Preservation education needs

I've spent a lot of time thinking about lacunae in the education of
preservation administrators and others who need to take responsibility
for preservation or collections care.  I think the most serious lacks
are in areas outside the strict subject field

    1.  management skills (e.g. strategic planning, budgeting,
        organizational psychology);

    2.  critical thinking skills (setting priorities, identifying more
        or less useful approaches, interpreting the literature;
        generalizing from the theoretical to a practical application in
        a specific situation); and

    3.  building and facilities management skills.

Following those, I think many preservation administrators could use

    4.  improved understanding of simple, basic science (this in the
        context of interpreting the literature and research findings
        appropriately). Finally,

    5.  we all have a rapidly increasing need for computer literacy
        beyond spreadsheets and word processing.  I don't believe we
        need to be computer scientists, but we do need an understanding
        of the fundamentals of computing as they apply to the electronic
        library, we need to be able to keep up with and adapt to the
        rapid changes in technology, and we need to understand the
        implications of the technology for preservation strategies and
        choices into at least the short- and mid-term future.

I'll be interested to see other comments.

Karen Motylewski
Northeast Document Conservation Center

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 7:44
                 Distributed: Monday, December 13, 1993
                        Message Id: cdl-7-44-001
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