Less is more or more is more? Does access equal preservation?

The article is written in a lively opinionated tone, building an argument with each additional paragraph. This makes reading 30 pages of tightly spaced text, which could otherwise be an excruciatingly boring experience, go pretty fast.

To me, the issue of traditional preservation transitioning into a more access-oriented approach is an issue that begs for the middle ground, where both sides of the argument are presented along with the possible consequences of going in the direction of either extreme. But that might not have made for a very exciting article to read. Reactionary/revolutionary rhetoric of a bold vociferous minority speaking out against a less than lucid majority of old-timers is much more attractive on the page. Then again, "reactionary" might be an overstatement, we are talking about archives, the God's sake!

We all know what brittle, crumbling documents, punctured by rusty paper clips, look and feel like - they are unusable for research. So, in about 20 years most of the documents that had not received preventative preservation treatment, like refoldering and staple removal, are going to be extremely difficult for researchers to access. Just as gigantic backlogs are a consequence of inefficient processing practices, so is document deterioration and eventual disintegration a consequence of foregoing preservation treatment.

If broad quick description procedures, which target the maximum number of collections, are given priority over preventative conservation processing, then the researchers of today are significantly favored over the researchers of 20 years from now. The contemporary papers, plastics, transparencies, films and inks are usually of poor quality, permanence was not a goal in their production. These materials degrade quickly and in unpredictable ways, so they need all the preservation help that they can get.

I agree that archivists need to respond to the needs of the public in terms of access. It is a scary thought that if material is not available and is not described, it might as well be dead. But it seems unwise, to say the least, to abandon preservation efforts in order to increase descriptive processing productivity. The middle ground of balance and compromise has to be reached by each specific institution, taking into consideration their budget, their collection type and use, the mission of their institution and the core institutional beliefs. There is a great potential for variability of policies that may (and should, I think) be allowed to exist.