Volume 33, Issue 3

NEWS FROM THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION (ALA) ANNUAL MEETING For the first time since assuming the position of editor-in-chief, I was able to meet with several members of the Board of Editors during the ALA Annual meeting in Orlando, Florida in late June 2004. I hope to do this regularly, at both the annual and mid-winter meetings of ALA, and to report any news of interest to readers of Microform & Imaging Review (MIR) .

Sometime in the 1490s, a Benedictine monk by the name of Johannes Trithemius was deeply concerned about how long the newfangled invention of printing, on paper, would endure: For handwriting placed on parchment will be able to endure a thousand years. But how long, forsooth, will printing last, which is dependent on paper? For if a paper volume lasts for two hundred years that is a long time.

Introduction These Metamorfoze Preservation Microfilming Guidelines are the guidelines applied by Metamorfoze, the Dutch national programme for the preservation of the paper heritage. They are to be regarded as representing a standard for “ preservation microfilming ,” which means that the microfilm serves to preserve the content of the original for posterity. Metamorfoze started in 1997. The programme is financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and coordinated by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. The programme focuses on the preservation of documents, books, newspapers and periodicals from the period 1840–1950 that are endangered by paper acidification. The method chosen is to preserve the information by capturing the content of the documents on microfilm. In addition, the original documents are securely packaged and stored and withdrawn from use.

Introduction The last decade has witnessed a rising tide of digital information resources. Varian and Lyman estimate that 92 percent of the new information created in 2002 was stored in digital form on magnetic and optical media. Academia, government, and private enterprise; researchers, students, business decision-makers, and government policy-makers: all are transitioning to new models of information creation and use in digital environments.

1.0 Scope This report will focus on the requirements, functions and use of digital preservation in an institutional repository context. It will also provide an overview of existing institutional repository software as well as details of working systems and their core aims and purpose. Software that could be installed and used to perform the role of an institutional repository will be covered by this report.

Heather Brown writes in her introduction to Training in Preservation Microfilming that since the “aim of preservation microfilming is to preserve national and international heritage … it is therefore important that preservation microfilming staff have the relevant skills, knowledge and experience to be able to carry out this work to the highest level.” This maxim is the crux of Heather Brown's training program which is designed to give microfilming staff in the Asia-Pacific region the precise understanding and skills required to make high quality products – i.e., consistent density, high resolution, photographic images of documents in good order.