May 08, 2023

Tuesday, May 23rd - 24th, 2023

The Annual Meeting will kick off on Tuesday, May 23rd at 10:00 AM with two featured presentations: “Publishing and Creating OER Courseware” and “Access Solutions and Primo VE Features Lightning Round.”

This will be followed by a virtual lunch from 12:00 Noon to 12:45 PM that will feature a “Meet the New Director” session where you will have a chance to say hello and hear from WRLC’s new Executive Director, Kim Armstrong.

Join us for the 90 minute keynote beginning at 1:00 PM. “The Colors of Disinformation: Information Disorder and the Literacy Landscape” presented by Dr. Nichole A. Cooke from the University of South Carolina.

Concurrent sessions, highlighting presentations by your colleagues from throughout the Consortium, will take place Wednesday, May 24.

Check out the full agenda, learn about the Keynote presentation, and pick your preferred Concurrent Sessions.

This MayDay, the Society of American Archivists and the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation are urging cultural heritage institutions to do one thing for emergency preparedness. WRLC’s Preservation Advisory Committee (PAC) is pleased to announce that the disaster plan (dPlan) for the Shared Collections Facility (SCF) is currently being updated after a few years hiatus and welcoming new committee members.

PAC has long worked with WRLC to maintain a disaster preparedness plan for the SCF. In 2022 the dPlan platform underwent a major upgrade and combined the old product with another online preparedness tool. This spring, PAC began updating the plan in the new platform. Sections include things like risk assessments, collection summaries, contact lists, vendors and suppliers, instructions for types of disasters, and building information. We will share it with everyone once it is completed!

Rebecca Kennedy of Curae Collections Care will lead an in person disaster preparedness and emergency response training to PAC members and invited colleagues this July at George Washington University.

The trainings will include content rich lectures and scenario-based learning exercises (both

tabletop and hands-on). The training will be customized based on the Consortium’s areas of

interest and relevant collection types.

The topics covered during the training should enhance the participants skills for assessing,

preparing, and responding during complex emergencies relevant to all Consortium members’ collections and risk. Participants should feel fully involved in the preparedness and response of their own collections.

April 30-May 6th is Preservation Week! This year’s theme is building resilient communities. Preservation Week is an annual event meant to inspire action to preserve your collections. Focusing on preservation for a designated week every year raises awareness of the role libraries and other cultural institutions play in preservation, by sharing information to help make informed decisions that help your collections last for the future. There are tons of free trainings, webinars, and leaflets available to learn more!

• https://preservationweek.org/free-webinars/

• https://www.loc.gov/preservation/outreach/presweek/index_presweek.html

• https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/overview

Did you know that WRLC has a committee dedicated to preservation?

WRLC’s Preservation Advisory Committee is a longstanding group of library professionals whose work touches on preservation and conservation, most of us work in preservation units or archives and special collections. Our purpose is to propose policies and develop procedures to ensure the preservation and conservation of materials in all formats, including but not limited to printed text, audio-visual recordings, and digital files held within the WRLC central facility as well as in the individual member libraries that comprise the WRLC.

This year we have continued our environmental monitoring of the SCF, are planning a disaster preparedness training for select individuals, participated in Preservation Week, and have updated the disaster preparedness plan for the SCF. 

PAC has welcomed many new members this year. Feel free to reach out to your PAC representative or the PAC committee if you have preservation concerns!

• Leslie Nellis, Head Archivist for Special Collections and Digital Initiatives, AU - chair

• Kevin Gunn, Coordinator of Digital Scholarship, CU

• Chris Anglim, Archivist, DC

• James McCarthy, Director, Gallaudet University Archives, GA

• Amy Sullivan, Preservation Librarian, GM

• Vani Murthy, Department Head, Technical Services, GT

• Jay Sylvestre, Rare Books Curator, GT

• Brigette Kamsler, University Archivist, GW

• Christina Vortia, Rare Books Librarian, HU

• Mason Yang, Electronic Services Librarian, MU

• Aaron Krebeck, Interim Executive Director and Director of Library & User Services, WRLC

PAC was charged with gathering a year’s worth of environmental data (temperature, relative humidity, and seasonal changes) in the WRLC SCF as a pilot project. PAC members deployed four PEM2 monitors; one monitor in shelf locations within each of the three collections modules and one monitor within the collections ingest area. This analysis was expected to help eliminate assumptions about collections environments in the SCF and assist WRLC central and consortium leadership with making data-driven decisions about the current usage of and planning for future needs re: HVAC; especially as more consortium libraries rely on the SCF to maintain rare, archival, medium rare, and other cultural heritage collections. Over the past year, WRLC has implemented the conserv system. PAC members received training from a conserv staff person last year.

Pilot findings: Module 1 has a lower TWPI, due to its higher and less stable overall relative humidity. The overall time-weighted preservation index (TWPI) drops noticeably in Module 3 due to fluctuations in RH over the summer months.

Further reading about environmental monitoring:

• Fundamentals of Preservation Metrics 

• The Evolution of New Standards—Defining an Optimal & Sustainable Preservation Environment in the 21st Century

• Understand the Risks & Benefits of Your Storage Environment

• Best Practices for Collecting and Analyzing Environmental Data

Reparative Cataloging Updates

Reparative Work Around the Profession: The Prejudicial Materials Working Group of Rare Books and Manuscripts Section’s Controlled Vocabularies Editorial Group wants feedback on approximately 50 proposed new and revised terms for the RBMS Controlled Vocabulary for Rare Materials Cataloging. Suggestions/feedback can be submitted via this form, 4/17-5/26/2023. They will be hosting a 90 min public forum on the history of the project and an overview of the proposed terms on 5/10/23 at 3 pm EST via Zoom. More info and link to be sent out later.

ASERL Sponsored Professional Development Activities

ASERL offers a wide variety of webinars at no cost for members and other interested professionals. Follow the linked program title for full details and to register for an event.  

NOTE:  ASERL’s Code of Conduct is in effect for all webinar participants. See http://www.aserl.org/aserl_code_of_conduct/.  ASERL webinars are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

• Course Reserves Coordinator - American University

• Instruction & Online Learning Librarian (Instruction Team Coordinator) - Marymount University

• Media Services Coordinator - American University

• Access and Education Librarian, Department Head - Marymount University

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