A_Evidence_5

Melissa Townsend-Crow

LIBR 285

March 18, 2013

Literature review:  Preservation vs. access

I became interested in the conflict between access and preservation of rare books and manuscripts while researching another project for which access to a medieval manuscript would have been helpful. Certainly, there is a problem with protecting and preserving rare materials when the public is given free access to these things. However, there is also the question, if no one can ever see or handle these things, for what purpose what are they being preserved? So the problem has two components:  preservation/protection and access.

Preservation and Protection

There a plethora of journal articles and other resources on the subject of digital preservation and certainly, this is a method which gives access to  many more people who are interested in studying these treasures. There are far fewer on the actual preservation of the materials from which rare books, papers, and manuscripts were created. Sophia Jordan (2000) wrote a helpful literature review on the subject of materials preservation. The objects themselves, have a historical and cultural value. Michelle Cloonan writes,

Preservation must be a way of seeing and thinking about the world, and it must also be a set of actions. For some it is only a technical problem, for others an aesthetic one. But preservation also has broader social dimensions, and any discussion of preservation must include consideration of its cultural aspects (p. 232).

She also points out that it is a "cultural impulse" to preserve artifacts which represents a society's history (p. 233).  The "catch," if one will, or what Cloonan calls the paradox, is that by preserving or conserving the objects, their physical attributes are changed by the processes used (p. 235). However, as Clapinson (1993) writes. "Repeated handling eventually takes its toll on bindings, text, paper and illuminations (p. 5). Clapinson has an excellent discussion on the subject of preservation versus access to rare materials, including the notion that not everyone who wants access actually needs access to these materials. She states that some cases, specifically in that of schoolchildren, digital facsimiles of primary sources are a reasonable substitution. Conversely, Michael Forstrom (2009) raises the question of who should even have access to electronic records in the manuscript collection. The case study he conducted on Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript collection focused more on maintaining the authenticity of the electronic records rather than accessibility, however.

Accessibility vs. Protection of Rare Materials

Raymond Geselbracht (1986) discusses the accessibility of papers archived at the Library of Congress, but others are concerned with the very real danger caused by human handling of rare materials, but it makes some good points about accessibility to archived materials in general. Geselbracht relates that accessibility was not an issue until fairly recently. In the early 1800s, for example, little interest was shown in historical documents. However, a few decades later, he writes,

the rise of a historical profession trained in those methods in the 1880s and 1890s created a strong demand for documents. The American Antiquarian Society's Catalogue of 1837 refers to its documentary holdings as 'those time-defaced pages, which are now merely glanced at as objects of curiosity'" (p. 144).

In fact, Geselbracht goes on to say that one of the first meetings of the American Historical Society "focused on the destruction and neglect of historical documents" (p.144). Geselbracht says, however, that the beginning of accessibility restrictions at the Library of Congress is "unclear" (p. 145). In fact, he brings up the Beinecke Library at Yale as an example. As implied above, the Beinecke has a restrictive access policy, but staff were queried about is origins,  no one seemed to know when the policies began. Aaron Purcell (2002) writes about a different kind of accessibility, as in creating an archival directory to make items in the collection at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. easier to find and access.

Possible Solutions?

Sandra Powers (1986) discusses exhibiting rare manuscripts and so does Daniel Traister (2003). In fact, Traister promotes the notion that access to and even circulation of some rare materials is crucial in maintaining funding for the preservation and conservation and overall maintenance of a rare materials collection. The premise for his ideas are that funds are less likely to be forthcoming for something that " institutional administrators may feel that a resource not used or clearly underused in relation to the costs required to maintain it really is unnecessary" (Traister 2003,  p. 4). As part of getting attention and hence support and especially funding for rare materials in a collection, Traister emphasizes promotion of a collection and really underscores that as part of promoting the collection, "Readers must feel invited and welcome to, and comfortable in, the rare book department"  and there must be a designated and comfortable space where patrons can sit and read the books (p. 4). Powers recognizes that exhibiting rare materials poses a problem beyond the items security from human tampering and cites environmental factors such as , " air pollutants, dust, high temperatures, fluctuating humidity, and light, all of which become even more acute problems when materials are placed in closed exhibition cases for extended periods of time (Powers 1978 p. 296).

