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Allison Liesz

Professor Brian Baird

LIS 713 Intro to Preservation and Conservation

22 October 2021

Preservation and Assessment for Physical Collections in a Progressive Age

Ever since their conception, libraries have been evolving to meet the needs of their

patrons as the times change and grow. And arguably, one element of a library that is constantly

changing is the collection of items libraries have to offer. Collections, especially ones in a

physical format, are always changing, and there are dozens of reasons why that is. From items

becoming outdated, to items becoming damaged, and to the public interest of a particular subject

arising, collections are forced to change consistently if they are to meet the needs of their

patrons. Due to the continuous changes that a library collection is forced to undergo, determining

what items to preserve in a collection and which items to discard can become difficult. This is

something that I have struggled with at my current job as the acquisition’s coordinator at the

Rebecca Crown Library. I have always had a hard time determining whether an item is worth

keeping in the collection and continue to preserve it, or whether it is not worth the time to keep it

and focus on other elements of the collection instead. Half the time, I may not even be dealing

with an item in our collection, as I also have been going through a flux of donations now that we

are accepting them again after halting during the pandemic. In addition, the collection that we

currently have at our library is going through a major rehaul in terms of content. We have a lot of

materials that are old and contain outdated information. And, as of the past few years or so, we

have been trying to purchase an influx of materials that have modern views and discuss modern

progressive issues, such as LGBTQ+ rights and police brutality. Therefore, I wanted to focus this
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paper on collection assessment, struggles with it, and how to better improve a collection with

that information.

When starting to prepare for assessing a collection, there are several elements that must

be considered prior to actually going into the stacks. First and foremost, the librarians should be

aware of who they are serving so that they can better meet the needs of their patrons. For

example, if an academic library has a growing nursing program, librarians should make sure that

their current nursing collection is growing, that materials are not damaged, and that items contain

accurate and up to date information. It is important when assessing specific subjects contained in

a collection, and all elements of the collection, that the library must be willing to make changes

in order to grow and improve, “increasing the funding support, subscribing to new journals,

entering into new library consortia to expand patron access to materials” (Johnson). In addition

to an initial assessment, librarians also must make sure that they are doing follow up assessments

after they have made changes to try and improve the collection. This is to ensure that the changes

that were made are actually improving a collection and, if this is not the case, additional work

must be done so that the collection can continue to improve.

It is also important that, if possible, librarians should attempt to conduct information on

the current items in their collection so they have a better idea of what they are dealing with

beforehand. Thankfully, with modern technology, this process has become much easier than it

was before when a lot of work at the library was done with a pencil and paper. A fair amount of

data on materials in a library should even be gathered without even going to the stacks. One such

example is circulation information. Information on what items are circulated the most should

give librarians a good starting point on assessing a collection, as it can be assumed that items that

are circulated the most should be looked into. If an item is being circulated a fair amount, it is
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important that those items are in good condition, as circulated materials are handled the most by

patrons, and therefore can have a higher chance of breaking down from use. If items are being

circulated by a large amount, librarians should also consider purchasing duplicate copies of this

book, allowing for more patrons to access the material while others may have it. Alternatively, if

an item is not being circulated very much, librarians should look into why that may be. At that

point, librarians should consider several options, such as weeding the item entirely, potentially

obtaining an updated version of that item, or simply trying to promote the item more in the hopes

that it will be used more. Due to the scope of any given collection, this is something that

obviously cannot be done with every item in a collection. But librarians should still be prepared

to attempt getting more items circulated so that patrons can further benefit from the materials

that are provided by them.

Even though replacing and weeding items in a collection is inevitable when assessing a

collection, librarians should make themselves familiar with items that will be staying in the

collection indefinitely. Many librarians have at least a few items, if not collections, that are other

libraries don’t, are rare and valuable, or are integral to the library itself for one reason or another.

