must be played off against each other.

Temporal contraction is a relatively new phenomenon. Preservation will become a higher priority. The clientele for preservation services have not even been born yet. We need to decouple traditional and digital preservation. Traditional preservation has to continue, however. Material in digital form deteriorates and becomes inaccessible much more quickly than material in printed form.

Digital preservation programs that provide warranted longevity are required. Databases need to be self-renewing objects. Preservation of digital content needs to be achieved, or libraries will be out of business. Systems, by definition, need to be designed to maintain what comes into the system for preservation.

 

The “macrologic conjecture” means that it is likely to be more sustainable to save everything, rather to select things to save. It may be cheaper to just save everything, because selection costs are simply too expensive. Welcome back, Alexandria. Will selection become a dead practice? Probably not. Ownership continues to be a fundamental implication for selection. Scholarly communication will remain a scarce commodity with limited access. We really do want to get out of the way of users of research libraries. Let the user select what is useful from the universe of information. To achieve this, we really need to have good metadata of various types, including normative metadata that will instruct users what is important. This is a just another type of selection.

In online environments, the “look and feel” of information as originally produced and delivered is as important as delivering the data.

 

There is an ecology to every knowledge base. At some point, information will be lost. We can systematize and manage the loss of information, however. If humans continue to be the prime engines of knowledge creation, maintaining knowledge bases that people can use is vital. Deciding what to discard and eliminate will become much more important than what to save and preserve.

Janice Mohlhenrich from Emory

She provided institutional perspectives on preservation, as evidenced in the recent SPEC Kit #262. There is more specialization and isolation in the preservation field. Preservation is beginning to be seen as ubiquitous to the work of what we do. Preservationists are becoming more integrated into the overall mission of the research library and the research university. Globalization and collaboration are gaining importance. We now all serve worldwide populations. Mohlenrich noted that the opportunities for collaboration are great within and among universities. The desire for standards and the codification of best practices has become strong. Standards and best practices are moving targets, however. We need to increase preservation efforts related to non-print materials. Digital preservation activities engender both excitement and concern within and outside the preservation community. The Antiques Roadshow, Nicholson Baker’s writings, and other phenomena have increased the general public’s awareness of preservation issues and concerns. There is a rising tide of perceptions of the value of old objects.

Funding remains one of the top challenges and needs, but also one of the top accomplishments, according to the 87 respondents to the SPEC survey. One-third of the respondents said that their preservation programs do not meet basic needs. How do we know what these basic preservation needs are? How can we bridge the gap between what scholars want and what we’re able to provide with current preservation strategies? We need to collectively and individually make reasoned, appropriate decisions that keep our options open for technological innovation and improvement? What we need are multiple models, thoughtful inquiry, careful testing and assessment, and effective leadership.

General Discussion

Atkinson and Joe Branin highly recommend reading The Evidence in Hand report. What is the next step? The scholars have tossed or hit the ball back into our half of the court. Scholars expect librarians to deal with the practical matters of preservation. There is tremendous competition among the various preservation goals that have been identified. Realistically, what can the ARL libraries do together? As a general rule, have we been truly collaborative in the last few years? Peter Graham from Syracuse suggested that the preservation monolith needs to be broken down into various roles and types of preservation needs. What preservation opportunities are opening up now? We should address this question, rather than try to predict future opportunities. We should have a thorough assessment at regular intervals. Preservation efforts are interwoven into many functional areas across the research library. Scholars tend to compliment the cooperative nature of librarians. See the recent article in C&RL about the long-term retention of monographs. What is the role of the commercial sector in the future of long-term, national preservation efforts? Does the commercial sector focus on meeting the immediate needs of current users? The commercial sector’s primary goal is to make money, yet research libraries need to work closely with the commercial sector to create products and programs of mutual benefit. Atkinson advised us to exercise our role and power as customers. A community effort, involving the commercial sector, will be needed. In the new information era, we need to work with commercial publishers and technologists to create useful preservation programs. A person from the Smithsonian asked, “What are the barriers to collaboration?” We need to be realistic about collaboration.

 

Reports on Breakout Discussions on “Building Preservation Programs Locally”

Bring the stakeholders (faculty, staff, administrators) together. Come to a common understanding of the institution’s mission, which should be linked to the collection development and preservation policies. Document the wants and needs of all stakeholding groups. Then map this to the existing resources. Establish priorities. Maintain a continuous dialogue with faculty and all stakeholders. Communication is crucial. What will be lost if priorities are not established? Consider use patterns and specialized institutional values. Students and scholars want 24/7 access to our collections. Design the optimal program: achieve buy-in; present data about the benefits and the costs of the entire program; articulate what optimal means for your institution. Identify core competencies and exploit existing skills/expertise on campus.

