Print Monographs:
Endangered Species & Dangerous Metaphors
Jacob Nadal
Lower Falls of the Lewis River
Executive Director, ReCAP
Gifford Pinchot National Forest
ALA Midwinter 2015:
Washington State
Print Archive Network Meeting
Print Monographs:
Endangered Species & Dangerous Metaphors
• The Map
 Trends, rates, inflection points
 Rule-proving versus gamechanging exceptions
• The Trail
 IUCN Red List
 A risk-model for books
Mid-20th Century
This is a big opportunity
This can be addressed in
many ways and at many rates
•


•
Rate of Change
Loss rate for ILL
Region/Consortia
Total Population
• Establish categories of concern
 Archiving cycles for most likely highimpact mono groups
• FRBRize retention commitments
• Consider hybrid
(light/dim/dark) archives
• Seek additional copies
 Secondary market
 Private collections
 Non-PAN affiliated libs.
•


•
Rate of Change
Loss rate for ILL
Region/Consortia
Total Population
• Establish categories of concern
 Archiving cycles for most likely highimpact mono groups
• FRBRize retention commitments
• Consider hybrid
(light/dim/dark) archives
• Seek additional copies
 Secondary market
 Private collections
 Non-PAN affiliated libs.
Consider the Antelope…*
Specifically, the Mountain nyala or balbok (Tragelaphus buxtoni)
Dramatization
Localization
Most artifact value
falls in a
•• Twenty-five
endangered
small partspecies
of the longest part
antelope
of the tail; keep specific
• Loss
of habitat
instances
• Trophy
Assumptions
about care give
hunting
way to specific, binding,
• Illicit
pelt and
horn trade
measurable
commitments
•• Competition
grazing
Make room forwith
technologies
cattle
and workspaces…
… and also cultivate more
browsable stacks and better
curated collections
Triangulation
De-escalation
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
* With apologies to Suzanne Briet and David Foster Wallace
Andy
Stauffer:booktraces.org
“Wastebasket
Taxon”
(& forthcoming CLIR study)
66 of 91 species are in “least
MLA:
printrecord.commons.
concern”
status (72.5%)
mla.org
Systematic risk is low;
SHARP: www.sharpweb.org
individual risk is real and
CLIR: coherence.clir.org
often very severe
OCLC: oclc.org/research/
Speciesactivities/usl.html
risk and habitat loss
may be better addressed as a
CRL-PAN: crl.edu/
joint archiving-preservation/
issue, to preserve the
creature
and the place
print-archives
Thank you.
Jacob Nadal
Executive Director, ReCAP:
The Research Collections & Preservation Consortium
jnadal@princeton.edu
Scarcity Case-study : jacobnadal.com/162
Image Credits: Alex Dunke, FluttershyIsMagic, Николай Усик,
KrisMaes, Lyn Topinka, Medicaster40, Mulmatsherm.
Petrarch1603, pfly, US Forest Service, and US Geological Serive.
All images sourced from the author, US government web sites, or
from wikimedia.org, where they were posted under Creative
Commons 2.0 or higher.