The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has released a report titled 'Safeguarding Collections at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Describing Roles & Measuring Contemporary Preservation Activities in ARL Libraries.' The report seeks to provide a current picture of preservation activities in ARL member libraries, and makes recommendations about how libraries should characterise and measure those activities.
Written by ARL Visiting Program Officer Lars Meyer, the report responds to a recommendation of the 2006 ARL Task Force on the Future of Preservation in ARL Libraries. The task force encouraged ARL to conduct a high-level investigation of the range and balance of preservation activities represented among the ARL membership.
The report is projected as a qualitative examination of how research libraries' preservation activities are evolving and expanding in the 21st century. It not only considers activities traditionally captured by ARL's Preservation Statistics, but also a host of emerging activities largely, but not exclusively, centered on developing digital collections and involving collaborative efforts. The report sheds light on the broad range of options available to research libraries for making investments in activities to further preservation of high-value resources in their collections.
Additionally, it will provide a basis for a follow-on project recommended by the ARL task force - the creation of a self-assessment tool to assist research libraries in developing efficient, balanced and effective preservation programmes that address the full extent of content they support. The report is organised into three thematic sections - reshaping the preservation functions in research libraries; the networked digital environment; and library collaborative strategies.
The 'Safeguarding Collections' report is freely available on the ARL website at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/safeguarding-collections.pdf.
