Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 812.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Sat, 21 Apr 2001 07:22:40 +0100
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/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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