Preservation Committee Meeting: January 8, 2024

Conference Call / Zoom

Members attending:

• Teri Embrey, Pritzker Military Museum & Library
• Patti Gibbons, University of Chicago
• Tonia Grafakos, Northwestern University
• Gabriel Hamer, Newberry Library
• Jade Kastel, Western Illinois University, convened the meeting in Shelby’s absence
• Bonnie Parr, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
• Bradley Wiles, Northern Illinois University

Members absent:

• Heidi Marshall, Columbia College Chicago
• Shelby Strommer, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, co-chair

CARLI Staff attending:

• Elizabeth Clarage
• Nicole Swanson

Tasks Assigned

• Minutes taken by Patti Gibbons.

Decisions

• Updates on future events to be discussed at February meeting (fire salvage, how to prepare for moves, partnerships with SAA during August annual meeting in Chicago, revisiting plans for an open house at the Newberry, digital preservation events for smaller libraries).
• Bonnie Parr to present first draft of a new preservation survey for CARLI members.
• Edits/changes to the structure of the committee’s web resources section were completed. Consider adding a third tab to the “Preservation Resources” area that lists committee’s blogs and newsletter posts for current year’s theme of articles.

Announcements

• Member Announcements:
  • Jade Kastel, Western Illinois University, accepted a new position as Director of Library Services at the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum
• CARLI Announcements:
  • Feb. 6th program is coming up and is entitled PDA Event: Intercultural Awareness & Microaggressions. Register on the CARLI website.
  • April 30th upcoming webinar: “Poison in the Stacks” with Shelby, Tonia, and Patti.
  • Newsletter articles due to CARLI February 20th and March 19th/20th to allow members time to provide feedback, CARLI will work with article authors on final text.

Discussion

• Monthly Preservation Topics: Disaster planning and response. Gabriel prepared article for staff training. Next month Patti will prepare article on apps and tech. March, Bonnie and Brad will prepare an article about collection-specific salvage.
• Link checking: nothing to discuss today.
• 2023-24 committee project/continuing education programing plans: Heavy metals in 19th century books: Tonia, Patti, and Shelby on April 30th from 1-2:30. Patti noted that she, Shelby, and Tonia will meet soon to begin planning and Nicole asked that they aim for about 2 months before the event to get to CARLI the program description, bios, and any photos so CARLI can create and open the event registration page. This program will not be recorded.
• 2023-24 committee project/continuing education programming plans: IFSI fire salvage in-person workshop in spring. Elizabeth said CARLI is waiting for the final price quote and a few people are out this week but when they return she should have the needed information.
• 2023-24 committee project/continuing education programming plans: Other possible ideas included 1) digital preservation event for smaller libraries, 2) revisiting a preservation open house for CARLI members at the Newberry Library based on nixed plans from 2020 – Gabriel to investigate.
• 2023-24 committee project/continuing education programming plans: New suggestions included creating a new preservation survey for members. The last one happened in 2014-2015. Bonnie will revisit her notes from the last survey and draft possible questions for the group to review, with a note that the group will need to come together to craft questions about digital preservation. Brad shared a link to https://digitalpwrr.niu.edu with a comment that group should consider collaborating with them to pull together a training presentation, and he mentioned the survey should cover AI issues. Elizabeth shared PDF of the last survey. Nicole recommends that the group look for surveys put together by national groups to use as a model. Elizabeth asked if the group would like to have the survey at 9 or 10 years since the last survey.
• Preservation Committee web content discoverability: CARLI updated the Preservation Resources to include all previously discussed edits. Elizabeth reviewed the tab structure in the Past Blog Series and pointed out that the two nesting tabs behave differently. One, that is lengthy opens to a new tab, and the shorter one unfolds to show a text descriptor. Members did not feel strongly about changing that structure. Elizabeth pointed out that current articles related to the Disaster Planning theme will appear in the blog section and also in the group’s Preservation Resources section in the Disaster Planning area. The group was fine with double listing. Nicole reported that she had followed up with CARLI’s IT person and there isn’t currently the ability to include a search box but the IT person thought it was a good idea and is investigating if it is possible to adopt the feature. Jade suggested that there be a third tab for the current year’s theme and have monthly newsletter articles appear there.

Next Meeting Dates and Deadlines

The next Preservation Committee meeting will be February 12, 2024 at 1 p.m.

Future Committee Meeting Dates:
February 12, 2024, minutes taker: Tonia Grafakos
March 11, 2024, minutes taker: Gabriel Hamer
April 8, 2024, minutes taker: Jade Kastel
May 13, 2024, minutes taker: Heidi Marshall
June 10, 2024, minutes taker: Shelby Strommer