November 2011  603 C&RL News

Jane Hedberg is senior preservation program officer 
at Harvard University Library, e-mail: jane_hedberg@
harvard.edu; fax: (617) 496-8344

Security for special collections
ACRL recently released Guide to Security 
Considerations and Practices for Rare Book, 
Manuscript and Special Collection Librar-
ies. This 380-page softcover book addresses 
specific concerns in providing security for 
the most valuable collections in academic 
libraries. It covers general administrative con-
siderations, background checks, reading room 
design, access control systems, burglar alarms, 
closed circuit TV systems, security guards, 
management and processing procedures, audit 
trails, marking and weighing materials, thieves 
and their methods, dealing with a theft, and 
recovery of stolen materials. It also includes 
copies of relevant guidelines and information 
about individual thieves, particularly Stephen 
Blumberg. Compiled and edited by Everett 
C. Wilkie Jr., it contains contributions from 
Anne Marie Lane, Jeffrey Marshall, Alvan Breg-
man, Margaret Tenney, Elaine Shiner, Richard 
W. Oram, Ann Hartley, Susan M. Allen, and 
Daniel J. Slive.

The book costs $65 and is available from 
the ALA Online Store. For more informa-
tion, go to www.alastore.ala.org/detail.
aspx?ID=3560. ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-8592-2.

Media preservation
Indiana University (IU) Bloomington released 
“Meeting the Challenge of Media Preservation: 
Strategies and Solutions.” The current 128-page 
report is the result of a yearlong project by 
the IU Media Preservation Task Force to ad-
dress the challenges identified in a previous 
report published in 2009. Although specifi-
cally about the IU Bloomington situation, the 
process used and the solutions recommended 
may be of use to other academic institutions. 
The report covers the provost’s charge to the 
task force, guiding principles, preservation 
planning, preservation transfer, prioritization, 

strategies for film, planning facilities, provid-
ing access, analyzing technology infrastructure 
and needs, encouraging campus engagement, 
and next steps.

The report, a 12MB PDF, is available 
for free download at http://www.indiana.
edu/~medpres/.

“Permanence Matters”
The Sheridan Libraries at Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity (JHU) have mounted video of “Perma-
nence Matters: Inaugural Conference in Topics 
on Book Permanence for Cultural and Aca-
demic Institutions,” which was held May 2011. 
The conference focused on paper, covering 
the history of advocacy for permanent paper, 
trends in paper manufacturing, the science of 
paper, development of the Canadian standard 
for permanence of records, books, and other 
documents, fighting brittle paper, the culture 
of paper, transforming research into an action 
agenda at the Library of Congress, and digital 
options for collections. Speakers included 
Scott Mingus from Glatfelter; David Grattan, 
formerly of the Canadian Conservation Insti-
tute; Jeanne Drewes from Library of Congress; 
Winston Tabb, Sonja Jordan-Mowery, John 
Baty, and Jonathan Pevsner from JHU; and 
Kathleen Keane from JHU Press.

For more information and to view the 
conference, go to www.library.jhu.edu 
/departments/preservation/hcs/permanence 
%20matters.html.

Handling special collections
The Harvard College Library has released a 
video tutorial, “Handling Harvard’s Special 
Collections.” In the video, James Capobianco 
of Houghton Library explains and Pamela 
Spitzmueller of the Weissman Preservation 
Center demonstrates basic handling proce-
dures for bound, unbound, and oversized 
collection materials.

The 4 minute, 28 second video is avail-
able on YouTube at www.youtube.com 
/watch?v=UOv0SOQ8B68&hd=1. 

P r e s e r v a t i o n  N e w sJane Hedberg