Article Citation:
Frost, Hannah. "Media Preservation in Libraries: A Profile". AIC News, Vol. 32, No. 4, July 2007
In W(H)ITHER PRESERVATION M.V. Cloonan speaks about the challenge of designing a preservation program that is appropriate for the social needs of the present. Such a program has to be able to adjust to the the lack of fixed parameters in cyber-generated documents, the ambiguous nature of the relationship between object and record, as exemplified in some works of contemporary art, and the changing priorities in selecting objects for preservation. Cloonan stresses the importance of social and historical context in defining a philosophical basis for a preservation program.
Cloonan states that in order for preservation to be effective and relevant as a field, there needs to be inter-disciplinary collaboration and discussion with scientists, scholars and stakeholders in the preservation process. She is weary of over-simplification and of going to extremes, stating that neither does preservation equal access, eliminating the need for preserving the original, nor does every physical copy of a book need to be preserved for the sake of its uniqueness.
A recent article in AIC News describes a relatively new audio/visual preservation initiative at NYU. The Head of Preservation, Paula de Stefano, talks at length about the premise of the new program, its focus, goals and challenges and the practical considerations of running it. I feel that the Media Preservation Program at NYU is modeled on Cloonan's ideas. The program was established at the same time as the graduate program in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, crating an opportunity for dynamic educational collaborations within the Media Preservation Lab environment and the assistance of graduate students in ongoing projects.
Paula de Stefano describes the challenges of harmonizing audio/visual preservation and book/archives preservation under the umbrella of the same program, while recognizing the unique, different needs of each one. Finally, the NYU Preservation Department involved the Special Collections departments of its library system by asking for feedback on the media preservation program. Currently, the Media Preservation lab staff is collaborating with the Preservation Department of Columbia University Libraries, funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of the project is to develop and test a survey instrument to inventory and access audio/visual collections and ultimately to create a database that would serve as an inventory/assessment tool.