The goals of a needs assessment need to be articulated. Assessing the environment and opportunities are part of this. Get internal constituencies at the table. Set benchmarks. Revisit the benchmarks published by ARL in 1991. Build conservation components into digitization projects.

The idea of right-sizing needs to be explored. All research libraries cannot have comprehensive preservation programs. Focus on local strengths. Pay attention to geographically close libraries, even if they are not ARL (or even academic) libraries. The number of off-site storage facilities seems to be burgeoning. What affect will this have on local preservation programs? Will print and digital preservation programs diverge? Most libraries have a difficult time keeping the circulating collections in basic working order. Institutional culture, institutional mission, and regional differences all have a bearing here.

What does the phrase “preservation need” really mean? What should be the relationship between digital preservation and analog preservation? Peter Graham thinks that the selection processes may share some similarities, but the idea of benchwork does not translate well. Is digital preservation primarily about preserving digital content, or is digitization a method for preserving content? The preservation programs could be charged with monitoring the media on which digital content is stored. Do traditional preservation programs need to reinvent themselves or expand the scope of their services? Has digital content become the end product, or is print-on-demand on acid-free paper a viable end product? Often when digital surrogates are made, an assumption is made that the original analog object will continue to persist. We are here to try to figure out how we can work together, not to share best scanning practices or how to deal with scratched microfilm. The ARL Preservation Planning Program was useful in the past in helping to start preservation programs.

Large-Scale Solutions for Artifacts

Connie Brooks from Stanford (moderator)

Think not only about solutions, but take a fresh look at the problems. Probe the real needs and underlying questions.

Jim Reilly from Rochester Institute of Technology

Environmental controls are the large-scale preservation solution. Temperature and humidity are the keys. A good environment slows down all decay processes. Environmental controls are proven to be truly effective. Our collections are composed of fast-decaying materials. Environmental controls complement and underlie all other preservation efforts. Slow, inherent chemical decay occurs over decades. Off-site storage with environmental controls can slow down the decay process by the order of magnitude of five times. The barriers to using environmental controls effectively are not money, lack of HVAC equipment, or staff. The real barriers are leadership/management, education and culture change, and monitoring the infrastructure. In the evolution of library facilities planning, the current trend toward off-site storage will evolve into the separation of people and collections, and the construction of specialized vaults. Most of our materials are decaying extraordinarily rapidly. We will not be able to digitize all of them before they decay. The Preservation Environment Monitor (PEM) system from the Image Permanence Institute is being tested at 80 institutions. We also need to examine the management processes at these institutions.

Joe Branin from Ohio State University

Branin discussed the value of storage facilities. Central campuses are crowded environments, and campus libraries are full. Open space is sacred on our campuses. OhioLINK actually began as a facility consortium, not a consortium to facilitate group purchases of e-content. Harvard, Ohio, Texas, Minnesota, Princeton/Columbia/NYPL, Five Colleges, Indiana, and Illinois are moving toward storage facilities. Storage centers cost approx. 10 percent of conventional central library facilities. 40 percent of titles in research libraries never circulate. Only 3 percent of a stored collection will circulate in an average year. Check-out history is the strongest indicator of probably future use. Security in open stacks is a big problem. Conservation facilities are becoming part of storage facilities. Providing intellectual and physical access to items in remote storage is a challenge. On-site services for visiting readers need to be provided. Johns Hopkins’ Access to Printed Materials (APM) project is using robotics to retrieve and scan printed materials. Storage centers should collaborate to avoid putting duplicates of little-used material into these centers.

Bernie Reilly from the Center for Research Libraries

 

He spoke about the cooperative preservation of newspapers. Newspaper information is ephemeral and difficult to manage, yet the newspaper genre is not going away. Historians of all stripes rely on newspapers. Newspapers cry out for attention. We need a national strategy for the hardcopy preservation for newspapers. The audience for hardcopy newspapers is not just scholars. In 1998 LC held a conference on newspaper preservation. Nicholson Baker gave the state of newspaper preservation some needed, if unwanted, attention. We should get used to this type of exposure. Americans are wary of opacity of how national resources are managed. Robert Darnton is calling for a new national repository for cultural artifacts—a new Library of Congress.

Cooperation has been a characteristic of research libraries for the last 50 years, primarily through interlibrary loan. We no longer can afford to build and house redundant print holdings. The national energy grid manages the entire energy resources of the nation. Why can’t we do that for research materials? We need a national knowledge resources grid. This would enable the strategic management of our knowledge resources. The UK and Australia are launching national distributed knowledge management systems. We already have implicit last copy repositories for newspapers. Depository libraries for federal documents also could be part of the grid. We should create a preservation federation. We will need to form agreements and enter into contractual relationships to make this federation happen. We should form a standing selection committee to guide the selection and preservation of foreign newspapers. Ownership and control will move away from local loci. Gradually libraries are getting used to providing access to things they don’t own. Funding and governance are crucial issues. How to focus the will of the community on such a long-term effort and commitment?

Shannon Zachary from the U. of Michigan

She spoke about the state of mass deacidification in 2002. The brittle books problem has not gone away. At UMich, approx. 25 percent of the print collection is acidic and brittle. Libraries are trying to rectify these problems after the fact. ANSI Z39.48-1992 is the current standard for permanence of paper for printed library materials. Paper production methods have become more environmentally friendly. A recent sample of new books at UMich revealed that 13 percent of the monographs were acidic. The Battelle process developed in Germany has been in production since 1994. The Bookkeeper process at PTLP recently was awarded a major job from LC. Zachary does not prefer one process over the other. NEH now allows mass deacidification to count for cost-sharing. If the paper survives a single doublefold test, it is considered not brittle. Deacidification (date, company, and process) information is entered into the notes field of the MaRC record. There are some side effects to mass deacidification. At present, PTLP is the only viable massD vendor in the U.S.

Working with Vendors

 

Sherry Byrne from U of Chicago

Libraries use a variety of vendors for a wide variety of services. Library binders historically have provided preservation services to libraries for the longest time. Microfilming services also have been around for a long time as well. These both are significant, ongoing relationships. Integrated library vendors also can contribute to preservation programs. Vendors supplement the capabilities that libraries do not have or choose not to have. When selecting a vendor, look at the vendor’s capacity, company background, track record, financial solvency, etc. Don’t give vague or mixed messages to vendors. Be clear, and refer to standards and best practices. Understand the work being vended, to ensure quality control and getting what you want, and only what you want.

 

Tom Peters from the CIC (Committee on Institutional Cooperation)

He spoke about consortial agreements for preservation services. The CIC has been in existence since 1958, and the CIC Center for Library Initiatives was formed in 1994. Peters noted that it takes years (sometimes decades) to create a culture of cooperation among institutions. Consortial license agreements are a major program within the CIC. In addition to library consortial agreements, the university purchasing officers have consortial agreements for scientific equipment and paper supplies, and the IT groups have a new program to collaboratively purchase software. Within the Center for Library Initiatives, the “deals” we do focus on e-content, software, and services. Regarding preservation consortial agreements with vendors, the service sector (and possibly the software sector) are the two most likely areas for worthwhile collaboration. Research libraries enter into consortial agreements in order to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness than would be probably if all parties acted alone, to obtain better terms, and to get better pricing. Current CIC consortial agreements and programs related to preservation include a series of 6 NEH-funded preservation microfilming projects (the total dollar value of these projects if over $8 million), deacidification services, underground storage, print master microfilm storage (and related services), and scanning and conversion services. Other possible consortial agreements could focus on trusted repositories for born-digital content, binding services, collaborative off-site storage, and distributed print retention agreements for journals.

Peters concluded by noting that in some ways all consortial agreements are alike, regardless of what is being purchased and delivered. The processes are similar, as are the pitfalls and stumbling blocks. In other ways, consortial agreements for preservation services and tools are different. For example, sole source situations are much more common in e-content market than in the preservation field, although the preservation market is not as truly competitive as, say, the software market. Through preservation agreements, information materials often are transported, stored off-site, and processed, which creates a host of liability and insurance issues that are not found in e-resource agreements.

 

Paul Parisi from Acme Bookbinding

He spoke about image processing and library binding standards. Preservation facsimiles are a relatively new product with emerging standards. Scanning to create preservation facsimiles involves making several decisions. Should the original be disbound? Should background noise (e.g., bleed-through text from the other side of the page) be edited out?

Library binding standards from the Library Binding Institute sprung up in the 1920’s. Ex Libris has developed an interface to binding software from commercial binderies. This is a collaboration of partners, not a vendor-customer relationship. The model of the on-demand printed book holds much promise. Vendors need to listen to what their customers are telling them. End-users don’t like working with microfilm. People like books—sometimes too much.

