CARLI News

This photo comes from a collection that has not yet been featured on the CARLI website as part of the bi-monthly featured image posts, and I thought it was time to correct that. “Struggle and Progress-African Americans in Knox County, Illinois” is a fascinating and eclectic collection of photographs, newspapers, letters, documents and interviews that form a picture of the African-American community in and around Galesburg, IL from the late 19th century through the early twentieth century.

Miriam Centeno, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Why do you need to conduct a collection assessment?

Thus far in the year-long project on the preservation of audiovisual (AV) materials, the CARLI Preservation Committee has concentrated on the need for getting to know an institution’s AV holdings, by taking inventory and identifying formats. Much like the principle that “Form follows function,” the collecting priorities of an institution, the nature of the holdings, and their physical condition will greatly influence the creation of a preservation plan.

Conducting an assessment survey gathers all of the information together in one place, so that the next steps can be prioritized.  The survey can be as simple or as complex as a collection needs, the important thing is that the tool used to gather, store, and process the information is adequate to the scale of the holdings. This allows the surveyor to avoid building a huge survey that takes a very long time to complete and yields little useful information. For very small collections, a single spreadsheet that can be sorted by selected categories can suffice. For larger institutions, a tool that can grow as needs change will work better such as adding new locations and new collections to the general survey.

Alternative titles for this post:

• Ceci n'est pas un yearbook!
• When Serendipity Strikes Too Late
• Practical Applications for Digitized Stuff (a could-have-been case study)

If it's life-affirming hope and optimism you seek as we transition from one year to the next, look no further than this new digital collection of posters by Patricia Ellen Ricci. (And if not, take a look anyway.)