Exploring

What is Preservation?

Historical Context: Archives

All archival records might in some sense be considered permanent, or they would not be collected. But does that mean they all can or should be preserved? And if so, how should they be preserved? Early American archival repositories strongly emphasized the importance of ensuring the permanence of their collections. During the 19th century, there was a great impetus, partly as a result of the loss of some prominent collections to fire, to disseminate the information found in records by publishing them. As early microfilming technology was developed, archivists began to embrace this as well.

By the mid-20th century, however, archivists increasingly focused on the preservation of original documents that were clearly deteriorating. Archivists adopted many of the techniques for conservation of individual documents set forth by William J. Barrow, among them deacidification and lamination, a process later found to be damaging. In the middle of the 1960s, the acid-free box was developed, with partial support from CLR.

Faced with ever-larger collections of modern records, archivists began to see how severe the problem of physical deterioration was—and how little time and money was available to address it. As a result, they began to consider how to choose those records that deserved preservation in their original form, and those that should be dealt with in other ways, such as reformatting. Like librarians, archivists have increasingly focused on improving environmental control and storage facilities to ensure that their collections of enduring value have as long a life as possible.

Deciding What to Preserve

In libraries, it is relatively easy to identify important deteriorated collections in a particular subject category. Library collections are, by and large, well-cataloged, and there are tools available (such as the RLG Conspectus) to assess the subject strengths and weaknesses of any particular library's collection. Assuming funding and other resources are available, librarians can determine what materials would make up a "comprehensive" collection in a subject, identify the libraries that hold those materials, and initiate a cooperative preservation program for them.

Due to the nature of archival collections, archivists face more difficulty in ensuring that a particular subject or an area of society (e.g., dance, scientific materials) has been fully documented and the appropriate records preserved. The archival community has not yet developed a systematic program for identifying collections in need of preservation that parallels the national brittle book initiative in libraries, although some steps have been taken. In the early 1990s the Commission on Preservation and Access supported the work of the Task Forces on Archival Selection, which began to address key issues in identifying and selecting collections for preservation.

For the report of the Task Forces on Archival Selection, see The Preservation of Archival Materials. See Securing Our Dance Heritage: Issues in the Documentation and Preservation of Dance for a discussion of selection and preservation issues in the context of dance collections, which often include various types of media and are dispersed throughout other types of archival collections.

See James O'Toole's "On the Idea of Permanence" (referenced in Additional Resources) for a general discussion of approaches to the preservation of archival materials.