ALA Annual - Preservation and archiving

There were several meaningful initiatives regarding preservation, assessing digital collections, and personal digital archiving.   But the session I thought was most feasible and scalable for the Pratt library was Preservation Week 101. In light of memory lab offerings that may be part of future endeavors at Pratt, this session provided examples of programs that introduce preservation topics of interest to a public audience. 

Introduction programs included the following topics:

Saving Family Photos 

What to Do with Digital Photos? 

What to Do with Family Recipes?

These programs might consist of a panel of speakers, some artifacts such as the panelist’s family photos or the librarian’s and the why and how of preserving photos. These kinds of programs can attract public interest and help to determine the focus for a memory lab service. They can also be tied to existing genealogy workshops. The programs can be a precursor to memory lab offerings or standalone without a memory lab.

ALCTS at http://www.ala.org/alcts/preservationweek/howto offers excellent resources, webinars and slide presentations to get started.  Initiating these sessions would help to gauge interest and focus areas as part of a survey/assessment before investing in memory lab equipment.

Rose Anne Ullrich

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