Suggested Readings for Students
California Preservation Program. Preservation Needs Assessment.
This is an excellent starting place to set surveys in context and determine the steps for an institution beginning an assessment of its preservation needs. The document references a number of related resources and points to the CALIPR software available for download. This study covers preliminary planning and surveying of general collections.
Chrzastowski, Tina, David Cobb, Nancy Davis, Jean Geil, and Betsy Kruger. “Library Collection Deterioration: A Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” College & Research Libraries 50, no. 5 (September): 558–77.
Frost, Hannah. Survey of Sound Recordings. In Proceedings from the Sound Savings: Preserving Audio Collections Symposium. Association of Research Libraries, July 24–26, 2003.
Frost’s survey provides an excellent starting place for A/V collections surveys, issues, and preliminary planning, as well as a sample survey, and an explanation of what is needed before starting. The first section sets the context for the need for surveys and the issues for surveying materials that require machinery to assess quality of information.
LYRASIS Disaster Prevention and Protection Checklist
This tool for examining the preservation environment focuses on the condition of the physical building as a protective envelope for collections and the means of storage utilized within the facility.
National Park Service. “Safe Techniques for Archival Surveying and Assessment.” Conserve O Gram 2/12, September 2000.
This document assists cultural heritage staff who enter “inadequate storage” spaces to view collections. It includes advice for how to protect yourself and questions to ask of institution staff. The document presumes a lack of knowledge about the site to be surveyed and how to determine safety issues before beginning the survey.
Patkus, Beth. Assessing Preservation Needs: A Self-Survey Guide. Andover, Mass.: Northeast Document Conservation Center, 2003.
This tool provides a starting point for understanding a self survey, how to conduct one, what to look for, and how to analyze the results of the survey data.
Teper, Thomas H., and Stephanie S. Atkins. “Building Preservation: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Stacks Assessment.” In College & Research Libraries 64, no. 3 (May 2003): 211–27.
This article compares the results of a 2003 preservation survey with a 1989 study. See Tina Chrzastowski for the reference to the 1989 survey.
For Further Study
Amigos Library Services. The Preservation Survey: A First Step in Saving Your Collections (Video). Dallas: Amigos Library Services, 2003.
Brief video companion to Patkus self-survey guide mentioned above. Provides visual information on the preservation site survey process.
Columbia University Libraries. Special Collections Materials Survey Instrument.
This Mellon Foundation–funded survey instrument assesses the value of uncataloged or minimally cataloged materials in special or archival collections. Using a Microsoft Access Database (available for downloading), this instrument allows surveying of multiple-format collections using sampling to ascertain the extent of need of bibliographic control and preservation for unprocessed collections.
Holden, Maria. “Customized Tools for Accessing Preservation and Access Needs,” at the Society of American Archivists meeting in San Diego, on August 30, 1996. Abbey Newsletter 20, no. 7 (1996).
This article explains the methodology and reason for conducting a survey using two institutions as examples. A short article, but explains well the reasoning that goes into the decision making for conducting a survey.
This Web site creates sets of random numbers based on data input by the user. This is a tool to use for random samples of known numbers of volumes/items in a collection, to provide truly random samples for surveying.
University of Maryland Libraries. The Condition of the University of Maryland Libraries Collections.
This is a partial report done in 1989. The Web site shows the structure of the survey and preliminary results, and is a good example of the type of information given in a final report on the results of a survey. Putting the results in the context of survey design is an important feature highlighted here.
Wolf, Sara. The Conservation Assessment: A Tool for Planning, Implementing, and Fund Raising. Washington, D.C.: Getty Conservation Institute and Heritage Preservation, 1998.