Blog #7

National Endowment for the Humanities:

"NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities." It also promotes excellence in the humanities and conveys the lessons of history to all Americans by providing grants for high-quality humanities projects in four funding areas: preserving and providing access to cultural resources, education, research, and public programs.
The grants typically go to cultural institutions as well as individual scholars.

Mellon Foundation:

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation currently makes grants in six core program areas - Higher Education and Scholarship, Scholarly Communications, Research in Information Technology, Museums and Art Conservation, Performing Arts, Conservation and Environment.
The grants strive to "build, strengthen and sustain institutions and their core capacities, rather than be a source for narrowly defined projects."

On November 5, 2008 The Mellon foundation released the following statement:

"The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has certainly experienced some of the effects of the current financial environment. Nevertheless, we do not now foresee significant retrenchment or dislocations in our grantmaking. All existing commitments will be honored, and the Foundation will continue to be alert to the needs of grantees as circumstances develop."

One major trend I see across the board is that the grant committees want to fund programs that are sustainable. This is especially apropos in these hard financial times. The granting agencies are still awarding funding but they want to make sure their money will go towards something that will benefit the public many years to come as seen with the Mellon Foundation grants. Also grant agencies want to know there is something in it for them whether this be notoriety in being associated with a successful project or having the opportunity to have their own products testing out in the market.

Blog #6

There is one part of this article that stuck in my mind the most:

I can't tell you how many people have suggested to us, 'Oh, you just need to digitize all that stuff down in the basement and you'll be all right,' Ms. Wainwright said. 'They have no idea how much effort that requires.'

It often does feel that people outside of the library/information/digitization fields simply cannot wrap their minds around what a giant initiative digitization has become. They see it as an end answer as oppose to what it really is: the beginning of a whole new set of questions and problems. Even large institutions such as the National Archives are having a hard time digitizing their collections. This is disheartening to those tiny institutions with collections that are quickly being lost. The article mentioned how large companies like IBM and Google are helping to fund digitization initiatives but I feel as if this can be a slippery slope. Materials may appear to be becoming more accessible with little to no cost to an institution but we all know that nothing is free these days. The cost often comes from the company holding copyright over the digital versions of your copies or having their own bottom line at heart such as how IBM only takes on projects that will directly help IBM showcase their newest technologies.

I have chosen to look into the digitization strategies of Yale University and the British Library.

The British Library:

GOAL - All of the British Library’s digital collections will reside in a secure digital repository by the year 2016

MAIN STRATEGIES - normalization, migration on request, emulation, and desiccation.
Apply best practice from the print world where it is applicable for the preservation of digital materials. Multiple copies (3) in different physical locations and utilizing backups and integrity checking to ensure that no data is lost due to media decay, or catastrophe.
PREVENTATIVE MEASURES - work with the developers of application software to improve the longevity of proprietary file formats

LONG TERM STRATEGIES - Recording metadata about each digital object and allocating unique, persistent identifiers.

Many of the suggestions were very broad as in "Perform preservation activities with appropriate timeliness" and "use existing tools where they are fit for purpose". Yet at the same time it is important to officially state that you are indeed planning to follow obvious best practices. It serves as reminder to yourself of the basics that might be taken for granted or forgotten. It was interesting to me that plan on applying the best practices from the print world to the preservation of digital objects. It makes me wonder exactly what they mean by this statement.

Yale University:

GOAL - The digital resources are subject to the same criteria for selection and preservation as other resources in the Yale Libraries. Decisions are made by curators and experts on the content of the materials in addition to those dealing in preservation and information technology.
MAIN STRATEGIES - To recognize that preservation strategies and actions for materials vary depending on the content types, formats, and resources and to act accordingly. To thoroughly understand the digital life cycle of each object.
STORAGE: Purchase large quantities of digital storage and provide personnel to manage the space.

