For immediate release:
May 14, 2009
For more information, contact:
Julia Blixrud
Association of Research Libraries
jblix@arl.org
Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released a report that provides a current picture of preservation activities in ARL member libraries and makes recommendations about how libraries should characterize and measure those activities.
The report by ARL Visiting Program Officer Lars Meyer, "Safeguarding Collections at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Describing Roles & Measuring Contemporary Preservation Activities in ARL Libraries," responds to a recommendation of the 2006 ARL Task Force on the Future of Preservation in ARL Libraries. The task force encouraged ARL to conduct a high-level investigation of the range and balance of preservation activities represented among the ARL membership. Meyer's report is a thoughtful and thorough qualitative examination of how research libraries' preservation activities are evolving and expanding in the 21st century. He not only considered activities traditionally captured by ARL’s Preservation Statistics, but also a host of emerging activities largely, but not exclusively, centered on developing digital collections and involving collaborative efforts.
Meyer sheds light on the broad range of options available to research libraries for making investments in activities to further preservation of high-value resources in their collections. Additionally, the report will provide a basis for a follow-on project recommended by the ARL task force, the creation of a self-assessment tool to assist research libraries in developing efficient, balanced, and effective preservation programs that address the full extent of content they support. Meyer makes many suggestions about where libraries should focus attention, which should prove immediately useful as well as provide a basis for formalizing a framework and process for self-evaluation.
The report is organized into three thematic sections:
Reshaping the preservation functions in research libraries--Libraries must reconceptualize preservation as a core function that extends beyond activities within a preservation department. As preservation is advanced through a range of investments and partnerships, libraries are in the midst of reshaping priorities and reallocating resources to align with new services and conceptions of collections.
The networked digital environment--ARL members need to expand their activities and deepen their practices related to preserving digital content though Web archiving, deployment of digital repositories, and efforts to preserve e-journals and other born digital content (whether purchased, licensed, or digitized by the library).
Library collaborative strategies--Community-level activities are crucial, both to address the challenges presented by digital formats, but also to make traditional preservation activities more effective.
ARL is also planning a webcast this summer to provide an opportunity for the community to discuss the report with Meyer. In the webcast, he will review his findings and the implications for preservation programs in individual libraries. The webcast schedule and registration information will be released on the ARL Web site in the coming weeks.
The "Safeguarding Collections" report is freely available on the ARL Web site at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/safeguarding-collections.pdf.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.