Conclusion

The sampling of the literature available on this topic, while at first difficult to find, is like take a cup of water out of the ocean. Most of the recent discussion on the preservation of rare materials focuses on the legal and other aspects of digitalization, however my interest lies in the preservation of  the actual materials itself. For that, I had to look for articles written in last decades of the twentieth century. I would be really interested to find out what new methods of rare material conservation have arisen more recently and will be re-reading many of the articles and using them as jumping off points to delve further into the subject.  Accessibility and security hasn't changed much. Rare materials are still guarded and protected, as well they should be for the treasures they are, but digitalization does provide some access to content if not material.

References

Bone, C. (2007). The case of the missing title page:  Research in rare book cataloguing.  The Feliciter, 53(1), pp. 15-17. http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Vol_53_No_1&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=3845

Bradbury, D. J. (1994).  Barbarians within the Gate: Pillage of a Rare Book Collection? Rare Books & Manuscripts Librarianship, 9(1), pp. 8-16.

Carlile, H. (2007). The implications of  library anxiety for academic reference services: A review of the literature. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 38(2), pp. 129-147.

Clapinson, M. (1993): Services and Developments Issues Related to Manuscripts and Other Unique Materials. Journal of Library Administration, 19(1), pp. 35-52

Cloonan, M. V. (2001).  W(HITHER) Preservation?  The Library Quarterly,71(2), pp. 231-242.

Forstrom, M.  (2009).  Managing Electronic Records in Manuscript Collections: A Case Study from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.  The American Archivist,72(2), pp. 460-477

Garofalo, D. A. (2011).  RBMS (rare books and manuscripts and manuscripts section of ACRL)

            bibliographic standards committee resources for the rare materials cataloger. Technical Services Quarterly, 28(4), pp. 458-459.

Geselbracht, R. H. (1986).  The origins of restrictions on access to personal papers at the Library of Congress and the National Archives.  The American Archivist,49(2), pp. 142-162.

            http://www.jstor.org/stable/40292983. Accessed:  02/17/2013.

Graham, T. (2003). Electronic access to and the preservation of heritage materials. The Electronic Library, 21(3), pp. 223 – 226. DOI:  10.1108/02640470310480461.

Jordan, S. (2000).  A review of the preservation literature, 1993-1998: the coming of age. Library Literature & Information Science Full Text, 44(1), pp. 4-21.

Merryman, J. H. (1990).  Protection" of the Cultural "Heritage? The American Journal of Comparative Law, 38, pp. 513- 522.

Powers, S. (1978) Why Exhibit? The Risks versus the Benefits. The American Archivist, 41(3), pp. 297-306.

Purcell, A. D. (2002). Providing Better Access to Manuscript Collections:  A Case Study from the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Journal of Archival Studies, 1(4), pp. 29-52,

Reiger, O. (2010).  Enduring access to special collections:  Challenges and opportunities for large scale digitization initiatives. RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, & Cultural Heritage, 11(1), pp. 11-22.

Russell, B. M. (2003): Description and Access in Rare Books Cataloging: A Historical Survey, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 35, pp. 491-523.

Sheehan, J. K. (2009).  Making the most of what we have: A framework for preservation management in rare book collections. RBM: A journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, 10(2), pp. 111-121.

Teper, T. H. (2005).  Challenges for the future of library and archival preservation.  Library Resources & Technical Services, 49(1), pp. 32-39.

Traister, D.  H. (2003) Public services and outreach in rare book, manuscript, and special collections libraries.  Library Trends, 52(1), pp. 87-108.

Walsh, V. I. (1990).  Checklist of Standards Applicable to the Preservation of Archives and Manuscripts.  American Archivist, 5,  pp. 324-338.

Zeidberg, D. S. (1987). "We have met the enemy. . ." Collection security in libraries.  Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship, 2(1), pp. 19-26.

Zinkham, H., Cloud, P. D., and Mayo, H. (1989).  Providing access by form of material, genre, and physical characteristics: Benefits and techniques.  American Archivist, 52, pp. 300-319.

Hedstrom, M.  (1998).  Digital preservation: A time bomb for digital libraries. Computers and the Humanities, 31,( 3), pp. 189-202. Retrieved 05/02/13 from http://www.jstor.org.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/stable/30200423