30th Year Reflections/59: By Example

“The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.” — Andrew Carnegie

A few weeks ago I gave graduate students in my preservation management class an assignment. I asked them to watch a presentation given on September 30th at the University of Minnesota by Elliott Shore, Executive Director for the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and James Hilton, Dean of Libraries and Vice Provost for Digital Education Initiatives at the University of Michigan. This joint presentation was made possible by University Librarian Wendy Lougee (who also serves as ARL president), and appeared under the general title “Research Libraries at Scale: Moving from 19th Century Origins to 21st Century Solutions.” While watching this presentation, I asked my students to keep in mind three questions and to write a 1,500 word short paper based on answers to those questions. The questions were these: What did Shore or Hilton say that relates to preservation? Does it make sense? Does what they said give you a roadmap to think about preservation planning in the future? Perhaps not the most profound questions, but intentional all the same. I wanted my students to: a) have a chance to hear two influential professional leaders speak about the future of libraries, and b) pull out and assemble thoughts on a topic not immediately apparent in the theme of the Shore/Hilton presentation, i.e. library preservation programs and planning.

My students handed in their papers last Saturday. Before reading them, I thought of another experiment (akin to my MLA pre- and post-conference experience of the last two posts): commit my own thoughts to paper, post them to the blog, and see how they stand up against my students. This, like my MLA reflections, is a bit risky (for me and my students). But why ask my students to do something if I’m not willing to do it myself? In my piece I spend more time than my students might at the beginning summarizing the Shore/Hilton presentation; I think it is necessary for context. I then wrap up with some observations on preservation. Here, then, are my reflections on the Shore/Hilton presentation as they relate to preservation programs and planning.

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The long-term preservation of culturally and educationally important materials is a core function of libraries. Shore—in setting the table for Hilton—argued “that how we are acting now (or trying to react to what we are seeing) is deeply and inexorably rooted in a period of human history whose foundations are now crumbling” and whose practices and habits, developed across all cultures of the world, “mark our habit of thought and continue to be present in how we make our decisions.” He further argued that “the library is the central institution that bears the most marks of the thinking of the last century and a half” and that it was his firm belief “that if we understand our habits of mind better, we may be in a better position to make choices among a seemingly infinite number” of possibilities. Preservation, as a core function, bears some of these marks and habits of thought.

Shore assisted us in this historical introspection by noting, in essence, our bad habits, i.e. the things we need to break. He observed: “The penetration of the dynamic, changeable nature of digital, web-based, linked information technologies to universities and to research libraries has shown the fissures and exposed the assumptions in some of the fixed structures into which we have organized ourselves and how we think about our work.” These habits include (but are not limited to) a propensity towards reducing problems to discrete parts and tasks; creating (and continuing)—through classification and sorting activities—information silos; organizing ourselves and our work hierarchically; assuming that items in our care are, by their nature, discrete and finished. By breaking these habits (and perhaps healing our scars in the process), we can move from a discrete, contained, hierarchical, rigid, single profession mode of existence toward something that engages us in a fluid, ubiquitous, diverse, collaborative, and interprofessional reality.

Beyond introspection (to continue a psychoanalytic or religious metaphor), Shore asks us ostensibly to perform a professional confession, i.e. to acknowledge our current state: We have lost control; we need to get beyond our “binary oppositions” of centralization versus decentralization, control versus openness, fixed versus shifting categories; we are jolted by the rapid appearance and aggressive behavior of commercial, social, and personal entities in “our” domain; we are not alone; there is a way out; we need to seek a middle ground.

The confessional ends with the realization that there is a middle ground, but even here questions arise, the principal being: “Where do we differentiate ourselves from one another and where do we work together?” Is it, as Shore seems to say, that this middle ground, this new place of professional identity and activity is in both these areas of difference and collaboration? For examples, he points to aggregators and cultural commons, e.g. the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and Wikipedia, and quotes Charles Henry’s observation (“Higher Ground”) that the next two decades “could witness an extraordinary fluorescence of activity among universities and colleges focused on repositioning, consolidation, and convergence.” Is this the middle ground of which he speaks? If so, what does this mean for the core function of preservation?

Hilton, in response to (or continuing) Shore’s presentation, framed matters another way, i.e. if Shore’s talk was classical music, then Hilton offered free-wheelin’, pickin’, kinetic bluegrass sprinkled with the blood of a Baptist preacher. His presentation, like a preacher’s sermon, included three major points: the emergent nature of change, irresistible forces, and opportunities/imperatives (aka celestial navigation).

