Related product Collections Management

Preservation Committee Meeting: August 9, 2019

CARLI OFFICE, Champaign

Members Attending:

  • Ann Lindsey, University of Chicago, co-chair
  • Mary Burns, Northern Illinois University, co-chair
  • Fred Barnhart, Northern Illinois University, Board liaison, by phone
  • Nora Gabor, DePaul University, by phone
  • Tonia Grafakos, Northwestern University
  • Becky Koch, Illinois State University
  • Susan Howell, Southern Illinois University Carbondale
  • Meghan Ryan, National Louis University, by phone
  • William Schlaack, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Members Absent:

  • Rob DeLand, VanderCook College of Music

Staff Attending:

  • Elizabeth Clarage
  • Anne Craig
  • Nicole Swanson

Announcements

CARLI Announcements

  • Anne Craig presented a report on CARLI activities:
    • Each of the CARLI committees will have board member liaisons. The liaison positions were created in response to feedback from members about the CARLI strategic plan. More coordination and communication among the Board and the Committees was requested along with more coordinated efforts by the Committees. 
    • The committees have been asked to support the Alma Primo VE migration with their work if possible.
    • Committee members were asked to see the All Committees FY20 Kick off webinar presented on July 23, 2019 if they had not already. A recording can be found on the CARLI website.
    • CARLI received an IMLS grant for the project CARLI Counts: Analytics and Advocacy for Service Development.
    • CARLI hired a graduate assistant position in partnership with the I-School.
    • 30 people have registered for the Mid-Level Leader's Symposium: CARLI's Next Dean's and Directors. There are still 30 open spots.
    • CARLI′s first Career Fair will be held in partnership with the iSchool at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on Thursday, November 14, the day prior to the CARLI Annual Meeting.
      • A CARLI scholarship will be announced at the Career Fair in commemoration of our 40th anniversary. It is for anyone who works in a CARLI library to support their going to library school. 
    • The CARLI Annual Meeting will be November 15 at the I-Hotel.
      • CARLI Committees need to be prepared to talk about their past year’s project for 2018-19 and their project for the current year.
    • The University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern University, and CARLI are hosting the ACRL workshop: Standards for Libraries in Higher Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on October 29, 2019. Registration is open.
    • There are 131 Libraries in CARLI. Ninety-one are members of I-Share and will migrate to Alma Primo VE. The Chicago History Museum is now a governing member of CARLI.
  • Nicole reported that the member libraries are doing really well keeping up with the Alma migration timeline, mentioned the weekly Alma Office Hours with recordings, and Alma Certification training.
  • Elizabeth shared that from October to April each member of I-Share will have their library data available in a test environment. The system goes live on June 24, 2020.

Member announcements

  • Meghan reported that National Louis University is in the process of moving its special collections from Skokie to its Chicago campus.
  • Susan reported that their director of special collections left to take a position at the University of Illinois, Chicago. They will be filling the position.