Preservation for items that fall into these categories need to be assessed and taken care of

effectively so that they do not deteriorate for any given reason. Additionally, these items must be

kept in the best condition they can be, and repairs should be done for anything that could

potentially lead to further damage. Arguably, one of the most important things to look into when

assessing these items in a collection is to make sure that the items are in a controlled

environment. Because these items are being preserved for the collection, it would be horrible if

any of these items were to be damaged during some sort of disaster such as flooding or heat

waves. Due to the potentially devastating effects these events could have, librarians should make
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sure that the area these items are kept in have a low risk of any potential disaster damaging these

items. The library building should be monitored closely to ensure that humidity is controlled, the

building is kept up to date, and that there is a proper emergency plan in place in case the worst

was to happen. In an essay discussing an assessment done for the University of Tennessee’s

Special Collections, the author discusses the importance of environmental conditions based on

the concerning findings at the library: “For a collection of rare and valuable materials, the

environment should ideally be well regulated and within the recommended parameters in

temperature, relative humidity, and light levels. These factors have a profound effect on the

deterioration rate of library materials, and even slight damage to a rare book is highly

significant” (Starmer). If the location that the preserved items being kept in has any risk of

causing damage to the materials, librarians should take immediate action to ensure that these

items do not gain any unnecessary damage.

While fixing any issues a library building may have, and keeping the building up to date,

is paramount, it is understandably difficult to obtain at times. Building maintenance can be

expensive, even more so if an underlying issue is discovered that requires a major rehaul of

something in the building. Older libraries are especially prone to this problem, as the building

becomes more outdated, more issues can arise. One common issue these older libraries face is an

outdated air conditioning system, which not only is principal to keeping books in good condition,

but also would require major construction of the entire library, which would be a long process.

Due to these limitations, it is expected that libraries could face issues coming up with a budget to

fix any problems that may arise. Because of these challenges, librarians should make an effort to

keep preserved materials as safe as possible until building updates can be made. Moving items

being persevered to a temporary location is a simple solution to keeping these items safe, as it
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allows these items to be moved to a location that can be better controlled by librarians. In

addition, these items can be temporarily become noncirculating (if they were being circulated in

the first place), if the library does not have enough room to keep the items on sight at the library.

These items can remain temporarily unavailable until the library is able to come up with the

budget to make the repairs to their location, keeping them safe and preventing any damage from

taking place.

While assessing a collection can be a daunting task, dividing areas of the libraries into

groups, such as dividing the work by subject or topic, can help make work more manageable.

However, assessing a collection by condition can be more difficult, as that would require

checking every part of the library to make sure items are not damaged and need repairs. What’s

more is that repairing items themselves can take up valuable time, unlike weeding which can be

a rather quick process, and requires money for repair supplies. Because of this, assessing

collections by condition can be a much more challenging task than the other elements of

assessing a collection. But some libraries with special collections were able to develop methods

to help assess damage on books and make the process easier. One such library, the Flanders

Heritage Library, helped create the Universal Procedure for Library Assessment (UPLA) to

model damage on books. The procedure has several elements to it, one of them being to first

determine the types of damage books can have. The list provided by the UPLA contains twenty-

two types of damage, which is divided into where this damage can occur, from the pages of the

book to the cover. In addition, the UPLA also has four different ways to categorize damage on

books, ranging from least worrying to worst. These two of these four elements are serious

damage, where the book can become more damaged upon being handled or has no risk additional

damage. The other two elements assess moderate damage, where the book can become more
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damaged upon being handled or has no risk additional damage (Capiau). This model, paired with

the twenty-two types of damage list, can help librarians better distinguish damage done to books,

and help them determine whether or not a book needs repairs. Hopefully, by using this model or

one very similar to it, libraries will be able to accurately determine which items need repairs,

while also saving precious time in the process.

Something that will always constantly affect library collections and how they are built

and assessed is the evolution of public opinion. Public view on certain topics and issues changes

with the times, and libraries need to evolve with their audience in order to evolve themselves.