On the emergent nature of change, Hilton noted that “our notions of change don’t serve us well.” We think of change as calm waters punctuated by rapids, when in fact it is really rapids all the time, all the way. Viewed this way, change is disruptive, messy, not orderly, planned, or predictable. While Hilton did not adequately define what he meant by emergence (as understood, for example, in systems theory) he did point to it as a strategy for dealing with change. In this sense we have a known starting point and desired direction, but an unknown end point. Part of this strategy involves identifying and adjusting “fundamental conditions” so that “new opportunities will emerge.” It also entails instilling “a discipline of ‘fine-tune as you go’ and refinement based on experience. Hilton likened the process to sailing.

Taking up the sailing theme we might quote Seneca: “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” Hilton might respond that the port is not important, just the direction. (We would hope he wants to hit land at some point, if for no other reason than to reprovision his ship—assuming the natives are friendly and their stores abundant.) We might also amend his earlier image of change (which included pictures of canoes or kayaks on calm water and rapids) to a sailing image that includes the natural forces of massive swells, towering waves, smooth seas, and doldrums. These maritime dynamisms would correspond (by name if not by nature) to the four irresistible forces, i.e. emerging conditions, outlined in his talk: higher education, consumerization/relevance, unbundling, and digital.

Under these conditions—adjusting the tiller—we might expect nearly continuous evaluation or redefinition of the purposes and meaning of education, who participates in education, and how it is financed. We might also expect incessant gusts from port or starboard in the form of commercial blowhards (I mean entities) telling us how they can do it better, cheaper, more efficiently, etc. As an example, Hilton gave us a charming thumbnail portrait of his colleague at Michigan, Paul Courant, and the interaction between Courant and the Elsevier publishing company on the topics of preservation and digitization.

Elsevier: “Look, we were Galileo’s publisher. Trust us. We’re going to be fine.”
Courant: “We have the hubris to be unimpressed with your track record of longevity.”
Courant: “Where did you go to get your backfiles for digitization?”
Courant: “You’re going to go to your board of directors and propose something with a perpetual, binding liability with no revenue stream behind it?”

Hilton’s conclusions, his celestial navigation, led him to five final imperatives: 1) re-orient around durable access, 2) tie our fate to collaboration, 3) harness economies of scale, 4) be Switzerland on steroids (i.e. neutral and highly engaged), and 5) double down on audacity.

Let me return to the three questions I posed to my students as they relate to preservation planning in libraries. If the five major components of preservation planning are environmental control, emergency preparedness, security, storage, and handling/use, then at first blush Shore/Hilton said little in specific terms about this core library function. But in broad terms, and as a roadmap to the future, they gave us plenty to think about.

First, Shore challenged us to examine those habits of thought and work that have become embedded in our professional consciousness. In terms of managerial planning and conservators’ treatments we might question the amount of time, staff, space, and money spent on treating individual items in loco. If we are collaborating, i.e. practicing what Hilton called an “intentional interdependence between organizations,” and working to scale it would seem we would want to invest more of our resources on regional treatment centers to which numerous institutions could send individual items for attention. Something like the Regional Alliance for Preservation might provide a model or a vehicle for this type of work.

This also argues for active, real-time discussions across institutions and among staffs/faculties of what should be sent for treatment to such regional centers, what can be done in-house, or ignored. Such a discussion overlaps Shore’s concern for a middle ground and the question: “Where do we differentiate ourselves from one another and where do we work together?” If we differentiate ourselves, in part, through our special and rare collections, then we are long overdue for a conversation (let alone collaborative work) about physical and digital preservation planning for these materials. This conversation, among regional or consortial curatorial staff, needs to happen sooner rather than later. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) have a number of initiatives that address physical and digital preservation: the Shared Print Repository, Hathi Trust Digital Repository, the Google Book Search Project. But almost all of this activity addresses circulating or journal collections, not rare or special materials. It is time for curatorial staffs (and associated faculty) to gather, talk, and act.

Some might argue that digital humanities initiatives or cultural commons projects like the DPLA meet this need. This may be the case on the digital front, but I do not think it adequately addresses Hilton’s call to re-orient around durable access. Here he pointed to “traditional content,” (books and paper) as being less problematic, i.e. put it on the shelf in an environmentally stable, secure, place and we’ll be fine for five hundred years. This may be so, but we do not, at present, have the necessary capacity for such storage. The physical is being shortchanged in favor of the digital. We need to be collaboratively audacious on both fronts.

Emergency Planning and Response

Anyone who has suffered a natural disaster knows the multitude of emotions connected with such an event: feelings of loss, pain, fatigue, frustration, confusion—the list is nearly endless. Archives and libraries—and their associated staff—are no different. At least a few of us have endured (and survived) professional lives disrupted by flood, fire, earthquake, or other calamity. Among the many questions that linger after such an event is one of paramount importance to archivists and librarians: how can we be better prepared the next time such an event comes our way.

