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Hello all, I have been asked to provide a
definition of “preservation” in 1,000 words or less, for the next
edition of the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. I’d appreciate comments
on the first draft that I am including below, as well as suggestions for
further reading. Since the NGA is musically oriented I am concentrating on the
preservation of musical objects and content, but I’d appreciate hearing
from people with other backgrounds. I’m a music librarian, and that
definitely informs my approach. Thanks! Alice Carli The term preservation encompasses the broad variety
of actions taken to prolong the useful life of an object. In the field of
music, the objects to be preserved include musical instruments and works of art
relating to music, manuscript and printed scores or books on paper, and audio
and video recordings of musical art in many formats, both analog and digital.
The preservation actions may be aimed at prolonging the life of the cultural
content (also called intellectual content) of an object – the appearance
of the score printed on the paper, the sound of the music on a recording
– or the physical object itself, e.g. a Stradivarius violin, a
composer’s manuscript, or a rare issue of a recording. Often the word conservation
is used for one of these (physical object or cultural content) since the
distinction is important. Unfortunately, different fields use the term in
opposite ways, with libraries typically using conservation to refer to
working with the physical object while in museums the same term generally
refers to work with the cultural content. Generally, however, preservation
is used as the broader term, that includes both types of work. The preservation approach to be taken with any particular
object or collection will depend both on the type of object and the type of
expected use. For the physical objects given as examples above, the total
cultural content includes aspects of the physical object that cannot be taken
in abstraction. Ten experts given access to the same Stradivarius violin or
Gershwin manuscript will find ten different and important uses for it, and no
copy will substitute for the original for any of them. For this reason museum
and rare books curators tend to see preservation of the physical object as
paramount. In this type of preservation, a further distinction relates to the
type of use the object will receive. Enclosing the individual pages of the Gershwin
manuscript so that each can be examined closely without touching it would be a
very appropriate preservation strategy, but a similar approach would not constitute
effective preservation of the Stradivarius, which cannot be used meaningfully
without being handled. This latter type of object, whose cultural value lies in
keeping it in active use, provides the greatest challenge for preservation,
both because of the possibility of accidental damage and because of the
potential for “restorative” care to cause unintended changes.
Responsible preservation of physical objects therefore tends to be extremely
conservative in approach. The expected use of a score or book published in black ink
on white paper may be quite different. Whether it is a Henle edition of a
Beethoven quartet which exists in hundreds of copies, or one of two archival
copies of a dissertation, its use by ensembles in performance or theorists for
study will depend on a single aspect of the object – the appearance of
the printed music or text. Any preservation approach that allows the text to be
read easily may be appropriate, whether it is keeping a bound copy deacidified
in a library or digitizing the text for electronic dissemination. Since
digitization allows more convenient use by a greater number of people, and
because so much of the material held by libraries is in the form of printed
publications, librarians tend to be much aware of the value of preserving the
cultural content of their materials. For cultural content that is not in the
public domain, preservation must also take copyright and sometimes other types
of licensing into account, particularly for strategies that involve multiple
copies. In some cases a single object will support composite uses. A particular
quartet ensemble may all make pencil annotations in one copy of a published
score for a performance, which will distinguish that copy from all others. One
facet of responsible preservation is determining the importance of preserving
the traces of that particular performance. The distinction between – and interaction among
– physical manifestation and cultural content is even more complex for
sound recordings and digital objects. On the one hand, the physical objects may
be more ephemeral than even acidic paper, leading to preservation strategies
that concentrate on high resolution duplication and multiple copies to mitigate
loss of quality over successive generations of copying. On the other hand, the
duplication methods used may introduce alterations, whether through intentional
editing or unavoidable issues such as digital aliasing. Different playback
methods may produce different experienced results from the same recorded
object, and different storage formats, whether analog or digital, will offer
different types of compromise between fidelity, economy, and ease of use.
Finally, the rapid pace of technology introduces potential not only for
fantastic increases in accessibility and fidelity, but also for the complete
loss of cultural content when a carrier format breaks down or becomes obsolete
before the content is reproduced. An institutional preservation program will usually need to
cover both object and content preservation. Prolonging the life of objects
includes environmental controls, security from disaster, theft, and abuse, and
repair or appropriate replacement of objects damaged during exhibition or use.
Prolonging the life of cultural content includes following best practices to
balance a level of reproduction fidelity that will satisfy the needs of users
(recognizing that some future needs may be difficult to anticipate) with the
resources the institution has to maintain and update the records over a long
term, and developing metadata and other publication structures to make the
content widely accessible to audiences that may go far beyond the
institution’s local patrons. Rights management must also be taken into
account for reproductions of content that is not in the public domain. A well
developed preservation program may represent a significant investment of
resources for a cultural institution, but considered as a means of “retrospective
collection development” – keeping collections fresh and accessible
to new audiences and new generations – it can produce a high return. |