The Future of the Past: Preservation in American Research Libraries

The Commission on Preservation and Access, a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources, supports the efforts of libraries and archives to save endangered portions of their paper-based collections and to meet the new preservation challenges of the digital environment. Working with institutions around the world, CLIR disseminates knowledge of best preservation practices and promotes a coordinated approach to preservation activity. Additional copies are available for $15.00 from the above address. Orders must be prepaid, with checks made payable to the Council on Library and Information Resources. iv Foreword Deanna Marcum President This is a stocktaking report—a summary of challenges and accomplishments in preservation efforts since the early 1960s. For preservation specialists, the message is not new. But in our work with scholarly groups, we have found little knowledge of the library community's preservation agenda. Preservation of library resources is a vital matter to both scholars and librarians, and this is our attempt to provide a common backdrop against which further work can proceed. At a time when digitization is posed as the solution to a wide range of problems, we believe it is important to review the lessons learned from a national, coordinated preservation microfilming program. The library community has held different views about the best course of action to preserve brittle books, and the controversies have been public and sometimes contentious. Yet the progress in preserving the information recorded on the embrittled imprints of the past century and a half has been remarkable. In part as a result of the work done to address the brittle book problem, guidelines for preservation of library resources are well established and followed by virtually all libraries in the United States, as well as by other countries. As we begin to address the preservation challenges presented by twentieth-century media, we are once again faced with decisions about how to attack a far-reaching problem. Should we deal with non-print media preservation in a national program? How do we select the materials that will be preserved? Where will the resources come from? How will scholars be involved? Abby Smith's essay does not answer these questions, but it provides a concise history of how preservation of books and journals has been framed by librarians and archivists. Her report is meant to be a review that prepares us for the next phase of preservation work. R ecorded knowledge is as fragile as the medium …