Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost: Preservation in the Age of Shared Print and Withdrawal Projects

Abstract

This paper's review of current issues in shared print retention and preservation identifies such shared issues as the cataloging and validation, retention and withdrawal of holdings, loss rates, current condition of holdings, recommendations for the number of copies to retain, and storage environments. Library institutions require a communitywide dialogue assessing practical retention concerns. We hope that our recommendations and discussion will serve as a call to action for further study and greater interest in strong cooperation at both institutional and repository levels, including collaborative action for multiple levels of collection assessments.

A Model to Determine Optimal Numbers of Monograph Copies for Preservation in Shared Print Collections

“…This brings us to the second foundation article for this study: "Everything Not Saved Will be Lost," in which the authors attempt to identify the factors that will affect long-term retention in the context of shared print initiatives. 3 The holy grail is a well-reasoned recommendation on the number of retention commitments that each title needs. "The problem is that generating a recommended number is difficult, because to do so responsibly requires balancing several factors such as level of validation, condition, risk of loss, and long-term environmental storage, few of which have available data."…”

“…We recognize the significant importance of retention agreements and their implementationfor example, whether these commitments are made public, whether there are clear shared print memoranda of understanding, and whether withdrawal intentions of the parties to the agreements are specified. 32 But how can one measure the effect of retention agreements (or the lack of them) and put a number to it? Likewise, withdrawal decisions are intentional, but one cannot reasonably assign a value to the probability that a copy would be accidentally withdrawn.…”