The Preservation Management Handbook

Book excerpt: Preservation how-to for every medium. Cultural heritage professionals—museum curators, museum professionals, archivists, and librarians— use their specialized knowledge to prioritize the needs of their collections. Preservation managers and collections care specialists draw from experts in climate control, fire safety, pest management, and more in assessing a collection and its needs. And all the special materials within the collections have their experts too. This revised second edition contains a wide range of topic-specific expertise that comprises both an enduring text for preservation and collections care students, as well as an essential one-stop reference for cultural heritage professionals—particularly those in small- to medium sized organizations where resources are limited and professional help, is not always accessible. Chapter coverage includes: PART I: FUNDAMENTALS Chapter 1: Mapping the Preservation Landscape for the Twenty-first Century Chapter 2: Preservation Principles Chapter 3: Managing Preservation: Policy, Assessment, Planning Chapter 4: Security and Disaster Planning PART II: COLLECTIONS Chapter 5: Artifacts and Information Chapter 6: The Environment Chapter 7: Creating Preservation-friendly Objects PART III: MEDIA AND MATERIAL Chapter 8: Putting it all together – environment and storage quick reference guides Chapter 9: Paper Objects and Books Chapter 10: Photographic Materials Chapter 11: Digital Prints (A. Carver-Kubik) Chapter 12: Sound Materials Chapter 13: Moving Image Materials Chapter 14: Digital Storage Media and Files Chapter 15: Textiles Chapter 16: Paintings In addition to updated and expanded existing content, a new chapter on digital prints has been added to the Media and Material. Also new is Expanded information on disaster planning; A quick guide to good, better, and best preservation practices to help institutions strive to improve their own activities; A comparative terminology guide to assist in greater understanding between LAMs; and two quick references for temperature and relative humidity preferences for a wide range of collection materials. This comprehensive handbook is an invaluable reference.