I liked that the content of the materials is also taken into account. Also, they stated that they understood that the storage management would take a considerable amount of time, energy, and money to maintain but they are willing to do this work. Metadata was discussed as being an integral part of the collection management as well.

Both institutions covered the main best practices of digital preservation but neither really put forth any new and innovative ideas on the subject. The British Library made some statements that led me to believe that they were thinking towards the future but did not expand on the matter. However, they were both realistic in understanding how much effort and money it would actually take to realize their efforts.

This past Monday and Tuesday I attending a program called A Race Against Time: Preserving Our Audiovisual Media. The program was held at the HRC in conjunction with the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. Many of the speakers gave an overview of what I already knew from my classwork. It appeared that the symposium was held for preservation administrators that were in charge of smaller AV collections that they had little knowledge of. I did gain some insight into the physical storage of electronic media. My favorite speaker was George Blood. He was very charismatic and knowledgeable on the subject of audio recordings. He had anticipated having some 'show and tell' objects for us to handle but unfortunately his baggage did not make it to Austin with him. This was a bit dissappointing as it is always fun to actually handle the meadia you are learning about. The second day was less exciting because it dealt with funding opportunites. I was able to meet with students from the school of information that also liked working with audio visual materials and I feel that this was of great benefit to me because I now know who to ask with questions on certain materials. I am glad I was able to attened this symposium because it helped me to gain a better understanding of the field that I am in.

I feel that while in school or at a very wealthy institution it is easy to assume and expect that all institutions follow the same guidelines or best practices when it comes to how materials are so different than they use to be and are received in higher quantities. The statistical information in the Greene/Meissner article is quite telling. It appears that many libraries or archives are doing just what they can to get by but much of the current library literature expresses that the only practices are best practices. Very rarely to we see a gradient scale of what should be the bare minimum in way of conservation, acquisition policies, description, and user access. As the article points out, the sheer number of materials coming into these collections is staggering and archives are forced to either keep with a basic level of service for all the materials (both those already in the collection and those coming in) or carefully position the current materials within the confines of the collection and let the incoming materials wait sometimes in a perpetual limbo. This waiting is disastrous for many time sensitive materials such as those from audio/visual collections. The research within the article sometimes caused me to feel a bit hopeless about the situation. This is probably the same feeling that many students have once they start work at their first institution.

Disaster Preparedness

-Look through the websites of preservation and conservation units in museums
and find out if they have a disaster preparedness plan in place. Choose two,
identify their main characteristics and compare them.

I chose to look at the disaster preparedness of the conservation department at the National Archives and Cornell University.

Both institutions are first and foremost concerned with the safety of the employees before any of the collection materials although the National Archives had step by step actions to take in cases of:

Severe Storms

Hurricane Warning

Tornado Warning

Winter Storm

Utility Failure

Flood

Hazardous Material Accident

Civil Disorder and Demonstrations

Terrorism

Bomb Threat and Checklist

Explosion

Major Transportation Accident

Earthquake

The Cornell site simply stated to seek other sources from administrators for such instructions. The National Archives disaster preparedness plan was also very thorough in explaining how certain disasters such as water and fire can affect the different types of materials within the archive, what to do before trying to salvage items and what to do within the weeks follow salvage to prevent further repercussions of the disaster from occurring. There isn't any mention of exactly what to do first in the event of a disaster other than to save personnel then begin disaster treatment of material. There are several mentions of disaster preparedness drills for both the staff evacuations as well as scenarios involving materials. The Cornell plan is not as involved but it allows for each head of each library, museum or collection to tailor the plan to their own needs. For example, the disaster preparedness plan states:

