Preservation Risks, Responses, Results

Evolving and emerging digital delivery of books prompts re-evaluation of the role of print collections in research libraries. Are such collections experiencing displacement and devaluation? We will discuss preservations implications of the developments considering risks, responses and possible results going forward.

Preservation Risks

The preservation of the physical book is in a lively interaction with preservation of its own screen copies. A cascade of reports and white papers investigate this contest and, reasonably or unreasonably, associate together the two destinies. (1)

In this dynamic the first risk is faulty digital production of the physical copy. Poor production quality subtracts directly from efficiencies that have long enabled the continued success of the physical book. Atrophy of physical quality and graceful book action is not suddenly new, but it is suddenly more strategic. Exclusive attributes should not be discarded while screen media counter with their own exclusive attributes.

Most at risk are books produced on high-speed copiers under pressure of same-day delivery. (2) The print is grey, the paper is a harsh white in color and translucent, the margins are ugly, binding immobile and the image fusing is fragile. Who will note that facing styrene /acrylic imaging will not act like ink or that gradual blocking or slow chemistry between imaging and alkaline papers could be adverse? And aside from such considerations we may be seeing stealthy damage of ergonomic attributes. Haptic and kinetic features refined for efficient comprehension of content are at risk. (3)  A long legacy of performance may now mask vandalism of attributes we take for granted.

Meanwhile, in libraries there are service shifts from physical circulation to reformatting and high-density storage that diminish previous risks but add others. Handling risks from scanning, exhibit installation, processing of shrink- wrap and re-shelving emerge. An even more fundamental risk is the shift from classified order imposed by inventory software used in high-density storage and the jeopardy of disorder and damage from even minor disaster.

Other preservation risks can be associated with the advent of screen access to print collections. Concerns range from discard following imaging to “Googlization” of description, access and classified order. As such, risks extend from loss of items to demise of library function.  Perhaps most troubling, is an association of certified digital repositories with disposal of print. (4) Gratuitous association of print disposal with an economic downturn is also at work.

Collection preservation advantages of digital delivery and of optimal storage environment and strict security have been realized, but the codex mechanism has found little vindication in the new era. Difficulties of imaging a codex on a flat bed scanner suggest an obsolete format rather than an up-side-down copying method. As the book is cut and dis-bound for imaging its exemplary navigational and haptic features are lost. Book conservators are now among the few that still advocate for the relevance of mobility and function in the codex binding.

Another risk for the continuing role of print collections is unjustified disregard. A recent report mentions that an appreciable portion of print collections are “either brittle or at risk” and that “digital copies may be the only versions of work that will survive into the future”. (5) There are at least two suspect elements in this position. First, it is arguable that in the long run the acidic print collections will persist and re-master more reliably than the digital collections. Another questioned aspect is the assumption that preservation of print will inevitably be compromised by traditional circulation. The option of converting print collections to a mastering status is not considered. Print collections can easily persist in the long run if they are protectively stored and strictly used as imaging masters.

Preservation Responses

A first preservation response can be improved communication between preservation and information technology specialists. The IT specialist conceives access as delivery to current users while the preservation specialist conceives delivery to future users. A simple confusion of equivalence between physical collections and their screen simulations is not at issue, but, rather, a larger confusion of equivalence between the self-authenticating attributes of artifacts and the self-indexing attributes of their screen simulations. There is also the opportunity of communication between preservation and information workers to view source and simulation formats as interacting components of a single transmission ecology.

Another interesting response stance toward long term digital transmission derives directly from physical collection preservation. It is worth asking why digital preservation standards and practice must be developed only after our wide dependence on such a transmission mode.  Why are we condemned to this frantic, churning process?

Self-preservation attributes of earlier media were inherent before our wider dependence on them. Beyond routine display precautions, no intervention is needed to preserve a Gutenberg Bible. Hidden within this circumstance is the suggestion that we may need to rediscover the efficacy of persistence and sustainability as a precursor of library access. If that premise is wildly impractical, a smaller enclave of its application to research library collections is more feasible.

An even more fundamental preservation response lurks in the physical collections. We need a wider view of access and its sustainability. Access to imaged copies of books is referred to as virtual or remote access. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such access presents the same reading mirror as a book in hand. The screen copy will differ in haptic, navigational and legibility qualities, but should not differ in content. So, from an access perspective, the book’s on-line use should be tabulated as a circulation in the same way as borrowing a copy from the shelf.

Access to book simulations with extensive reformatting characteristic of devices such as Kindle or iPhone is not quite as fungible as a reading image. Deliberately modified and enhanced screen copies are in the same category. These presentations are evocative of historical manuscript copies of printed books. The typography, page layout, pagination, illustrations and emendations can be distinctly different. Perhaps this is why all but a very, very few book titles presented for hand held device reading are also available in paper.

There is an even more crucial perspective as the paper copy, and not the screen copy, serves a back-up, mastering or authentication role. The back-up function comes into play whenever the screen copy is unavailable. The mastering role is engaged whenever a second or subsequent capture is required for reasons different from the initial capture. And the authentication role comes into play as the intent or forensic features of the physical publication are investigated further.

These are all distinctive functionalities well known and well regarded by both preservation workers and researchers. Let’s adventure further with the distinctive functions of back-up, mastering and authentication that are so embedded in and so easily assigned to the physical collections.

Preservation Results

A focus on information access made possible by new technologies has dominated recent library and information studies. While access is migrating to screen delivery, at the same time options are opening for reassignment of print collections to a persistent back-up, mastering and authentication role. Curiously, such a new paradigm may shift eye reading to the screen and machine reading or image capture to print.

