Competency F: Introduction
F. Use the basic concepts and principles related to the selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation of physical and digital information items
Evaluation: To be able to accurately assess the current condition of the item due to physical or digital indicators, and understand what steps need to be taken in order to reduce further degradation, be it specialized storage environment, restoration, or reformatting the items.
Selection: There will always be a value judgment present when it comes to selection, as selection is all about determining an object’s future value versus it’s current condition and the anticipated effort required to adequately preserve it. However, one must endeavor to minimize one’s personal biases when selecting items for inclusion in a collection or archive.
Organization: ensures that materials are accessible to staff and patrons. Extra obstacle that one must also organize for anticipated future use as well, such as exhibits or research purposes.
Preservation: The sands of time constantly work to erode artifacts both digital and physical, and so a vital part of library work is maintaining and preserving their collections. What complicates matters for libraries is that methods of preservation are largely format specific. For digital items, this may require storing files in formats that minimize bitrot, transferring items to new formats regularly, and maintaining old file reading devices to prevent playback obsolescence.
In this paper I designed a selection and preservation procedure for the hypothetical Freddy Jacobs collection of items to be donated to an academic archive. These items varied greatly in form and condition, ranging from digital clips of music to books to hand-drawn portraits. In this document, I went through each item category and determined which materials would be worth selecting for preservation, and what measures would be needed to store and display those materials for long-term use. With a mix of physical and digital items to be accounted for, each category had to be assessed with care and items selected for maximum value towards both the university and future patrons.
This assignment came in two parts. The first was an audit of pre-existing environmental conditions in Special Collections area of Smith Library, a Chicago-based library situated in an older building that is subject to seasonal extremes in temperature and light. The second part was to use the audit from part one in order to determine what actions needed to be taken to achieve an ideal environment for long-term storage for the special collections. I ended up organizing the audit and recommendations spatially, as each area of the space was subject to it’s own conditions and concerns. In addition installing item-appropriate storage solutions, policy changes such as a regular maintenance schedule and updated handling procedures were also advised.
Application and Conclusion
Professional experience:
At Salt Lake Community College, the Library department’s workforce has had a persistent problem with file management. This is due to approximately thirty employees constantly generating files for the past five years, and each of those files being stored in one of three possible areas: an employee’s computer hard-drive, the department-specific network drive, and an online Sharepoint site. At the beginning of this year, I was recruited to assist in helping solve this problem.
In short, our team had to sort files into one of four categories: “archival” (old documents needed for future reference), “retention” (documents occasionally used), “working” (active documents that are commonly used) and “discard” (or documents that no longer have use and can be deleted).
Although this was not typical archival work, we still had to employ the principles surrounding selection, evaluation, organization, and preservation.