One topic that has increasingly become more important for librarians to feature in their

collections is representation. Whether this is collecting more items relating to people of color, to

weeding out items that have viewpoints that would be seen as negative now, collections are

changing constantly as these issues become more prominent. While topics relating to the

LGBTQ+ community were controversial at best a number of years ago, they have since become

much more accepted. Due to this acceptance, library collections have had to update their

collections to accurate represent the times and weed out items that have since contained outdated

views. Some institutions, such as the Public Libraries and Museums Act, even believes that not

providing LGBTQ+ materials is discriminatory and goes against several organizations: “library

authorities are obliged to “meet the general requirements and any special requirements of both

adults and children,” and discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender

reassignment is prohibited under the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007, the

Sex Discrimination (Amendment of Legislation) Regulations 2008, and the Equality Act 2010”

(Chapman). Due to this, it is even more important for libraries to assess their collections so that

materials relating to these topics are available for patrons. In addition, libraries should make sure
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that items in their collections are not discriminatory in nature, and materials such as these should

at the very least be considered for weeding, as they are likely outdated. That way, more updated,

accurate, and inclusive materials can be purchased and diversify the collection more.

In addition to making collections more diverse, collection assessment should also look at

making their items more accessible to their patrons. One way that libraries can help make items

more accessible to a number of patrons is by providing more materials in multiple languages.

Serving non-English language communities is something that will have largely varying results by

library, as libraries may be located in a community that has differing non-English languages that

others. But assessing collections based on this is something that all libraries should focus on to

meet the needs of the patrons in their areas. In a study done at the Toronto Public Library, it was

found that, “While the collection comprises many languages, there is far more focus on official

language items than any other language compared to the population in terms of number of items

and variety of formats. All 17 non-official languages that were studied had fewer items

proportionally available in the catalogue than the proportion of speakers with that mother

tongue” (Ly). If this library study is any indication, libraries should look into assessing their own

collections so that they can better meet the needs of their community and provide more resources

in the languages their community speaks in. This assessment, of course, will require some

addition work, with librarians having to do research into their communities to find out what are

the most common non-English languages spoken on top of assessing the collection. However, it

is a necessary process that will make collections more accessible to patrons that do not speak

English in their communities.

One way libraries have attempted to keep up with the consistent evolution their

collections have to go through is the development of a collection management cycle. This cycle
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typically forms a committee of several faculty and staff of a library, as well as facility and staff

of a school if it is an academic library. Each group of people were then able to focus on a certain

section of the collection, rather than be overwhelmed assessing the entirety of it, and create

workflows to assess their sections. By using this model, libraries are also able to lessen the risk

of discarding items that should be preserved instead: “cross-unit feedback is built into the

committee structure and lessens the risk of creating processes and programs that neglect any

potential stakeholder expertise and concerns” (Lantzy). This method allows librarians to better

manage their areas of the library, keeping track of physical conditions, circulation statistics,

dated materials, and recommendations for the collection. What’s more is that this method can be

adjusted to suit each libraries’ individual needs, such as adjusting the frequency of when the

collection needs to make large changes. This customization allows librarians to adjust how often

they need to complete collection management cycles. This is especially useful for libraries that

are looking to vastly improve their collection so that they can have as frequent collect

management cycles as they need.

While building library collections to expand on diversity and inclusion is vastly

important, it is important that librarians also work to build upon these values outside of just items

that they offer to patrons. And this is simply because that while collections can be improved

upon in this vein, there are always going to be items in a library collection that are controversial

or go against these values in one way or another. And many titles that have some of these issues

at the forefront of their narrative are considered classic books and therefore should be preserved

in library collections. Take Mary and the Secret Garden, for example, which features characters

that express racist views to characters in the novel that are people of color. Another example is

To Kill a Mockingbird which, while being deemed a classic book for decades now, has recently
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come under fire due to the release of its Go Set a Watchman, which was advertised as a sequel to

the original novel that has beloved character, Atticus Finch, expressing racist opinions. Similarly,

To Kill a Mockingbird has also been deemed a ‘white savior narrative,’ a modern term used to

define media that portrays white characters acting heroic and self-serving among people of color.