Such a shift in access strategy would progress to inevitability if long-term library cannot sustain multiple costs of maintenance of digital collections as both mastering and delivery resources. Affording persistent access to screen presentation will be costly enough. Perhaps it is advisable to engage mastering duties of more easily and economically persistent print as a copy master. (6)

Continued preservation funding of print collections can hinge on such a premise. What better way to justify funding print preservation than to assign to it a strategic back-up, mastering and authentication role for digital collections? What more effective critique of such funding follows from disassociation of print and digital collections? Long reformatting experience has by now confirmed the recurrent need to recapture across generations of standards, technologies and research agendas. The connection is inherent there.

In a new research environment of delivery surrogates, screen simulations, replacement copies and their discovery keywords, search tags and metadata, a more deliberate designation of a self-authenticating source original is needed. This designation would conform to a standard of completeness and copy preservation assurance. Screen simulations need an authentication stamp. This would be a mark or logo much like the infinity sign that verifies alkaline paper in print editions. The authentication stamp would indicate that the screen copy has been collated along side a known print copy. More importantly, it would also signify that the screen simulation can be collated again in the future along side the same print copy which has been preserved as a leaf master in a research library.

With such a designation the researcher can look across various delivery formats and arrive at a self-authenticating source item. This source original can answer questions of resolution, fidelity, scale, color, vintage, haptic function, materialist fabric, association, content, collation and every other aspect present or absent. A provenance of the original can be constructed and the material existence and extant condition of the surviving artifact be investigated directly.

The preservation master concept has already been adopted in other domains of patrimony. Wilderness area designation, prairie restoration, historical site verification, historical machine operation, endangered species preservation are designated in reference to self-authenticating sources. The concept and its implications are now apt for physical books.

We are more and more immersed in a culture based on simulation, screen delivery, and transient communication. Younger conversation is repeatedly qualified with the word “like”, as if every experience is not what it is, but something else. A more mysterious understanding, in which conceptual works are conveyed by physical objects and experiences are known as possessions has faded. Perhaps preservation of that cultural transmission mode deserves new action.

A recent report (7) begins; “Preservation is a core function of the research library.” If so, such functionality deserves honest definition. What if the preservation functionality derives from a relative immutability of the collections? If so the research library must provide safety from unwarranted modification or deletion and an assured organization of items. In essence, this preservation functionality would then spring from a physicality of collections and media even to the extent that physicality is ascribed to electronic resources.

Endnotes

1. (1) “Library Storage Facilities and the Future of Print Collections in North America”, Lizanne Payne, OCLC, 2007. This report considers the future of library print collections.  Reduction of legacy print collections is considered in context with a distributed print repository network. “Academic institutions are questioning whether their already low-use print collections will be made obsolete by more flexible and accessible digital book collections.” “Mass Digitization: Implications for Preserving the Scholarly Record”, Trudi Hahn, LRTS, 52/1, 2008. This report admonishes the preservation community to stop being so reactive and to take a more strategic approach to preservation of digital access to books. There is a view that research library custodial care of books should not be relinquished to search utilities. “Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization” Oya Reiger, CLIR, 2008. “The goal of this white paper is to consider the potential links between large-scale digitization and long-term preservation of print and digital content, with emphasis on research library collections.” Mechanisms of interdependence between print and digital book collections are discussed with reference to back-up, mastering and authentication roles and costs. “Sustaining the Digital Investment: Issues and Challenges of Economically Sustainable Digital Preservation”, Interim Report, Brian Lavoie, et al, 2008. This report discusses allocation and assumption of preservation responsibility for access sustainability of digital book collections. “The Research Library Role in Digital Repository Services”, ARL, Task Force, 2009. This report contends that sustainable repository responsibility must be extended to digital research materials and resources and that the legacy function of research libraries must be continued. (draft) “Standard Recommended Practice – Production, Inspection, and Quality Assurance of Digital Capture of Microfilm and Original Documents” – ANSI/AIIM Ms23-1998. This standard considers aspects of processing of books including dis-binding and measures of image quality, but provides no consideration of the continuing role of originals.

(2)Academic presses increasingly use on-demand copier production and it is likely that the half-way point is already passed in this sector and in research library acquisition of monographs.

(3)Haptics is the study of touch as a mode of communication. Studies are concentrated in psychology and robotics engineering. The specific issues of comprehension via physical media such as books are indirectly addressed in neurological evolution of human hands and primate dexterity.

(4)”Certification of Portico and HathiTrust”, Center for Research Libraries. (report forthcoming, 2009).  This assessment will link electronic-only resources with decommissioning of print. This gratuitous “hybrid” approach will “move more aggressively to reduce the costs of redundant print holding”.

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3. (5)”Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization” Oya Reiger, CLIR, 2008. “The goal of this white paper is to consider the potential links between large-scale digitization and long-term preservation of print and digital content, with emphasis on research library collections.” Mechanisms of interdependence between print and digital book collections are discussed with reference to back-up, mastering and authentication roles and costs.
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5. (6) The “leaf master “premise was inaugurated to preserve cut books following production of shelf-replacement photocopies of brittle books. These in-house library productions become the service copy and the originals, in shrink-wrap enclosure, are stored in the Preservation department. A more general Preservation Masters collection, spanning various source media, has been established at the University of Iowa Libraries; http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/preservation/PreservationMastersCollection.html

(7) “Safeguarding Collections at the Dawn of the 21st Century, Describing Roles and Measuring Contemporary Preservation Activities in ARL Libraries”, Lars Meyer, Association of Research Libraries, 2009.

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