To that end, the Libraries formed a Collections Emergency Response Team. Led by Mary Miller, the Libraries’ Collection Management and Preservation Strategist, this team is engaged in updating and enhancing collections emergency response procedures for the Libraries and the Minnesota Library Access Center (administered by Minitex). University Librarian Wendy Lougee charged the team “with assessing collections emergency preparedness in the Libraries, overseeing emergency planning, and fostering a culture of preparedness in the Libraries through strategic communication, education, and hands-on training. In the event of an emergency involving collections, the team will provide leadership, advice, and assistance to the Libraries during the response and recovery phases.” I was invited—along with nearly a dozen of my colleagues—to be a member of this team.

Hands-on training is an important part of “fostering a culture of preparedness.” In early September the team, along with other members of staff, participated in two days of exercises designed around collection damage assessment and salvage. Our sessions were led by Julie Page, a trainer for the Western States and Territories Preservation Assistance Service (WESTPAS). Julie is the former head of the preservation department at the University of California, San Diego and now serves as a preservation consultant. In addition to her work with WESTPAS, she is a trainer for the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC) Emergency Response for Cultural Institutions program, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and a member of the American Institute for Conservation Collections Emergency Response Team (AIC CERT).

We were instructed to wear “grubby” clothes, as we would be handling wet books and papers during our training. I was happy for the cautionary instructions. Our first day included a “stack assessment” exercise in Wilson Library. Portions of the stacks on the fourth floor were draped in different colors of crepe paper; blue indicated wet ranges of books, white indicated damp ranges. We divided into smaller teams and headed to an assigned area of the stacks. Once on site, our task was to assess and document the number damaged books, assign salvage priorities, note anything special about this portion of the collection, and create a sequence of response activities. These activities included activation of a telephone calling tree and notification of University facilities/emergency personnel, all designed to insure staff safety and a proper approach to an incident of this kind. In a debriefing session following this exercise, Julie emphasized the importance of an accurate assessment. The assessment drives much of what follows in terms of conservation treatments and other actions.

In the afternoon of our first day, following an introduction to salvage techniques and response issues, we ventured outside for a second hands-on exercise. Here we were exposed to, and instructed on, the correct handling for damp or wet books and papers. We practiced air-drying damp volumes, wrapping and packing saturated volumes, safe handling and drying of wet papers and record cartons, and treatments for other types of media such as microfilm or compact discs. In a real-life scenario much of this work would have been conducted indoors, but we wished to spare the interior of Andersen Library from any water damage during the exercise. It was amazing to see how much moisture books can absorb or how fragile an item or page becomes when wet.

Having survived the first day of mock disasters, we entered the second day more knowledgeable, yet humbled and eager to learn more. The major training of the day involved a “tabletop” exercise that presented us with a cascading series of events. Most of the incidents we might face in the future—so statistics and the risk management folks tell us—involve water. So, having divided ourselves into two teams, we were given a storm scenario. Faced with a series of spring storms, high winds, and extremely heavy rainfall, Wilson Library (on a Sunday afternoon) experienced “water all over the floor and collapsed ceiling tiles on the west side of the fourth floor….You have been called in to provide guidance and assistance.” The scenario indicated that our group had assembled in Wilson Library and was starting to assess the situation when a second call came from library staff on the St. Paul campus informing us of a second event involving more water and wet books. Our teams energetically worked through the steps outlined in our response plan as we tackled the scenario. At two points during our interactions Julie injected new events. The first involved two feet of water at the foundation level in Walter Library on Monday morning; the second occurred later on Monday morning, with water leaking into the Wangensteen Library and damage to a small number of rare books. These injections complicated the scenario and led us to think about related matters such as staff fatigue, meal breaks, security, and communications.

While the scenario (and its two injections) might seem unrealistic, we know from experience that such things could happen. We were presented with a robust set of circumstances that tested our situational awareness and previous training. One of the goals of the tabletop exercise was to put the draft of our current response plan through its paces, testing how well this document functioned under the stress of an active scenario. By the time we completed the exercise our copies of the response plan were littered with additional notations with suggestions for improved clarity or re-working. It was an extremely valuable drill that will result in a better plan.

Following a final debriefing, we concluded our training on collection assessment and salvage. I’m sure more training sessions and conversations will follow as we refine our emergency response plans for the collections. A special word of thanks goes to Mary Miller and other members of the staff for organizing this two-day session, and to Julie Page for her expertise in guiding our team toward better readiness and response. We hope such disastrous days will never come, but know at some point the inevitable will happen. The strength of our training and a commitment to developing a culture of preparedness will keep us vigilant and ready for such a day.

***** This post originally appeared on the departmental blog "Primary Sourcery" for Archives and Special Collections at the University of Minnesota.

I've taken a month break from blogging for a personal vacation and the start of the school year, but intend to resume regular weekly posts here starting next week. My "30th Year Reflections" series will end in October. From that point forward I'll blog about anything related to my work in special collections, rare books, and archives.

30th Year Reflections/33: Timbuktu

“One week after Islamic militants fled Timbuktu under French bombing strikes, preservationists are deeply uncertain about how to continue protecting the city’s priceless ancient documents — a conundrum that cuts to the heart of how treasures are safeguarded through political upheaval in places where locals have little trust in government.” -- Vivienne Walt, Time Magazine

When I was much younger I occasionally would hear someone utter a mysterious phrase: “from here to Timbuktu.” I never quite understood what the phrase meant, except that Timbuktu was a place far, far away. If someone told me they were going to kick me “from here to Timbuktu” (not that such a thing ever happened) then chances were good that I was hightailing it out of there before they had the opportunity to execute the first kick. It was not until much later than I learned that Timbuktu was a real place, and later still when I finally located it on a map. The last and greatest disclosure about Timbuktu came to my ears sometime around 1998, perhaps through the pages of the National Geographic or the PBS documentary by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. However it was that I heard the news, I was stunned and excited to hear about so rich a cache of manuscripts and the efforts being made to preserve them.

Then came the news that the manuscripts had been destroyed by Islamic militants during their occupation of the city, followed by other news that contradicted the first: the majority of the manuscripts had been saved by the thirty or forty families who have held private custody for generations, hiding them now and again from invading forces. This little tidbit was then followed up other accounts, including the one in Time, that Timbuktu families were reluctant to part with the manuscripts in favor of government ownership; that the government was not stable enough, or trustworthy enough to gain custody of the manuscripts. Even the United Nations seems puzzled with how to achieve long-term preservation of the manuscripts. We may, indeed, be witness to the destruction of another piece of the world’s culture. There is at least one project in place, the Tombouctou Manuscript Project, that offers some hope in the other direction.

And we have seen this happen before. One only needs to go back a short distance in time to recall stories on the destruction of books and manuscripts at the Institut d'Égypte in Cairo in 2011, the Iraq National Library and Archive in 2003, or the National and University Library in Sarajevo in 1992. (An article on Wikipedia contains a fuller list.) Libraries and archives, by their very natures, can become cultural, political, or military targets. Outside the rule of law or a democratic tradition, these cultural repositories may occupy unstable ground. But even within our own society we can point to a destruction of libraries or archival collections through natural disasters (e.g. Katrina), inept management (Ruskin College), or even by an act of government (burning of the Library on Congress by the British in 1812, or the University of Alabama Library by Union forces during the Civil War). Some destruction may be well-intentioned or part of a regular schedule. I have few concerns about the latter, but some hesitancy about the former. Even in some of our public institutions (e.g. schools) it might be argued that our libraries are disappearing (or perhaps becoming invisible) because school districts so often target librarians and media specialists as the first to be dismissed during a fiscal crisis and spend little to no money on library resources (arguing, as many have, that the public library will meet the need).

You may know of other examples of archival or library destruction. I’m not crying out that it is time to rush to the barricades in defense of all things bibliographic or archival. But what I am asking for is some sort of eternal vigilance that makes this an unending concern for the profession.

Cyberwar

I teach a course on preservation and conservation in St. Catherine University's MLIS program. We spend a part of the semester talking about disaster plans and emergency preparedness. This new post on the ACRLog is something I'll need to keep in mind as I tweak my syllabus for the coming fall.

So, two somewhat "downer" posts today about the digital world: blogs being swept away and now the need in preparing for cyberwar. I think this does need serious attention. I'm beginning to feel in my bones that our next Pearl Harbor -- 9/11 -- will be such an attack. I probably need to amass more actual data (something Sherlock Holmes would have done) before making any kind of pronouncement. But think about it for just a moment. What could you do (or not do) in the course of a day if everything was "down." What kind of disruptions would we face. I'm not losing sleep over the issue, but it causes a quiver when contemplated.

Reading Text in Rolled Documents

For the past three years, in the course of my teaching conservation and preservation at St. Kate's, I've mentioned the challenge of reading texts hidden in rolled or multi-layered objects such as scrolls. Kevin Driedger noted the following video on his blog and I thought I'd share it here as well. It is exciting to think about the texts that may come to light through the process described in this video. Enjoy!