Adapted from Calipr
As part of a California State Library grant to the University of California, Berkeley, a preservation needs assessment instrument called Calipr was developed in 1991 to measure the preservation needs of collections in California libraries, archives, and historical societies. Staff from 42 institutions volunteered to be trained in the use of Calipr, to implement it to determine the needs of their collections, and to contribute their data for aggregation with data from other institutions to achieve an understanding of preservation needs throughout the State.
The data have been compiled and interpreted below. These summary data must be understood to be representative of the needs only of the participating institutions and are not necessarily representative of other institutions in the state, though it is reasonable to assume a similar scope of problems, and a scale of problems proportional to size of collections, in most other libraries, archives, and historical societies throughout California. Further, the participants in aggregate hold a large portion of the State's documentary heritage; for example, among the participants were the California State Library and California State Archives. Thus these data, even if not representative of all needs of the state (or even of all the collections in the institutions surveyed), are useful estimates of the preservation needs of collections of major consequence to the citizens of California.-
The Calipr survey instrument was designed to measure the needs of books, documents, and other record formats, but too few films, video tapes, sound recordings, etc. were assessed to allow accurate quantitative estimates of preservation needs to be made. Consequently, this report quantifies the needs of only books and documents.
From each of the participating institutions' collections a sample of at least 100 items was randomly drawn and examined to collect answers to thirteen questions (the questionnaire follows on page 26) relating to preservation concerns about the materials. These questions ranged from the environmental conditions under which the materials are stored, to their physical condition, to how much they are used, to their importance to the collection and to resource-sharing throughout the state. With this data in hand, the survey instrument (automated for the personal computer) was able to assign one of nine appropriate preservation actions to the preservation problems identified by the questions. Further, with information gathered on the risk of damage or loss of materials and on their value, the instrument assigned priorities for preservation action.
For the purposes of undertaking a statewide preservation needs assessment, the wide range of possible actions to correct preservation problems was divided into nine generic categories. In order to implement any and all of the solutions, two types of needs must be met: 1) resources, including facilities, personnel, and supplies (or funds to contract for services); and 2) information and training (both technical and management) on how to implement the needed preservation actions.
If a California statewide preservation program were to be designed to help meet these two types of preservation needs in libraries, archives, and historical societies, the raw data of the preservation needs assessment survey could be summarized in two ways to estimate the scope and scale of needs within the state:
The data from the preservation needs assessment survey can be grouped both by number of materials needing preservation and by number of institutions. Given the huge numbers of materials in need of preservation, priorities must (and can) be established among "competing" preservation solutions for whatever resources can be made available.
The five tables that follow document only the needs of the institutions included in the preservation needs assessment survey. The final column of each table is- the percentage of the total collections or institutions surveyed in need of an action. These percentages might be taken as indicators of the percentages of materials in need of preservation, and institutions in need of information and training, throughout California. With data on the total size of holdings and total number of institutions in the State, rough, but comprehensive, planning estimates could be made of statewide needs.
Table 1 summarizes the total number of materials in need of preservation in all of the collections assessed. With the possible exception of the two top priority actions in this list (staff and user education and disaster planning), costs to meet needs are likely to be roughly proportional to the numbers of materials in need of each action.
The costs fully to meet the preservation needs of just the collections surveyed are likely to be dauntingly large, even without the costs for other institutions in the state whose needs are not included here. Consequently, the needs assessment instrument was designed to further discriminate among "competing" preservation needs. The above list establishes priorities for action exclusively on number of volumes needing particular preservation actions, without regard for risk of damage/loss or level of value. However, participating institutions did not judge all materials to be at equal risk of damage/loss or of equal value, thus allowing for a second interpretation of priorities for action by collection needs, in order to give higher preservation priority to materials at great risk and of high value.
Table 2 is a compilation of a subset of survey data identifying the needs of ONLY those materials at high risk of damage/loss and of high value. Because these numbers are much smaller than the total needs, resources could be "targeted" with much greater impact on arguably the most urgent preservation problems and the materials most important to the State for resource-sharing. Then, should more resources be forthcoming, lower priority materials could be preserved as well.
Interpretation of Tables 1 and 2
Table 1 demonstrates that, to benefit the most books among the institutions surveyed, the highest priority actions should be to institute preservation awareness programs for staff and users, to develop disaster recovery plans for all institutions surveyed, and to install fire detection and suppression systems for all institutions surveyed. These activities would benefit more materials than any other activities. However, an alternate set of priorities is seen in Table 2, which refers only to books that specialists have identified as the most important and the most at-risk. Among these books, staff and user education, and fire protection systems also- rank high, but the need for programs to replace or reformat brittle materials is a much higher priority than is disaster preparedness. It is also useful to note that the scale of activity is much less in Table 2 than in Table 1, since very few books are both highly valued and already at-risk. Programs to address the needs of this subset of collections may well be within the capability of smaller institutions, unlike programs which attempt to address the needs of all collections.
Tables 3 and 4 summarize priorities for action for documents by collection needs for both the total collections (Table 3) and then limited only to documents of high value and at high risk (Table 4) .
In both tables the need for systems to protect document collections from fire is a high priority for action. Likewise, document collections in the state suffer from poor environmental conditions. For collections at all levels of value and risk, staff and user education is nearly as important as the top three priorities. For the high value/high risk collections the top three priorities apply to significantly more materials than do priorities 4 - 9. And, as with the book collections, the scale of programs needed by the high risk/high value documents is considerably smaller, and thus much more feasible.
Scale of information and training needs frequently is less related to number of materials in a collection needing a preservation solution than to the number of institutions in need. Once trained, a staff member can write a disaster response plan for all the collections, consult on environmental control for several buildings, or even teach other staff how to do basic repair. Consequently the following tables summarize the number of institutions in need of information and training as an initial step towards estimating the costs of a statewide preservation information and training program.
Unlike the sometimes vast differences in cost between preserving a book and a document, the costs to provide information and training on preservation of books and documents are comparable. In Table 5, data for institutions holding either books or documents in need of preservation have been combined to determine the information and training needs of all participants.
The California preservation needs assessment survey documents major preservation problems in collections of libraries, archives, and historical societies throughout California that, unless corrective action is taken, will lead to the loss of millions of books, documents, and other types of materials needed for resource-sharing. Further, the stewards of these collections (librarians, archivists, historians) have identified 1) collections of importance for resource-sharing, 2) those materials most at risk of damage and loss, and 3) the scope and scale of action (including the need for information and training) required to ensure their preservation.
This questionnaire was used by participating institutions on at least 100 items from their collections. Data collected was used to assign one of nine appropriate preservation actions to the problems identified.