Preservation storage and curation strategies: Introduction

Abstract

All collecting institutions reckon with the fundamental question of how to store collections. The answer to this question often begins and ends with pragmatic decisions: collections are stored wherever staff can find room. Storage is an operational necessity but it also needs attention at a strategic level. Storage serves as a fundamental and functional piece of the institution’s plan for access to and preservation of its collections: storage at its best becomes proactive curation of the collection and requires a good knowledge of the condition and quality of the collection. In this special issue of IFLA Journal, we have attempted to bring together articles depicting a variety of approaches to storage for physical and digital collections that are adapted to the particular constraints and opportunities of different types of libraries. We hope that this collection will show how storage choices affect the goals of libraries across the spectrum, from preservation to access. As we brought together these articles, we found that there is a history of library science that deserves to be told from the viewpoint of storage. Historically, most classification systems have grouped related categories of materials together on the shelf, but several systems also tried to group materials near their service points in particular buildings. All libraries have faced some version of this question as they decide between on-site and off-site storage or settle on the optimal number of copies to collect. Some models of storage, such as the Open Archival Information System, have attempted to make a similar connection between the elements of a digital storage and delivery system to guide development of effective and reliable digital archives. The answers to these questions are as many and varied as the communities that libraries serve. In describing the classification system he developed for the New York Public Library, a system intended to place subject collections close to their respective reading rooms, John Shaw Billings wrote that “it is not logical so far as the succession of different departments in relation to the operations of the human mind is concerned; that it is not recommended for any other library, and that no librarian of another library would approve of it.” The book stacks that Billings had in mind were themselves the result of a strategic decision about how to store books, and attempted to make the best use of the best technologies of their era. They were designed by Bernard Green and first used at the Library of Congress (USA), being soon adopted by the Ontario Legislative Library (Canada), New York Public Library (USA), and Widener Memorial Library of Harvard University (USA). These stacks, which were manufactured by Snead & Co. Ironworks, were intended to fulfill a program of requirements that includes many aspects of library services: