Greetings:
The following snippets of possible interest to the group are from "Preservation's Crumbling Future," by Maria Blackburn, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Vol. 58, No. 3, June 2006, pages 32-28. It doesn't appear to be available online yet so don't waste your Google.
"Although the libraries at Hopkins have devoted significant time and resources to digitizing certain types of books, manuscripts, and journals in their collections, the books themselves have not gone away. And they won't disappear any time soon, says Winston Tabb, dean of libraries. 'There's a huge fallacy afoot that digital will take the place of books,' Tabb says. 'The number of books being published every year is going up. Print is always going to be here. 'Part of what libraries have to do is preserve things as they are actually produced,' Tabb continues. 'This is why we need to have a preservation department.'
However as academic libraries at Hopkins and across the country have moved to embrace new technologies, traditional paper conservation efforts have been overlooked, says Deanna B. Marcum, associate librarian of Congress for librarian services at the Library of Congress. 'I'm afraid that because digital is new and requires so many resources we are leaving out or just dropping some of the responsibilities we have to the paper world,' she says. 'A lot of organizations have just said, we'll focus on digital now and get back to the paper when we can.'" (p. 34)
…
John Buchtel is "worried about the message the sight of these decaying books sends to students and scholars. 'I'm concerned that if I walk them through the stacks and they see these kinds of problems, it's disheartening -- it gives the impression that the library doesn't care about its materials…'
Doing nothing is not an option, [Sonia] Jordan-Mowry says. Nor is continuing to overlook the books that need help. 'The books are deteriorating -- we need to be responsive to them,' she says. 'So much of preservation is timing. We don't have forever to get to everything.'" (p. 38)
- Walter Cybulski
Preservation & Collection Management Section
National Library of Medicine
cybulskw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx