392G - Management of
Preservation Programs
Fall 2006
Class 1
The Academic Research Library
Preservation Challenges in 2006
The Academic Research Library
1945 - present
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Post World War II rapid expansion of higher
education, scholarship and library collections
Shift from collection development to collection
mgmt. in the 1980s
Attempts to collect cooperatively as duplicate
collections grew
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Rapid growth in collections – 840 papers were published in
mathematics in 1870; by the middle of the 1990s there were
50,000 new mathematics articles published annually.
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Before WWII, academic research in American focused on
Western culture and classical areas of science. After the war,
American research horizons expanded to cover all areas of the
world as well as applied and specialized fields of science.
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1950s and 1960s - the Golden Age of collection development.
US currency was strong and there was plenty of room in library
book stacks.
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Book production in the US began an extraordinary expansion in
1945 that was particularly rapid in the first half of the 1960s.
Collection Management
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1979 U. of Pittsburgh study found that any given book purchased
had only slightly better than one chance in two of every being
borrowed. As books on shelves aged and did not circulate, their
likelihood of ever circulating diminished to as low as one chance
in 50. And journal use was slow. Move to resource sharing and
cooperative collection development.
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In mid-1980s collection management became recognized as a
functional field of librarianship. Field includes collection policy
development, materials budget allocation, selection, collection
analysis, collection use and user studies, training and
organization of collection development staff, preservation, and
cooperative collection development.
A Rapidly Changing Economic
and Information Environment
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Mid 1980s –Fiscal constraint and decline.
Beginning in 1984, the library’s share of a
university’s education and general expenditures
began decreasing each year. Skyrocketing serials
costs lead to huge cancellations.
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Despite cancellations of hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of serials between 1986 and 1999, the
US and Canada have spent 124% more on serials to
purchase 7% fewer titles.
1989 – John Howe, History professor and director of libraries at
U. of Minnesota. Library losing place as a funding priority
due to:
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Alternate paths for access to scholarly information—$ shifting
to outside of the library.
Decline in arts and sciences and the rise of science and
technology programs in universities were eroding power of
disciplines that most directly supported the traditional library.
Librarianship seemed to be in disarray – anxiety over the
computer age.
Libraries were not competitive enough in the new, aggressive
environment of higher education. Needed new leadership.
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The amount of digital information has grown faster than most
librarians would have predicted. In 1996, the Web doubled in
size every 50 days. Huge attention, effort and resources have
turned to managing the digital information system.
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Universities and libraries have scrambled to develop technical
infrastructure and staff expertise to fully participate in the new
digital information system.
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Library organization and the education of many library staff were
designed for work in a print information system. It has not been
easy to change operational procedures, organizational structures,
and established work habits and outlooks. Such social changes
generally lag behind technological change.
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Fundamental changes in scholarship have evolved from the
digital information age; the tradition of the book and journal as
organizing frames has changed. The day is soon arriving when
scholars will become their own authors and archivists.
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Collection builders are evolving into collection prospectors,
ferreting out the accurate and useful information on the Web.
The creation of validated collections of digital materials and their
relationship to validated non-digital materials is offering
significant added value to the serious information seeker, while
allowing other linkages to be developed and used.
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Collections managers, subject specialists and bibliographers are
moving from a primarily local, print collection perspective to a
broader vision of “knowledge management” for the distributed
learning environment in higher education.
ARL Libraries
Trends, 1991-2004
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Interlibrary borrowing has increased constantly since 1991, by an
average of 148% or 1,096 transactions/year, tripling the numbers
borrowed between 1986 and 1994. Lending has increased 111%.
Based on costs alone for borrowing and lending activities, cost
reveal that it is less expensive to borrow. To defer to a purchase
of a title, a monograph would have to circulate 3 times annually,
and a serial 14 times/year.
Beginning in 1996, circulation began to decline, though initial
circulation is declining more slowly indicating that patrons are
keeping materials longer and, perhaps, using them more
intensely.
Libraries have reversed the “balance” of the early 90s – from
paper + electronic to electronic + paper.
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The average ARL library spends 31% of its
acquisitions budget on electronic electronic
materials (primarily serials).
Monographs purchased has risen above 1986 #s
only once in the last 18 years.
Serials unit costs have increased much faster than
inflation for the past 2 decades, yet serials
purchases have increased on an average of 2%
annually.
Preservation Challenges
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With declining purchases, there may be burden placed on
older collections, thus increasing preservation response.
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Research libraries have responsibilities to future
generations; cost considerations of the short-term are not
adequate to ensure research level collections, whether in
digital or analog formats.
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Preservation is responsible for preserving the library’s
digital assets. HUGE need for technologically savvy
preservation specialists.
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The preservation issues of audiovisual media are pressing.
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The ongoing growth of collections and competing demands
for limited resources will make the dollar allocations for
preservation and conservation activities less effective at a
time when the need to care for cultural assets grows.
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Issues of what to preserve. What do we select to preserve
from our collective cultural heritage?
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How do we justify the expense of preserving materials that
are inevitably bound to decay?
ARL Statistical Trends
1986 - 2004
http://www.arl.org/stats/arlstat/
ARL Preservation Statistics
2003-2004
http://www.arl.org/stats/pubpdf/pres.04.pdf
Heritage Health Index
December 2005