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Preservation and Copying
at the National Archives of Canada
by Ellen Desmarais
PAGE 2
The new preservation Centre
The National Archives is committed to preserving original
material, whenever that is appropriate. As evidence to this
commitment, is the construction of a special archival storage
and preservation centre in Gatineau, 20 kilometres northeast
of Ottawa, which will open officially in June 1997. The
Archives believes that proper accommodations are the most
cost-effective method of ensuring the long-term preservation
of the holdings, and this new facility will provide the
Archives, for the first time, with climate controlled, secure
storage spaces which will be adapted to the various formats
and media in the collections. Because the holdings include all
the traditional records, which I identified earlier, as well
as moving image and sound recordings, at least three distinct
storage environments will be created specifically to the
preservation needs of the records to be stored.
Preservation Specialists
The new state-of-the-art laboratories will provide staff with
safe and adequate work spaces. Since the early part of this
century, the Archives has employed its own binders. Originally
these were trade bookbinders, but over the decades more
emphasis was placed on preserving the integrity and structural
elements of original materials, and conservation techniques
were developed.
During the 1970's, other conservation specialists were added
to the staff - for photographs, medals, maps and plans, and
fine art - and in the 1980's, an in-house training program was
implemented so that more staff could be trained to a higher
level of skill in conservation of paper-based material and
books. The focus of the training is on preservation of the
original material, using the least intrusive methods possible.
Currently, I am responsible for a staff of 8 book, 6 paper, 3
fine-arts-on-paper, and 1 photograph conservator, and the
manager of the mass deacidification system, nineteen in all-
for traditional material. My colleague Bruce Walton is
responsible for preservation of audiovisual materials, and for
microfilm and photograph services, where there are another 25
specialists. The Archives generously supports training and
professional development opportunities for all preservation
staff to maintain their professional expertise and to be
up-to-date with developments in technology.
Technology Alternatives
It is not always the
case that "modern technologies" must be seen as somehow
being in opposition to traditional notions of conservation
and restoration. Technologies (both modern and no-longer
modern) offer an alternative to traditional conservation
methods. But more importantly, they offer increased access
to the information.
Microfilm
The advent of the microfilming in the first part of the
twentieth century is an example of technology offering a clear
alternative. A volume (or document) microfilmed is a volume
preserved, because it can be removed from circulation and
spared further wear and tear, but it is in no way a volume
"restored". It remains in the stacks in the condition in which
it was placed there. The microfilm itself is highly stable,
thereby assuring the long-term preservation of the document's
information content. Moreover, the copy shares an essential
continuity with the original. A book (or document) is text on
paper; microfilm is text on film.
Modern Technologies
More recently, new technologies have appeared which offer an
alternative to the "mature" technology of microfilm. The
advent of computing power through personal computers, combined
with the relatively low cost, impressive storage capacities
and rapid access capabilities of modern digital scanning
systems, have led to frequent assertions that the "digital
library" is just around the corner.
Like microfilm, these new technologies offer the conservation
that comes from copying-and-removal-from-circulation. Also
like microfilm, they focus on the content, not on the carrier,
and thus offer nothing in the way of preservation of the
original. There is another significant aspect of these new
technologies, however, which suggests that the "digital
library" whatever its advantages, will not be an improvement
over microfilming.
Transforming Text to Data
Microfilm reproduction represented a clear step away from the
document or book as an artefact since it offers users an
alternative means of access to content. Beyond this, however,
microfilming represented continuity with library principles of
stability through preservation. The new digital technologies
represent a radical discontinuity in this regard - not only
the replacement of the physical item, but also the continuing
replacement over time, of the replacement itself. Unlike
microfilm, which preserves the essentially textual nature of
the book, and which can be used with only the most basic of
machines (a reader), the new technologies transform text into
the bits and bytes of digital information, onto a base which
is inherently unstable, and which is accessible only through
sophisticated software/hardware combinations. The rapid
advance and constant change in the digital world means that
the initial transformation of text into data is but the first
of a series of reproductions, as data is migrated through the
inevitable "evolutions" of the technology in order to make it
accessible. At this stage, we have moved from the restoration
of the original document or book, through its one-time
replacement on a slightly more technological medium which is
inherently stable (microfilm) to a future characterized by
impermanence and technological dependence. In the process, we
have gained far greater capacities for diffusion of content.
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