Preservation and conservation decisions in the local library

Henderson, William T.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/454 Copy

Description

Title

Preservation and conservation decisions in the local library

Author(s)

Henderson, William T.

Issue Date

1983

Keyword(s)

• Preservation of materials
• Library materials--Conservation and restoration

Abstract

"For a period of years, I have been aware that the decisions regarding preservation which I have made, which I have shared in making, or which have been made by others have not all been of the same nature. The level or levels within the library's staff hierarchy of the persons involved make some decisions differ from other decisions; however, these levels of involvement are not the heart of the problem. The thing lacking was a clear way to designate other distinctions which seemed necessary in attempting to analyze such problems and decisions. I found little help in my reading or sharing experiences with others in attempting to work in this area. In reading the proceedings of the 1976 conference on A National Preservation Program at the Library of Congress, I was therefore quite interested to discover that Daniel Boorstin in opening the conference suggested a division of the questions comprising the problem of preservation. He characterized two rather distinct types of problems as epistemological and technical. He further described the epistemological questions as being social questions, meaning that they are questions relating to the interests of those who will use, administer, and service the materials comprising the collections. I must admit that the term epistemological sent me to the dictionary because it has been some time since I had studied formal philosophical language. At this point, it becomes necessary to understand Boorstin's exact meaning and intention in interjecting this term into the vocabulary of library preservation. Epistemology is defined as ""the study of the methods and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity; broadly: the theory of knowledge."""

Publisher

Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Series/Report Name or Number

Allerton Park Institute (27th : 1981)

ISSN

0536-4604

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/454

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