Discussion

  • Group Communications
    • Nicole reviewed communication options for the Committee: email list, the Preservation Group Space on the CARLI website, and Box. Elizabeth also demoed Google docs.
    • Committee members shared concerns about losing information regarding committee work in email communications. Suggestions were made for tools instead of emails for projects. The advantages and disadvantages of using the CARLI website group space, GoogleDocs, and Box were discussed. The Committee is going to use Box in the coming year for its group work and shared documents.
  • Elizabeth did an overview of the guidelines for Committee chairs and members.  She noted specifics for the timelines for events: webinars need to be announced 4-8 weeks ahead of time; CARLI committee events need to be announced 3-4 months ahead of time; special events with speakers and meeting logistics require at least six months of planning because contracts need to be put in place.
  • Nicole spoke more about the role of the Committee board liaisons.
  • The committee discussed the CARLI Preservation Workshop: Choosing and Constructing Protective Enclosures for Library Materials.
    • The evaluations were very positive.
    • It was one of the more intensive hands-on workshops CARLI had done.  The committee discussed the need for high ratio for instructors to attendees for hands-on programs.
    • The workshop sponsors who donated materials were very generous.
    • Everyone went home with two finished products.
  • The committee discussed the Conservation Lab Open Houses at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the Illinois State Military Museum.
    • The open houses were a success and enjoyed by attendees.
    • Bonnie Parr showed objects held by the Lincoln Library including a Civil War era violin.
    • Bill Lear talked about the preservation of flags and uniforms in the Illinois State Military Museum's collection.
    • Both the workshop and the open houses were highlighted in an article in the July 30th CARLI Newsletter. These events complimented the Committee's annual project which focused on the preservation of non-book materials.    
  • Annual Project
    • Suggestions for this year's annual project were discussed. 
      • A series of interviews on various preservation topics with preservationists was discussed. Profiling “spotlights” on Illinois preservationists and preservation departments in CARLI libraries were considered; also, vendors and grant recipients.
        • It was proposed that the Introduction section to the blog be used to invite people to interview for various topics. This would be published in the September CARLI Newsletter. Ann volunteered to write the introductory section and to provide a list of topics for the Committee members to consider and use to make up lists of questions.
      • The committee discussed how it might contribute to the migration to Alma Primo VE. Some members shared that they use a separate system for tracking their conservation and preservation efforts on specific items and that information is not reflected within their LMS, but indicated it would be nice if the two systems could connect in some way. Two I-Share members indicated it would be helpful if some data migrated. SIC has conservation item notes as well as a temporary location for Preservation and an item temporary status “In Preservation”. UIUC mentioned the Voyager bib id is important to migrate since it is a reference between their LMS and external system. Northwestern, already an Alma customer, has a Conservation location. Committee members who had been through system migrations before said they and their work with preservation had not been affected, but that they also were not necessarily part of the conversation during the change. The group determined that a single blog post about the system migration would be sufficient to share news about any impact of the new system and preservation work and any desires for system interoperability.
      • The Committee discussed conducting another preservation survey of CARLI members since the last one was done in 2015 and is becoming outdated.
    • Other open houses or workshops
      • Members agreed a CARLI advanced repair workshop would not be a workable undertaking for the Committee. Survey respondents had suggested an advanced repair workshop, but the time needed to teach advanced topics would be beyond the scope of the Committee.
      • The Committee discussed doing a webinar on the intake of donated collections and the need for preservation input within the donation process library and protocols that should be followed. Donors and their expectations including digitization was another topic suggested.

Decisions

  • Mary Burns was confirmed to take minutes.
  • The June minutes were approved.
  • The committee is going to use Box as its working tool.
  • The annual project will be a series of interviews about various topics with library preservationists.
  • Beginning with October, meetings will be held the second Monday of the month from 10:00 to 11:30 or second Tuesday if there is a holiday.
  • The meeting adjourned at 3:10 pm.

Tasks Assigned

  • Schedule for minutes was assigned alphabetically by institution excepting August:
    • August  Mary Burns
    • September  Nora Gabor
    • October Becky Koch
    • November Meghan Ryan
    • December  Tonia Grafakos
    • January Susan Howell
    • February Ann Lindsey
    • March Will Schlaack
    • April  Rob DeLand
    • May  Meghan Ryan
    • Mary Burns
  • CARLI Preservation Resources Website - Checking Links:
    • Assessment Planning (Susan)
    • Audio-visual Preservation (Analog & Digital) (Mary)
    • Book Repair and Conservation (Susan)
    • Digital Preservation and Digitization for Preservation (William)
    • Disaster Planning and Response (William)
    • Exhibits (Becky)  
    • General Preservation and Conservation Resources Sites (Ann/Rob?)  
    • Glossaries (Nora)
    • Grants and Development (Meghan)
    • Legal issues (Tonia)
    • Library Binding (Rob?)
    • Mold, Pests, and the Environment (Becky)
    • Protective Enclosures and Storage (Meghan)
    • Social Media (Nicole, willing to switch)
    • Special Collections and Archives (Mary)
    • Supply Vendors (Elizabeth, willing to switch)
    • Training (Ann)
  • Annual Project
    • Ann volunteered to make a list of topics for the interviews 
    • Committee members will put their suggestions for topics and questions to ask interviewees for the annual project in the document provided in Box for the September 6th conference call meeting.
    • Ann volunteered to write the introduction article for the annual project

Meeting Dates and Deadlines

Schedule of Preservation Committee Conference Calls:

  • September 6, 2019: 10:00-11:30
  • October 14, 2019:  10:00-11:30 
  • November 11, 2019: 10:00-11:30
  • December 9, 2019: 10:00-11:30
  • January 13, 2020: 10:00-11:30
  • February 10, 2020: 10:00-11:30
  • March 9, 2020: 10:00-11:30
  • April 13, 2020: 10:00-11:30
  • May 11, 2020: 10:00-11:30
  • June 8, 2020: 10:00-11:30