Project Summary for the Middle Eastern Program Collection Preservation Initiatiative

The Middle Eastern Studies Collection at the University of Texas at Austin Libraries is comprised of many volumes that were made with poor quality materials. The low quality of text block paper and unsympathetic bindings contribute to overall deterioration of the collection. Because of lack of resources and dedicated staff, no action has been taken to assess the general physical condition of the collection. No long-term preservation plan, with specific needs of the Middle Eastern Studies collection in mind, has been established.

The Middle Eastern Collection includes many volumes that represent a narrow scholarly interest. The reading of these works demands a high level of language proficiency. Although highly valuable and somewhat rare, these volumes do not circulate widely. Because of infrequent circulation, it has been difficult to assess the physical condition of the collection, since most condition problems are identified when a volumes is checked out and returned to the library.

We propose to conduct an item level survey of the Middle Eastern Studies Collection, starting with the Perry Castaneda Library, where the majority of the volumes in the collection are housed. The survey would be conducted by a dedicated part-time staff of Preservation Administration graduate students enrolled at the School of Information, University of Texas at Austin. The goal of the assessment would be to determine what kind of preservation action is appropriate for items in the collection. Some of the options would be reformatting for brittle materials, de-acidification as preventative action for qualifying items, construction of phase boxes for light sensitive materials and repair of bindings at an in-house book conservation facility. Other approaches aimed at preservation of the collection may be determined as a result of the item-level survey.

We believe that this preservation initiative is timely and appropriate not just because of the needs of this particular collection, but also because of the broader cultural and political implication of preserving materials from the Middle East. The unstable political situation in many nations of the Middle East and destruction of war in Iraq have made preservation of Middle Eastern cultural heritage a priority worldwide. Funding agencies in the United States have taken a leadership role in targeting this problem. We believe that the Middle Eastern Collection at the University of Texas at Austin Libraries fits under the category of culturally significant collections of Middle Eastern materials in need of preservation attention.

At a more local level, the Middle Eastern Studies Collection is an integral and unique part of the University of Texas at Austin Libraries. The collection includes more that 300,000 volumes of monographs and bound periodicals, including works in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Tajiki and Kurdish, as well as in western languages. The Middle Eastern Collection serves as an irreplaceable resource for students and faculty at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, as well as for heritage speakers at the University of Texas at Austin. Many of the volumes from the collection get requested through the Inter-Library Loan system.
Ensuring long-term preservation of the Middle Eastern Studies Collection will benefit the students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the scholarly community at other research universities. The collection also offers cultural public value to heritage speakers of the languages that are represented in the collection.

We believe that as Preservation Administration and Conservation graduate students of the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin, we are uniquely qualified to conduct the survey and coordinate the proposed preservation initiative, The Kilgarlin Center for the Preservation of the Cultural Record, which is the home base of our graduate program, is at the forefront of preservation education for library and archive professionals. Graduate students at the Kilgarlin Center are motivated to gain practical real-world knowledge of working in the fields of preservation and conservation, possess the support system of the School of Information faculty and University of Texas Libraries staff, and have access to new technology and scholarly resources through the University of Texas Library system. We believe that these factors will enable our graduate students to come up with the most thoughtful preservation strategy and to effectively implement the assessment recommendations.