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As you may recall from discussions during our meetings, there was general agreement that the Eleven Comprehensive Research Libraries of New York would participate in a directory survey as a pilot for a national directory mounted by RLG. The following survey form should be filled out as appropriate. The results of the New York survey will be mounted on the Cornell server independent of the RLG directory.
If possible, complete the form electronically, applyng the information in a way that is appropriate to your preservation program. In some cases, titles and responsibilities may be different from those shown, so please apply the information closest to the intent of the survey. In some cases, the same person will be responsible for a variety of tasks and responsibilities, but please complete the form to list the person seperately at each point.
Please try to complete the forms before January 15th and send to me at my e-mail address.. Barbara Berger and I will be in communication with you when the directory is up and running.
John F. Dean
The basic assumption is that the directory will provide a list of PRESERV member institutions, and, within each institution, provide a brief description of the scope of the preservation program, listing each unit/person and area of expertise. It is hoped that institutions will provide more detailed narrative information if desired, but all othe information would conform to a standard basic set of data elements.
The directory should also be capable of expansion and development. For example, users should be able to search by a particular operation or function and have their search reveal member staff who could help and advise them. Institutional "home pages" and relevant local support may provide an opportunity to exploit the list in interesting ways. For example, ultimately the ability to display the preservation operations/organization chart, click on a unit or function box, and have the specific information on the work of the unit and the appropriate contact person revealed. Information provided by the institutions should include the basic elements from the ARL Preservation Statistics for each institutional member. This would place the staffing levels, budgets, and recorded effort into context, allowing the user to select for assistance the institution most similar to the user's situation. For those institutions not currently reporting preservation statistics to ARL, the data required can probably be extracted from annual reports.
Updates to the data should be formally requested by RLG annually, but members should be able to send in or post updates at any time as desired. This would ensure that information on projects and staff movements are current.
The following survey format would help to identify the key contacts within preservation programs. Although some institutions do not perform all the functions listed, and many will have the same staff noted in more than one category, it seems the most useful way to gather the most obvious data. If a person does appear in more than one capacity, it is important that the full address data be repeated in each instance. In some cases, a function may not be performed within the preservation program (for example, a technical service unit is often responsible for the organization of commercial binding), but this should not prevent the contact person from being named and the unit identified.
The functions to be reported are grouped in a general way into administration, reformatting, and physical treatment. In each case, the person actually responsible for supervising and/or performing the function should be listed, along with the other pertinent information. Whenever possible, terms and arrangement are matched to those used by ARL. The essential data for each person would consist of name, mailing address, e-mail, title, telephone/fax number, and unit. In addition to the basic directory information, each respondent should provide some descriptive narrative, as shown.
John F. Dean