 

Meg Bellinger from OCLC

How can vendors (aka business partners) anticipate needs, based on emerging markets, technologies, and needs? OCLC is both a vendor and a membership cooperative. It is a not-for-profit membership organization. They try to look for market opportunities, not just at what they are able to produce. Create mutual respect, listen to concerns, and anticipate solutions.

From 1985-2000, PresRes earned a reputation for high-quality preservation microfilming. It established a cost-recovery model. It developed its core competency, then added several enhancement options. PresRes adopted new technologies organically, and stuck to its values and mission. They began digitizing from preservation microfilm in 1995. WorldCat is the sun at the center of the OCLC solar system. WorldCat is the great metadata search engine in the sky. Digital and Preservation Resources (DPR) at OCLC was created in October 2001. DPR’s business plan includes: digital and preservation cooperative, digital and preservation resources centers in North America and Europe, and a digital archive.

Collaboration in the Digital World

Robin Dale from RLG (moderator)

Digitization should be part of our preservation programs. The library’s role is to preserve scholarly output—analog and digital. The new international science grid will create tremendous amounts of digital information.

Dan Greenstein from the Digital Library Federation

He spoke about the essentially collaborative nature of digital preservation. Are we seeing the emergence of two preservation cultures, one analog and the other digital? Digital preservation is part of a singular enterprise. Digital preservation is not for format-specific collections, nor perhaps for teaching and public lending libraries. DP is for memory organizations concerned generally with cultural and scholarly heritage irrespective of format. DP requires enterprise-wide priorities, funding, research, and staffing models. DP needs to be conceived in a unified, multi-institutional way. What of our cultural and scholarly heritage, irrespective of format, do we propose to preserve? Digital techniques contribute to preservation of analog materials. Ask not whether digital is a preservation medium, but what role for digital in the preservation of analog, to conserve film and audio, and to create new opportunities for preserving print materials. This will require comprehensive perspective across preservation practices.

How should we rationalize very scarce resources in the very few cultural memory organizations to preserve our cultural heritage? An interesting functional division of labor may start to emerge among the cultural memory organizations. In a networked world, access has little to do with physical proximity to the objects. Digital source objects can be delivered into all sorts of print on demand objects. Libraries could rely more on digital objects for access, thus mitigating the need for multiple libraries to hold large print collections. Distributed print archives may make sense. DP is essentially collaborative because it reduces costs and lowers barriers. Shared understanding of optimal formats and documentation (e.g., at Cornell, Harvard, Minnesota, and California) lowers the risks for all. A shared understanding of credible repositories (e.g., at OCLC) surfaces outsourcing options that lower costs and barriers for collecting institutions. Shared tools (e.g., LOCKSS, metadata harvesting services, naming schemes and resolution services, and auditors) lower costs and barriers for collection institutions. Outsourcing solutions can be good and cost effective.

There are three approaches to archiving the web. There are end-to-end “negotiated deposit” solutions, such as PANDORA in Australia. There are end-to-end “harvested” solutions, such as Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive. This technique currently captures static web pages, but not dynamically rendered content. There also is an extensively distributed stewardship model, where institutions would collect in subject areas of interest to them. There would be deep divisions of labor in this distributed stewardship model.

Dale Flecker from Harvard

He spoke about the Mellon-funded projects to study archiving scholarly e-journals. In the paper era, archiving involved large-scale redundancy. The preservation and access copies are the same copy. National and research libraries have assumed this role. The e-journal archiving model can be different. The copies are remotely held in publishers’ systems. Our ability to preserve the content is limited by the terms of the license. The long-term preservation issues can be unbundled from the day-to-day access issues. Currently research libraries are bearing double costs: the e-journals that most users prefer, and the paper copy for preservation. The electronic version increasingly is the copy of record. A second round of Mellon grants will fund actual implementation of the six planning grants awarded in December 2000. MIT is experimenting with archiving dynamic e-journals. Flecker argues that these archives need to be independent of publishers, yet this type of archiving requires active publisher partnerships. These archives are designed on the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model.

Collaboration is too narrow a term. This enterprise is inherently multi-party. This type of archiving involves collaboration, discussion, agreements, sharing, etc. among archives, subscribers, publishers, funding agencies, etc. No single institution will be able to build and maintain a self-sufficient archive. We will need a registry to know what content has been archived in this way. Some replication is good in any archiving system. E-journals are not simply articles. We have no control over the format of “associated materials” (datasets, images, tables, etc.). Archving advertising is very complex, because most of it is dynamic, frequently it comes from a third party, and it can involve country-specific complexities. The links frequently are separate from articles, and the links are regularly updated, sometimes dynamically. Most publishers are building databases of references and links.

