Resources for the Teacher
Amigos Library Services. The Preservation Survey: A First Step in Saving Your Collections (Video). Dallas: Amigos Library Services, 2003.
Brief video companion to Beth Patkus’s Assessing Preservation Needs: A Self-Survey Guide. Provides visual information on the preservation site survey process.
Artlab Australia, with the History Trust of South Australia and the State Library of New South Wales.
Development of a best-practices model for conservation and preservation assessment plans for cultural collections.
Brown, Karen E. K. “Use of General Preservation Assessments.” Library Resources & Technical Services 50, no. 1 (January 2006): 58–72.
This article analyzes the type and value of general preservation assessments across a large range of institutions conducting surveys.
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.
This is the original survey used then for comparison in the Teper article cited below.
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.
Dalley, Jane. The Conservation Assessment Guide for Archives. Ottawa: Canadian Council of Archives, 1995.
An assessment of policies, procedures, facilities storage, environment, disaster management, and staff.
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 explains the need for surveys and the issues for surveying materials that require machinery to assess quality of information.
Getty Conservation Institute. The conservation assessment: A proposed model for evaluating museum environmental management needs. Version 9/99. Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 1998.
While essentially a survey assessment recommendation for museum collections, this Web site provides the type of methodology and justification needed for an environmental assessment survey.
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.
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.
Kenney, Anne R., and Deirdre C. Stam. The State of Preservation Programs in American College and Research Libraries: Building a Common Understanding and Action Agenda. Washington, D.C.: Council on Library and Information Resources, 2002.
This study was done in two phases, relying on qualitative and quantitative data gathering. In Phase I, statistical information and additional quantitative data on preservation activities were collected in a survey of 116 member libraries of the University Libraries Group, from major non-ARL land grant institutions, and from leading liberal arts colleges (informally known as the Oberlin Group). The data were compared with information previously published in ARL Preservation Statistics for 2000–2001. Phase II focuses on qualitative data that complement the statistical data. Qualitative data were gathered by making 20 site visits to institutions representing the three surveyed groups, plus the ARL.
Matthews, Graham. “Surveying Collections: The Importance of Condition Assessment for Preservation Management.” In Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 27, no. 4 (December 1995): 227–36.
Merrill-Oldham, Jan, Carolyn Clark Morrow, and Mark Roosa. Preservation Program Models: A Study Project and Report. Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries, Committee on Preservation of Research Library Materials, 1991.
A discussion of ten components and four models for mature preservation programs, with benchmarks. Case studies included.
National Library of Australia Preservation Needs Assessment Surveys
This article discusses the scope and purpose of the needs assessment survey. It provides a comprehensive list of questions to ask in order to identify preservation needs and risks to the collections. Surveys help set priorities, and this site helps set goals and decision making for that prioritization. The article also outlines how to do a preservation assessment.
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 look at 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.
New York State Archives Collection Management Assessment Project
This is a link to the preservation survey software that the Archives developed using Access 97.
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.
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.
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.
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.