Padma Venkatraman, who wrote an article discussing racism in some of these books, expresses

how these views can cause harm, especially to children, “Exposing diverse children to classics in

which they see characters like themselves demeaned, or, at best, excluded, is downright cruel”

(Venkatraman). And while she brings up a great point, these books should be preserved despite

their controversy due to being famous books that are important to society today. However, this

then creates a double-edged sword, as while preserving these books is necessary, it can be argued

that it is going against diversity and inclusion. To counter act this, librarians must work outside

of assessing collections to share these world views with patrons and make it important to the

library’s message. In her same article, Venkatraman proposes advertising these books to an adult

audience instead of children, who will hopefully have a better understanding of these views.

Librarians can also work to celebrate and promote titles that have positive views to counteract

the racist views in these other books. Holding events that express support for marginalized

groups is also a great, effective way of showing support for these groups while also containing

books that are controversial in this lens.

Assessing a collection of a library can be a time-consuming task that can requires a

complete evaluation of a library’s items. However, collection assessment is important for all

libraries to complete as it helps keep collections up to date, in good condition, and to ensure that

the items are of interest to the public they are dedicated to serve. There are many ways for

librarians to prepare prior to actually assessing a collection so that they can make the most out of
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their assessment. For starters, librarians can remind themselves what communities they are trying

to serve, as well as gain a general understanding of what items are used the most in the library so

that they can take that into consideration while assessing. When librarians actually begin the

process of assessment, it is important for them to assess what items receive high circulation rates

and which don’t so that they can affectively make changes based on these findings. It is also

important for librarians to ensure the environment books are kept in is controlled and safe,

especially for items that could be staying in the library indefinitely, such as special collections. It

is even more important for libraries to assess their collections to meet the modern ideas and

needs of the current progressive age. With social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Me

Too, Climate Action Strike and the LGBT Rights movement, more modern issues are coming to

the forefront that libraries must take note of to better assess their collections and update them.

Patrons now, more than ever, are pushing for diversity and inclusion, and libraries must match

their needs and improve their collections as a result. And, by using collection assessment to their

advantage, librarians can weed the appropriate items, make room for more diverse materials, and

show support to marginalized groups.

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Citations

Capiau, S., de Valk, M., & Wuyts, E. (2015). The Universal Procedure for Library Assessment:

A statistical model for condition surveys of special collections in libraries. IFLA Journal,

41(3), 265–271. https://doi.org/10.1177/0340035215598161

Chapman, E. L. (2013). No More Controversial than a Gardening Display?: Provision of LGBT-

Related Fiction to Children and Young People in U.K. Public Libraries. Library Trends,

61(3), 542–568. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2013.0010

Johnson, Q. (2016). Moving from Analysis to Assessment: Strategic Assessment of Library

Collections. Journal of Library Administration, 56(4), 488–498.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2016.1157425

Lantzy, T., Matlin, T., & Opdahl, J. (2020). Creating a Library-Wide Collection Management

Cycle: One Academic Library’s Approach to Continuous Collection Assessment. Journal

of Library Administration, 60(2), 155–166.

https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2019.1677092

Ly, V. (2018). Assessment of Multilingual Collections in Public Libraries: A Case Study of the

Toronto Public Library. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 13(3), 17–31.

https://doi.org/10.18438/eblip29408

Starmer, M. E., McGough, S. H., & Leverette, A. (2005). RARE CONDITION:

PRESERVATION ASSESSMENT FOR RARE BOOK COLLECTIONS. RBM : a

Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, 6(2), 91–107.

https://doi.org/10.5860/rbm.6.2.247

Venkatraman, P. (2020). Weeding Out Racism: Challenging old classics is akin to replacing

statues of racist figures. School Library Journal (New York, N.Y.), 66(8), 22–.