Community Heritage Grants

Preservation Needs Assessment Surveys

In order to care for your collections with a limited budget and limited resources, it is important that preservation decisions are made on a known and rational basis.


Introduction

The preservation needs of your collections, or identified parts of them, have to be considered in line with your organisation's purpose, collecting policies and available resources. You also need to consider the social and political climate in which you operate.

Since resources for preservation will almost never be equal to the amount needed for the total care of your collection, it is important that you consider priorities in preservation decision making, and be aware of alternative pathways to achieve your goals.

Before a completely satisfactory preservation plan can be put in place for any collection, a preservation needs assessment survey should be undertaken. For community groups, this will almost always involve calling ain a consultant to help you with the technical details. A survey will clarify your ideas on:

The first four of these points can be considered as background information - what you need to establish before you call for a consultant's help. Preferably, your answers to them should form part of your brief to the consultants. If you find it too difficult to answer some of them, a good consultant should be able to guide you through your responses.

The last four points will need to be discussed with the consultants. No consultant can work in isolation from the client. You will need to put some time into working with the consultant to ensure that the final report is both correct, comprehensive and applicable to your specific collections. This document covers some of the information gathering steps that go to make up a preservation needs assessment - looking at their purpose and expected outcomes.

Background Information

Responses to the following should be considered and prepared before you engage a consultant.

To provide answers to the questions that follow, you will need to look at written reports or files and policies and procedure manuals if they exist. The most likely source of information, however, will be verbal - interviews, observations, surveys. The result of the information gathering phase sets the context for the preservation needs survey itself.

Statement of purpose, organisational setting

Scope of the collections

Use of the collections

Collections and Housing Survey

The following questions are some that should be considered for inclusion when you commission a preservation needs assessment survey of your collections.

They are intended to serve as a guide only. Since it is a list of very general questions, not all might be relevant for your own institution. You should discuss with the consultant what questions can be omitted and whether there are other additional questions that should be asked to cover the specific needs of your collection. Some of the questions you will be able to answer without using a consultant. The consultant will be important, however, to interpret some of your answers to these questions and to some of those in the preceding section, and to draw all the responses together into a final report.

This survey is intended to gather information which will enable you to better plan your collection preservation strategies. It consists of a series of sections, each of which relates to some aspects of your organisation's collections and their housing and storage. Each section contains a set of questions and/or key words or phrases to help you answer those questions.

The organisation and its staffing

This section gives the basic details of your organisation - always remember to include this information.

Location

This section gives a word picture of the location where your collections are housed. It attempts to describe and identify external environmental threats that might cause problems for your collections.

The Building

This section attempts to describe the building/buildings which house your collections. A sketch may be helpful to explain your answers .If your collections are housed in more than one building, you will need to describe each separately If the buildings are spread over more than 1 site, the previous section 'Location' should also be repeated for each site.

Building utilities and site maintenance

This section asks questions about the building utilities - air conditioning, lighting etc, and maintenance programs for the building and its surroundings. Maintenance serves two very important functions - firstly it makes certain that the fabric and environment are maintained in good order, and secondly it ensures that regular inspections are made of them.

Cleanliness and housekeeping

Air conditioning and environmental control

Lighting and light exposure

Disaster preparedness and response

Collections can be put at risk by a range of incidents or emergencies. Risk management strategies are important to minimise the effects of these incidents. The term 'disaster response planning' is one way of describing activities which will help recovery operations. The questions asked here are intended to alert you to some of the factors that need considering.

General preparedness

Fire preparedness

Building and collection security

General care of the collections

Simple preventive preservation measures will go a long way to keep your collections in good condition. The following questions address some of the issues which will enable you to care for your collections in an appropriate and safe way.

Use of the collections

Storage and housing

Environmental conditions

Preservation issues

Condition of the collections

A preservation needs assessment obviously has to take into account the current condition of the collection and identify potential problems. At this stage, however, only very general comments are likely to be possible, since a complete analysis would require a full condition survey of the collections.

Final Report

It is expected that a final report on your organisation's preservation needs assessment will take into account answers to the foregoing questions.

Not all will necessarily be relevant to your own institution, but they also to alert you to some of the considerations that are important in planning the general care of your collections.

Collections Description Form

Books and papers Quantity (give units) Age range
handwritten documents    
typed or photocopied documents    
printed books (monographs)    
posters, printed single sheets    
serials (journals, periodicals)    
newspapers    

Pictures, maps, plans Quantity (give units) Age range
watercolours    
drawings    
prints    
architectural drawings/originals    
architectural drawings/tracings    
blueprints, other reproductions    
maps and charts    
paintings    

Photographs and microfilm Quantity (give units) Age range
photographs (black and white)    
photographs (colour)    
colour slides    
black & white negatives    
colour negatives    
motion picture film    
microfilm/reels    
microfilm/microfiche    
microfilm/preservation masters    

Music and sound recordings Quantity (give units) Age range
records (LP's, 45's, 78's)    
cassette tapes    
reel to reel tapes    
wax cylinders    
compact discs (CD)    
video tapes    
electronic media/computer tapes    
electronic media/CD-ROM    

Other materials
- please list them
Quantity (give units) Age range
     
     
     
     
     
     

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