Subject: CLIR Seeks Public Comment on Report on the Artifact in Library Collections
NINCH-ANNOUNCE (david@ninch.org)
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:15:29 -0400
Message-Id: <v04210104b70656fc7bcd@[192.100.21.23]> Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:15:29 -0400 To: ninch-announce@cni.org From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org> Subject: CLIR Seeks Public Comment on Report on the Artifact in Library Collections
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
April 20, 2001
Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR) Seeks Public
Comment on
Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections
http://www.clir.org/pubs/issues/issues21.html#task
http://www.clir.org/activities/details/artifact-docs.html
Comments Sought by June 10, 2001
A compelling draft report on the role of the artifact in scholarly
research and related preservation issues is available on the website
of the Council on Library and Information Resources.
The report is especially interesting for this audience as many of the
issues have been framed by the act of digitizing scholarly resources,
which has "fundamentally altered the information landscape." Although
digital preservation was initially considered to be out of scope, it
was perhaps inevitably the subject of a considerable section of the
report. Also, as Abby Smith's brief article below states, the report
considers "digital surrogacy" at some length, "articulating its
advantages and disadvantages and identifying those parts of the
information infrastructure that need to be in place to maximize its
benefits."
David Green
===========
From CLIR Issues May-June 2001
Task Force on the Role of the Artifact Seeks Public Comment on Draft Report
by Abby Smith
FOR 18 MONTHS, a task force of scholars and librarians sponsored by
CLIR has been investigating the issues surrounding the preservation
of and access to artifactual collections. Artifacts-that is,
information recorded on physical media-form the bedrock of evidence
upon which scholarship and teaching are built. The task force has
produced a draft report, The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task
Force on the Artifact in Library Collections, and is inviting members
of the research community to comment on the draft and to help shape
the recommendations and outcomes of its work. The task force is
hosting five public-review sessions this spring that will engage
librarians and scholars in developing recommendations that meet the
needs of all who share an interest in this issue. The report is
designed to advise academic officers, funders, library
administrators, government funding agencies, and scholars on what is
at stake as library and archival collections age and as demands to
build digital services and collections threaten to eclipse the
continuing need for investment in preservation.
While preparing the draft report, the task force consulted
extensively with experts from libraries and archives. Task force
members confirmed what is well-known to many librarians: As the
volume of information collected by libraries grows, and with it the
demand for electronic resources, so do scholars' demands for access
to original, unreformatted resources. Libraries are caught between
building digital collections and infrastructures and increasing their
efforts to preserve many print and audiovisual resources in dire
condition-caught because their preservation budgets are flat and the
pressures to "go digital" are great. As long as the claim on
preservation resources exceeds the available funds, it will be
necessary to choose carefully which materials get treatment.
CLIR charged the task force with developing a framework for making or
evaluating institutional policies for the preservation and retention
of original materials-from printed materials to photographs and sound
recordings-and with articulating the value of the artifact for
research and teaching. The task force gave special consideration to
how a library and its home institution should make sound intellectual
and fiscal decisions about what to preserve, when, for whom, and at
what price.
Given the types of collections that research libraries hold-largely
printed matter-and the extensive use of retrospective resources by
humanists and social scientists, most task force members were
familiar with the problems of print on wood-pulp paper. Librarians
and preservationists know how to treat these materials; the problem
is that funds are often insufficient.
The situation is different for audiovisual materials. There is far
less awareness of their vulnerability, and fewer treatments are
available to save them. Many audiovisual resources created during the
last 150 years-prints, photographs, maps, broadsides, posters, films,
and sound recordings-are reaching the limits of their usable life
span. The task force identified an urgent need to address this
problem. If we do not act now, we risk losing a great deal of
material. For example, by the time we understood the cultural and
intellectual value of moving images, we had lost more than 80 percent
of all silent films and more than half of the films made before World
War II. We now face a similar crisis in recorded sound. At risk is
everything from ethnographic records of native languages facing
extinction to early radio, the "race records" of the pre-World War II
era, and speeches by Teddy Roosevelt-the list goes on.
Scholars can play an important role in preventing the future loss of
valuable resources by articulating clearly the full range of
contemporary formats and genres that have and will have potential
research value. The report acknowledges that the availability of
digital surrogates is changing the way some scholars value access to
original, unreformatted materials. While there is an increasing
number of items that scholars identify as valuable to preserve for
research, there is also a growing preference among scholars for
electronic delivery of secondary sources and, in some cases, of
primary sources as well. The task force report considers the matter
of digital surrogacy at some length, articulating its advantages and
disadvantages and identifying those parts of the information
infrastructure that need to be in place to maximize its benefits.
The draft report is available on the CLIR Web site at
www.clir.org/activities/details/artifact-docs.html. CLIR encourages
public comment on the draft through June 10. The final report will be
available in print and online in July.
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