LRTIS 37(4) Notes on Operations /I3J


Cooperative Preservation

of State-Level Publications:

Preserving the Literature

of New York State Agriculture

and Rural Life


Dorothy Wright, Samuel Demas, and Walter Cybulski

 A national planfor preserving the literature ofagriculture is currently under
 development. Two projects at Cornell University have been proposed as
 components of the emerging plan: one aimed at preserving core titles of
 national interest, the otherfocusing on materials concerned with agricultu ral
 and rural life in New York State. This article is a description of the latter: a
 pilot cooperative project for reformatting state-level literature within the
 framework of a national preservation plan. This project, conducted in
 cooperation with the New York State Library, is based on a systematic
 bibliographic analysis and evaluation of the literature of New York State
 agriculture and rural life. It involves a partnership oflibrarians and scholars
 seeking to identify and preserve the most significant agricultural literature
 of a state. This approach to setting preservation priorities for New York's
 agricultural literature was developed as a model for other land-grant and
 state libraries to use in projects to preserve their own state's agricultural
 literature.


G iven the scale of the preservation
challenge--currently about 75 million
brittle volumes in Association of Re-
search Libraries member libraries (U.S.
Congress 1988)-it is unlikely that so-
ciety will allocate sufficient funds to save
all of the endangered publications in a
given academic discipline or library. Dif-
ficult choices must be made, and pres-
ervation must proceed within a rational,


nationally coordinated, cooperative frame-
work.
 Currently, research libraries are in-
volved in a wide variety of loosely coordi-
nated preservation efforts across a variety
of academic disciplines. Priorities and
methodologies tend to be driven more by
the availability of national-level funding
than by a coherent approach to the needs
and priorities of individual disciplines or


DoinoTIY \VtniciT is Preservation Librarian, and SAMtucI. DEr\AS is Head, Collection Develop-
ment and Preservation, A.R, Mann Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.: WALTEr ClYDU.SKI
is Preservation Coordinator, New York State Newspaper Project, New York State Library,
Albany. Manuscript received November 20, 1992; accepted for publication May 21, 1993.


libraries. The issues and inherent difficul-
ties surrounding preservation selection
decisions and currently used approaches
have been widely discussed in the litera-
ture (for example: Atkinson 1986; Bagnell
and Harris 1987; Child 1982; and Tomer
1979). Debates continue as libraries search
for alternatives more focused than the
"clean sweep" approach (in which all
brittle materials in a very strong collection
or subject area are preserved regardless of
the condition, use, or value of the in-
dividual items; this approach is based on
the assumption that the collection repre-
sents the universe of literature in a discip-
line) yet more suited to cooperative efforts
than the "use and condition" approach (in
which selection is based on the extent of
use and physical condition of a title in a
particular collection). Each has its advan-
tages, but neither effectively looks beyond
the preservation of individual library col-
lections to the systematic preservation of
the literature of disciplines.
 National preservation planning, discip-
 line by discipline, is emerging as a rational
 model for establishing priorities. Under
 this approach, individual and cooperative
 projects are designed within the frame-
 work of a national plan for preserving the
 literature of a discipline. Such a plan,
 based on a systematic bibliographic analy.
 sis and evaluation of the literature of a
 discipline, involves a partnership of librar-
 ians and scholars. Careful analysis of the
 discipline's literature and of the needs of
 scholars provides the basis for dividing the
 challenge into a number of logical, achiev-
 able projects. Projects carried out under a
 national preservation plan would encom-
 pass a full range of preservation treat-
 ments, including reformatting brittle
 materials (to microform, preservation pho-
 tocopy, or digital formats) and conserva-
 tion of materials in their original format
 (through minor repair, protective enclo-
 sures, dencidification, or restoration of
 rare materials).
 Each institution's preservation efforts,
while building on both collection strengths
and constituent needs, are designed to
contribute clearly to the larger, nationally
coordinated plan. Some projects aim at
preserving a corpus of brittle materials of


broad national interest, while others focus
on materials primarily of interest to a
specific state or region.
 A national plan for preserving the lit-
erature of agriculture is currently under
development. Two projects at Corell Uni-
versity have been proposed as components
of the emerging plan: one aimed at pre-
serving core titles of national interest, the
other focusing on materials concerned
with agricultural and rural life in New York
State. This article is a description of the
latter: a pilot cooperative project aimed at
reformatting state-level literature within
the framework of a larger preservation
plan.

 THE CONTEXTs PRESERVATION OF
 AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE LITERATURE
 Within the discipline of agriculture, con-
 siderable reformatting work has taken
 place over the years, mostly as a by-pro-
 duct of preservation activity in other dis-
 ciplines. The notable exception (i.e., a
 large-scale project focused clearly on im-
 portant agricultural materials) was the
 National Agricultural Library (NAL)/land-
 grant publications project. This coopera-
 tive microfilming effort, funded by NAL
 and carried out with the cooperation of
 land-grant institutions, resulted in the re-
 formatting of the experiment station pub-
 lications of forty-six states. Some state his-
 torical societies (Wisconsin and Ohio are
 prime examples), commercial micro-
 filmers, and agribusiness corporations
 have filmed agricultural materials. Few
 land-grant institution libraries today are
 engaged in preservation projects focusing
 exclusively on agricultural science materi-
 als (Demas 1991).
 As a leading land-grant university, Cor-
nell University has worked with the United
States Agricultural Information Network
to initiate a nationally coordinated plan to
preserve and provide access to the histori-
cal literature of the agricultural sciences.
The aim of this long-range program is to
help ensure the widest, most cost-effective
dissemination of agricultural information
nationwide. This national preservation
plan provides a disciplinary framework
within which to divide the challenge