Travelling through time

Preserving the past

~ for the future

Heather Brown

Preservation Manager, State Library of South Australia

Preservation – why?

• Linking the past with the future

• Knowledge

whc.unesco.org/nwhc/pages/home.pages/homepage.htm

Preservation – why? cont.

Part of cultural memory of the world

Preservation – why?

• Focus on print heritage

Analogy of time traveller

The dangers

Agents of destruction

• Cultural heritage = a political

weapon

BBC News, 14 April 2005

• ‘Book arson “a Taleban-style” act’ The arsonists want the Mayek script to replace Bengali script in the state.

• …the loss of so many books was "an incalculable loss" to Manipur's heritage…

The dangers

• Agents of destruction

• Fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes…

Agents of destruction cont.

Item courtesy of Hutt City Council

Archives, NZ

The dangers

• Agents of destruction

• Insects and rodents, mould, environment …

The dangers

• Agents of destruction

• Inherent nature of original materials… e.g. poor quality paper

The dangers

• Inherent nature of original materials… e.g. digital information – difficulty in travelling over time

• Surrogate copies not always created to quality standards

- need to ‘do it once – do it right’

The dangers

• Poor storage –

including digital

The dangers

• Losing the balance between

access

and preservation

The ‘what’

• We cannot preserve everything• Ideally preservation is a pro-active

process• In the ‘best of worlds – linked to

collection development priorities• But few of us live in ideal conditions• The consequences of loss are

significant

The ‘how’

Two approaches – ability to profoundly affect time travelling

1)‘interconnectedness’ of all areas

of preservation

2) risk management

These are linked with the ‘how’ – the different techniques of preservation

‘Interconnectedness’

• Preservation as interconnected threads

• IFLA definition: ‘all the managerial and financial considerations,

including storage and accommodation provisions, staffing levels, policies, techniques and methods involved in preserving library and archival material and the information contained in them.’

(IFLA 2005)

Connecting the threads

Policies & Programs – linking strategically …

• treatments ‘traditional’ & modern

• environmental control

• IPM

• cleaning programs

• storage/housing

• disaster preparedness

• reformatting (copying)

• education of staff and users etc.

Connecting the threads cont.

Reformatting – an area ripe for further connections

e.g. programs for digitising, microfilming, conservation could be further integrated

• Key role of coordinating organisations e.g National Mission for Manuscripts (India)

Connecting the threads cont.

• Need for development of resource description or ‘preservation metadata’

• Recording not only existence of items but also conservation treatments & physical condition

• Also linked with records of surrogates e.g. microfilm, digital copies

• Needs further research and development.

Risk management

• Useful navigation tool for time travellers (Ashley-Smith 1999)

• ‘Agents of destruction’ are viewed as risk factors & assessed in terms of significance & consequences

• Focus on reformatting and particularly preservation microfilming…

Reformatting

• Copying information from one format to another

• Widely used strategy for time travelling of printed heritage

• Dates from earliest times with advantages of both preservation and access

Reformatting cont.

• Key reformatting strategies for print heritage are digitising and microfilming

• Saves ‘wear and tear’ on original

• May be only option, or most cost effective strategy

• Significant investment in reformatting cultural heritage in region

• Stakes are high ~ ‘do it once, do it right’

Risk management & microfilm

• preservation microfilm is produced to well-established, rigorous international quality standards

• long life expectancy – up to 500 years if stored to • recommended environmental conditions• in significant number of cases, preservation

microfilm will last long after originals have crumbled to dust.

Preservation microfilm cont.

• See article ‘Fading Fast’

Fran Molloy

‘Live Wire’

Sydney Morning Herald

11 August 2005

• Microfilm has limitations

Training in quality assurance• Critical to ensure that reformatted knowledge is preserved to highest level

• National Library of Australia’s PADI (Preserving Access to Digital Information) site - for digital preservation and access issues

  

Training in quality assurance

• IFLA-PAC, National Library of Australia and the State Library of South Australia: Training in Preservation Microfilming http://www.nla.gov.au/preserve/trainmat.html

• aim of developing practitioners’ skills in quality preservation microfilming

  

http://www.ifla.org/index.htm

http://www.librarypreservation.org/index.php

Training in the region

• Singapore National Archives - regional training centre

• training workshops on microfilming and digitisation quality issues to practitioners & project managers

Regional collaboration in formal training

• Workshops can link with formal training

• Specialised training course - Certificate IV in Preservation Microfilming

• Training reduces the risks of poor quality copies

Standards, guidelines & QA auditing

• Ongoing revision of standards and guidelines - an integral part of risk management

• Standards are rigorous and well established for microfilm

• Guidelines and best practices for digital master files

Standards, guidelines & QA auditing cont.

Standards, guidelines & QA auditing cont.

• Linked with concept of ‘trusted digital repositories’

• An Audit checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital Repositories (RLG 2005)

• draws on risk management framework to identify indicators of trustworthiness & reliability for digital repositories.

An Audit checklist for the Certification of Trusted Digital

Repositories cont.

• Includes systems for ongoing time travelling – plans for migration/emulation/refreshing, secure mass storage, management of contracts, licences etc.

• will require ongoing auditing to ensure certification

• systems are complex, will require frequent intervention

• the risks of long-term digital preservation still remain significant.

Conclusion

• We stand at a pivotal point in the journey for time travellers  

• The agents of destruction are many and varied.

Chances of survival can profoundly increase with ‘navigation chart’ that takes into account:

• interconnectedness of all areas of preservation

• risk management perspective – an integrated approach assessing, responding to & balancing risk factors

• advantages of a hybrid approach linking microfilming and digitising as reformatting strategies

• advantages of training and QA auditing

Stewardship

‘Doing the best we can with what we can achieve and being watchful and active.’

Colin Webb, NLA

Doing the best we can NOW

for the travellers of time into the future…