Each department, unit or library should identify those parts of library
collections which must be protected or salvaged first after an emergency. On the
attached form, list, in order of priority, those library materials, records and collections which should be salvaged first. Along with this priority list, attach a floor plan indicated locations of fire extinguishers, alarms, etc. It is best to list in detail what the collection priorities are in an appendix. Establishing priorities within collections is equally important (e.g. call numbers of specific items within collections). Consider the following points in establishing priorities What is the monetary and intrinsic value of the collection as a whole or its individual items? How fragile is the material? (e.g. brittle, unbound issues of serial, etc.) How vulnerable is the material to damage from a disaster? (e.g. location, under pipes, near water Is the material replaceable? Can the majority of items be replaced in the same or a different format, such as microfilm? What are the economics of replacing items? Which materials can be replaced more economically than they can be salvaged? The estimated average replacement of a monograph is currently $75.00. What are the costs of de-accessioning materials? What materials can be discarded instead of salvaged? What are the legal requirements, if any, for retention of documents/material? Why is preservation of this material critical? The relative importance of collections, to university programs. In addition to the collections, what other items are valuable (e.g. catalog, shelflist, computer terminals.)

(http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/emergencies/ word doc.)

I like the idea of obtaining input from those who know most about particular collections. This way a little bit of everything can be saved first. The plan seems to have enough structure in it to guide the staff but enough flexibility to be helpful to everyone.

Overall I would say that the National Archives disaster preparedness relies on hands on drills of procedures while Cornell has a more traditional preparedness manuals. Both realize that human life is more important than material objects. The National Archives appears to deal with materials that are in more need of rescue or are in more immediate danger while Cornell relies on curators/conservators to list what is most important and irreplaceable.

Initial Impressions of the First On-Site Visit

• The collection is located in a storage room at the Blanton along with other pieces of art and any soon to be exhibited collections. This space was a little on the warm side. The space only accessible through the use of an access card locked door. A staff member was stationed outside the door at all times for extra security.

• ALL copies (originals and exhibit copies) of each digital art work were kept in the same metal cabinet space.

• What was being kept in the cabinet were the only copies. There are no digital files located on any computer or server space.

• The DVDs and tapes are arranged in a plastic tray that is labeled with each artists name.
  

• There is little to no metadata associated with each piece. Much of the metadata present is what was given to the Blanton by the artists. Metadata included: run time, b&w or color, name of work, artist name

• One portion of the collection resides within a wooden box that the artist made for his art work.

• Some of the artists are very particular about what happens with their works.

• Some files were stored on a external drive that is meant to hook up to a projector.

• My contact had a number of questions about the collection including:

1. the use of gold DVDs
2. how to preserve the information on the external drive
3. metadata issues
4. how to physically label each DVD
5. how to store the DVDs

Currently the collection appears to be in good physical condition. The main issues lie with making sure the digital files make it through technological changes in hardware, software, and file formats. Hopefully I will be able to take a look at the actual digital files during my next visit.

Letter of Compromise

Sue Ellen Jeffers, Registrar
Blanton Museum of Art
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station D1303
Austin, TX 78712
(512) 471-9203




Dear Ms. Jeffers,

I, Cassandra Gallegos, intend to conduct a preservation assessment of the digital art collection at the Blanton Museum of Art. The main objective of my assessment will be to aid in the long term preservation of this collection through a series of preservation recommendations delivered to you in the form of a written report at the end of the Spring 2009 school semester. The recommendations will include but will not be limited to:

• Storage media recommendations
• Environmental recommendations
• The long term risks associated with each format within the collection with special attention paid to the dangers of changing technology and migration issues upon digital files.
• Recommendations on how to best handle these long term risks
  
• Metadata recommendations
• File format recommendations
• Estimated cost of preservation recommendations
  

Any additional recommendations will aim to not only preserve the life of the materials (both analog and digital formats) but also to preserve the artistic authenticity intended by each artist.

Activities performed during this assessment may include:

• Accessing the collection both physically and through appropriate technological avenues.
• Accessing the collection throughout the semester via monitored appointments.

I look forward to working with you and I hope that my preservation report will make a difference in the life of the collection!

Sincerely,

Cassandra Gallegos