Volume 16, Number 3
Jun 1992

Science gets Preservation Attention

• The literature of science nowadays is heavily illustrated. Geography has maps and Landsat photographs of the earth; astronomy has more photographs of the sky, in all wave lengths, than anyone will ever look at; climatology has computerized maps of the world's weather for into the future; anthropology has movies of primitive peoples; and so on. The records of science depend on visual representations just as heavily as the record of art does, and their preservation has been held up partly by the absence of a good way to copy or otherwise preserve those visual representations.

  The Getty Grant Program has funded a project to preserve 29 numbers of the New York State Museum Bulletin, which embody all the challenges: they are old, valuable brittle, heavily illustrated and currently much used. They will be preserved three ways: by microfilming in color and in black and white, putting selected color plates on 105 mm film; by digitizing the color microfilm images and creating enlarged reproductions on color printers; and by putting them on CD-ROM discs with keyword searching The Commission on Preservation and Access contracted with MAPS (Micrographic Preservation Service) to carry out the project, and MAPS will subcontract the color microfilming work with Herrmann & Kraemer, the company that supplies MAPS' state-of-the-art microfilm cameras. The idea came from the Joint Task Force on Text and Image, whose published final report, Preserving the Illustrated Text, does a good job of defining present capabilities and future possibilities, and makes good but unconventional recommendations for preservation strategies in the future.

• The National Archives has been planning and meeting with advisors on the long-term retention of scientific and technical records from governmental agencies. The focus of discussion has been the feasibility of general retention guidelines, rather than preservation as such, but preservation policies and methods are affected by two of the factors that the Archives also has to consider for records retention: the nature of the records and the needs of the users. The ARL Newsletter for March 2, 1992, has a short report of the January 29-30 planning meeting, which was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. These are some of the points that were made at that meeting:
  1. Users prefer that information, whatever the format be replicated, distributed, and serviced from a number of information facilities rather than just one central location. Regional distribution places researchers closer to the source of information, and protects the nation's data in the event of disaster.
  2. High-technology data, such as observational and mapping sets, present special challengers with amount of data and length of retention identified as critical decisions.
  3. Since it is not clear how current data will be used even 25 years from now, as much "good" information as possible should be retained, "just in case."
  4. High-tech data needs to be medium-independent, i.e., transferrable (and diligently transferred) into new formats and technologies as they become practical.
• There are too many science publications. This is definitely a preservation problem, though when the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) met in Oxford last September and discussed the flood of science papers, they saw it as an "information glut." However it is viewed, the cause is the academic merit system based on total publication record--"publish or perish." The editors passed a resolution to work toward changing that system, according to the March 2 ARL Newsletter. Elsewhere, it has been noted that about 50% of all science papers are mere restatements of the authors' previous publications, or worthless. Perhaps EASE could use some support and encouragement from the preservation field.