Regarding format, PDF is the lowest-common denominator, but the format is proprietary, it is marked up for display not meaning, it supports limited functionality, and the long-term preservability of PDF files is unclear. SGML/XML is increasingly common, but DTDs vary widely from publisher to publisher, and the DTDs are far from stable. Do we need to settle on an archival DTD for articles? If we did this, the look and feel of the archived e-article would be different that the article as delivered by publishers, vendors, and aggregators. It may be worthwhile to standardize the SIP (Submission Information Package).

What are the attributes of a trusted repository for digital material? Who would provide certification of these archives? Who would perform random or periodic auditing? The LOCKSS model allows archives to audit each other.

Publishers prefer dark archives that do not compete with publishers’ services. What “trigger events” would make the content in a dark archive accessible? If an archive is dark, how do you know it is still good? Real users are the best auditors of an archive. Who is going to pay to build and maintain these archives, which are intended to be a public good?

What is our fundamental goal, to preserve bits or to save usable digital objects? Preservation is a format-by-format issue. Most archives probably will specify their preferred formats, which will be kept usable.

Digital preservation is difficult and different. Risk happens in internet time. Nothing will be saved passively. Interdependence becomes explicit in this emerging model. Licensing and intellectual property issues are critical.

We should push long-term preservation work up into the publication process for e-journals and e-articles.

Winston Tabb from the Library of Congress

Collaborating to plan, and planning to collaborate. Will collaboration be easier in the digital world? NDIIPP is the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program being hosted by LC. The website should appear in the next few weeks. Up to $175 potentially is available for NDIIPP. Dec. of 2000, Congress gave $100 million to LC to develop NDIIPP. $75 million of that will be appropriated by Congress, if matching dollars come from non-federal sources by March 31, 2003. The objective of NDIIPP is to develop a national strategy for long-term preservation of digital content. It will be a national network of libraries and other organizations. LC will work with the Copyright Office to develop policies, protocols, and strategies for the long-term preservation of digital materials. The preservation issue is front-and-center, not the access issue. NDIIPP will have three phases: planning, partnerships, and evaluation/recommendations. A National Digital Strategy Advisory Board (NDSAB), including folks from other countries. Several ARL libraries (e.g., Michigan) have representatives. The master plan should be completed soon. Frank Romano at the U of Rochester is working on the e-books facet of the plan. Media and entertainment representatives have been included in stakeholder meetings.

Consensus has been reached concerning the basic need for a national preservation initiative. Some form of distributed or decentralized solution is commonly perceived. The three scenarios: a universal library; the world’s best library; congress of libraries (distributed model).

 

We need to collaborate to develop R&D strategies for long-term preservation. ZING will the Z30.50 for the 21^st Century. Content collaborators include ProQuest (dissertations), APS, AIP, Elsevier, Internet Archive, WebArchivist.org (new organization with the user’s perspective), the Television Archive at Vanderbilt, and the Harry Fox Agency for music. Future content collaboration could focus on foreign collections, government information (federal, state, and foreign), and a registry of projected digital content.

Lynn Marko from the U of Michigan

She spoke about local institutional collaboration for digital preservation. Preservation reformatting at Michigan will involve digital capture as the default mode. Michigan has made a long-term commitment to digital content. Preservationists care deeply about preserving the context of these objects. They have imbedded digitized images into MaRC records.

Reports from Break-Out Sessions on National Strategies

Martin Runkle from Chicago

Central registry of decentralized repository of scholarly information objects. Training for conservators is a pressing need. Internships would be useful. Encourage regional and state groups of preservation staffs. CRL should create a database of collaborative preservation programs. Identify monographs in medicine not held by NLM, then microfilm them and conserve the originals. Develop a shared database of film and video.

Peter Graham from Syracuse

Training and development issues loom large, esp. west of the Mississippi. Library school curricula should include preservation. Use existing consortia for the development of training programs. We need to lobby for resources and raise money to do what we know we need to do. Audio and video recording preservation needs to be brought up to speed. We need to develop and strengthen partnerships with the vendor community. We need to become more aware of what is happening internationally. We need to develop the tools for collaborating. We need to build social capital to support and sustain preservation efforts. We need to have a national discussion about selection-for-preservation principles. We need to make sure that preserved items continue to be accessible (intellectually and physically).

Joe Branin from Ohio State

We need to break down the barriers to collaboration (competition, regional differences, institutional differences, etc.). National coordination on print retention is important. Pay more attention to sound, moving images, and still images at the national level. We need a central clearinghouse on the web for preservation information—a preservation portal. Identify the top AV archives in the nation. Create a central registry for proposed digital projects. Funding is a central issue. What can we do at the national level to help with local funding needs? Why do we rely so much on external funding? We need to get preservation issues at the table during planning sessions for individual research libraries. We need to examine the fundamentals regarding basic materials and processes (paper, ink, binding, magnetic media, optical media).

General Discussion

R&D efforts also need to be added to the national agenda. Somebody needs to sound the alarm that digital content is being lost today. This is the new “slow fires” emergency for us. We need a national preservation research agenda that we can share with chemists, computer scientists, etc. AV formats, the need for training, and the need for funding are three agenda items that seem to have floated to the top.

Bill Gosling from Michigan

He spoke about the development and fund-raising aspects of preservation programs. We need to integrate preservation needs into the development stories in such a way that it will interest potential donors. Listen carefully for donor interests. Provide tours of the facilities and collections, especially the conservation lab. Try to address alumni, retirees, and community groups whenever possible. Michigan does have an endowed fund to support mass deacidification. Relate your story to how today’s students benefit from what your library are doing. Another donor at Michigan has endowed a fund to support their papyrology collection. Include wish lists (what we would like to have someone support) in your newsletter for the friends group. You never know what is going to interest potential donors. Create an environment where serendipity can occur. Tie preservation needs into the broader message of the library. Engage the preservation staff in creating and delivering the story. One-on-one with donors is labor-intensive, but it is the best place to get started. Target groups of prospective donors. Be careful when you write gift agreements. Make sure the wording meets your current and future needs. Build a wish list and keep it current. Have equipment, staff, processing support, and other specific needs in various price ranges ready to distribute to potential donors.

 

Matching gifts with internal funds or with corporate/foundation funds are another strategy. Donor gifts also can be pooled. Note to potential donors that endowed gifts build over time and last in perpetuity. Current faculty members are another potential source of support for preservation efforts. Report out how the money was used, esp. to the Friends of the Library group. Try to build a preservation plank into the university’s capital campaign. It could be a standalone plank, or integrated into broader expressions of need. In general, tell a story, and use examples. Speak to potential donors one-on-one, and listen to their areas of interest.

Federal grants can be come directly to institutions or consortially. Partner with other campus units. Private foundations often behave like individual donors. Requests for printed, bound copies of Making of America titles are coming in from individuals. While there is not yet a mechanism for producing them, this is under investigation as another possible source of revenue.

General Discussion: It’s true that no one ever graduated from the library, but no one ever graduated without the library. Keep the university development office, as well as other schools and colleges, aware of when you make contact with potential donors. Place and memories are important to alumni. In your promotional literature, focus not on what you’ve already accomplished, but what you need to have in order to do what you want to do. Your promotional literature should be under perpetual review and revision. Do not get discouraged is a campaign does not reach its goals. Treat everyone you come into contact with as a potential donor. Student employees eventually will become alumni. How do you approach faculty members who have collections of interest to the research library? Should we actively pursue gifts-in-kind that would enrich our collections? Should NEH provide more funding for large-scale digitization projects? Scholars are calling for more finding aids, not wholesale digitization projects.

Nancy Gwinn from the Smithsonian

She summarized the highlights and key themes of the conference. She wished that more library directors had attended this conference. The growth of the number of storage facilities is a major new development. She is intrigued by Bernie Reilly’s idea of a national scholarly information grid. Another dry process for deacidification will be demonstrated in a couple of weeks. Training needs have changed. We need to learn new skill sets. Everybody knows the problems that we face with preservation of—and access to—digital content, especially web content. NDIIPP is a top-down initiative, which is unusual for preservation initiatives. We developed a list of 21 high-priority action items. Peter Graham noted a lack of a sense of urgency we had over the brittle books problem of approx. 15 years ago. The new technology both excites and confuses us. In some ways, it has blunted our resolve. The brittle book problem remains.

General Discussion: Perhaps we should think not in terms of what we can do ourselves, but what we can pay someone to do. We still need to get over the digitization hump, as Michigan recently did. Realistically, how can we move forward nationally in a coordinated way? Could we use the NDIIPP as an available framework? Is digital preservation an end, a technique, or a self-sustaining process?

 

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