Book Review: The Preservation Management Handbook: A 21st–Century Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums

The Preservation Management Handbook: A 21st–Century Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums. By Ross Harvey and Martha R. Mahard. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 376 p. $95.00 hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-7591-2315-1); e-book (ISBN: 978-0-7591-2316-8).

A recent issue of Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture was devoted to preservation education and presented the conference papers from the 2011 University of Michigan “Symposium of Preservation Educators.” Paul Conway, the convener in the opening session, provided the key to the importance of the program: “In the cultural heritage sector of libraries, archives, and museums, the ongoing transition from analog to digital technologies as source, medium and technique has accelerated the pace of the knowledge required for one to be an effective preservationist, and it has complicated the transfer of knowledge from experts to students.”1 This is one of the issues for teaching preservation courses, and so the question of what to use for textbook and/or reading assignments becomes part of the challenge to adequately cover the traditional analog, still key and dominant in collections, environment and the growing digital landslide of files. And of course it is not just incoming professionals who need this hybrid knowledge, but also professionals in the various cultural institutions who are asked to add responsibility for digital to the responsibility of collections. The Preservation Management Handbook: A 21st-Century Guide for Libraries, Archives, and Museums helps to provide that transfer of knowledge from expert to student as well as providing a resource for collection managers. The resources, which are international and frequently cited as websites, are especially telling and suggest that the e-book format may the preferred format. The need for an up-to-date textbook has been talked about for some time, and educators have frequently resorted to assigning current articles rather than relying on textbooks alone, or indeed in requiring any textbook, to provide the necessary information as the preservation world continues to change rapidly to greater emphasis on digital and audio visual formats that is a recognized need in cultural collections. The term “curation” or “stewardship” has in many cases become the term for collection management, and that is discussed in the early part of the monograph. Stewardship “is the necessary duty of everyone involved in managing digital objects” (8).

Harvey and Mahard’s monograph is divided into four parts: “Fundamentals,” which covers planning and the changes in the cultural heritage world of today; “Collections,” which covers the varied types of collections and what is needed for policies and protocols for handling hybrid collections; “Materials and Objects,” which covers digital “preservation friendly” objects as well as the standards needed for quality materials such as paper; and “Media and Material,” with contributions from varied experts covering the formats and what is needed in terms of environment, handling and guidelines for extending the useful life of these objects. Further, the chapters on media and material follow the same layout for each format which makes the reference to any chapter easier to find as information is consistent across the format types. This “textbook” also serves as a reference tool for the professional who may be asked to provide oversight for a variety of material types in a first job or as an additional assignment.

The stated goal of the authors is to focus on material culture and to cover all the general topics without getting too bogged down in the details necessary for some preservation actions such as metadata or conservation. Rather, the book sets out the current preservation environment, reinforces the collaborative nature of this environment across cultural heritage institutions, and treats digital and analog with a balanced and measured coverage as if all preservationists need to understand these diverse areas with the same importance. While technical expertise in any one area from conservation to digital metadata requires in-depth knowledge, this textbook, management book, provides the overarching principles needed to manage any program for preservation whether archive, library, or museum based.

While this emphasis on overarching principles may be perceived as a weakness, believe it is a definite strength. The need for specific training in any one area is not the goal of this title, nor would it provide the management information necessary to serve the overarching direction for a broad-based collection preservation program for the hybrid collections now in most cultural institutions. This manual serves that purpose and in so doing also serves as a very useful textbook for a preservation management course taught within information, archive, or museum studies programs. The use of experts for the materials chapters provides excellent information by format type and references standards and other useful websites for more in-depth information. These chapters are recommended to those who might be asked to provide preservation administration for small or midsized cultural institutions because of the abundance of references to more detailed information on all subjects. As a textbook for semester long course work this manual provides an abundance of resources for the student. The bibliography and list of standards are helpful. I recommend this book for professionals who may be starting out in collections management or who have recently been assigned that responsibility. It also serves as an excellent reference tool for collections management across cultural institutions with collections of all types.—Jeanne Drewes (jdre@loc.gov), Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Reference

1. Paul Conway, “At the Nexus of Analog and Digital: Introduction to Papers from a Symposium of Preservation Educators,” Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture (PDT&C) 43, no. 1–2 (2014): 2–8, accessed September 8, 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/pdtc-2014-1001.