International Preservation News

n° 17
May 1998
ISSN 0890 - 4960

Contents

• Editorial
  
• Editorial
  

• Warning
  
• Attention
  

• La Numérisation Au Service De La Conservation Des Globes
  
• Digitisation Completes The Preservation Of Globes
  
• La Digitalización Permite Completar La Restauraciàn De Globos TerráQueos
  Alain Roger & Christophe Hubert

• The Digital Dark Ages ? Challenges In The Preservation Of Electronic Information
  
• Comment Sortir Du Moyen Âge Numérique?
  
• À Càmo Salir De La Edad Media Digital ?
  Terry Kuny

• A Cd-Rom For Safeguarding Latin American And Caribbean Photographs
  
• Un Cd-Rom Para La Fotograf'as En América Latina y el Caribe
  Ramón Sánchez Chapellin

• The Photographic Archives Of The City Hall In Lisbon
  
• Arquivo Fotográico Da Câmara Municipal De Lisboa
  Luis Pav‹O

• The Exhibitions Of Photographs
  
• Les Expositions De Photographies
  
• Las Exposiciones De Fotografías
  Anne Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Lav?Drine, Bernard Marbot

• Pac News

• Food For Thought

• Book Reviews

• Events

International Preservation News is a publication of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Core Progamme on Preservation and Conservation (PAC) that reports on the preservation activities and events that support efforts to preserve materials in the world's libraries and archives.

IFLA PAC

Director: Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff

Editor: Virginie Kremp

Spanish Translator: Solange Hernández

Typewriting: Isabelle Fornoni

Layout: Bristol

Printing: Bibliothèque nationale de France

PAC Newsletter is published free of charge three times a year. Orders, address changes and all other inquiries should be sent to the Regional Centre that covers your area, see map on page 40.
Opinions expressed in International Preservation News are those of the contributors and not official statements of the IFLA-PAC Programme.

c 1998 by IFLA
Part of this publication may be reproduced or transcribed in any form with permission of the publisher.

Editorial

Considerably improved thanks to expert comments from the world over, and dealing primarily with the preventive preservation of all media, this new version entitled 'Principles for the Care and Handling of Library Materials' is in print and will be distributed through the PAC Regional Centres. A digital version will soon be available on the CPA website*.

We have been trying to be very practical and have indicated the best and most cost-effective practices to prevent the deterioration of the world's documentary heritage. We have deliberately omitted conservation that requires practical training. We hope that these 'Principles will be useful to all our colleagues who need reminding that preservation precedes any activity, whatever the library.

Continuing on the topic of prevention, IFLA is one of the four non-governmental organisations (together with the International Council on Archives (ICA), the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) that have amalgamated the International Committee of the Blue Shield (ICBS). The Blue Shield is a Unesco programme for the prevention and safeguarding of cultural properties in case of armed conflict or natural disaster. The PAC is much involved and aims to share information on endangered regions and sites and to discuss types of action to be undertaken. PAC wishes to intensify the activities of the Blue Shield by the creation of national committees throughout the world, particularly in areas at risk.

On March 31, 1998 Winston Roberts, Coordinator of Professional Activities, left IFLA. I would like to say how much PAC will miss his constant, efficient and friendly support. Most of the work done by PAC over the last four years would not have succeeded without his determination and involvement. Always present whenever needed or called for, Winston Roberts has paved the way for cooperation between PAC and other professional groups or institutions either within the IFLA or outside. The PAC intends to keep on developing this cooperation with the help of the IFLA's new coordinator, Sjoerd Koopman.

* http://www.clir.org
Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff

Editorial

Considérablement augmentée grâce aux commentaires de nos collègues du monde entier et traitant essentiellement de conservation préventive, cette nouvelle version intitulée "Principles for the Care and Handling of Library Materials" est en cours d'impression et sera distribuée par le canal des Centres Régionaux PAC. Une version numérique sera bientôt accessible sur le site internet de la CPA* et la traduction en français para"tra en 1999.

Nous avons tenté d'être très empiriques et d'indiquer les pratiques les moins onéreuses pour prévenir la détérioration de notre patrimoine documentaire. C'est délibérement que nous avons laissé de côté la restauration qui réclame une formation pratique. Nous espérons que ces "Principes" seront utiles à tous les collègues qui doivent garder en mémoire que la conservation est inhérente à chacune des activités de toute bibliothèque, quelle qu'en soit sa nature.

Toujours dans le domaine de la prévention, notons que l'IFLA est l'une des quatre ONG (avec le CIA, l'ICOM et ICOMOS) qui se sont unies pour former le Comité International du Bouclier Bleu (CIBB), un programme de l'Unesco pour la prévention et la sauvegarde des biens culturels en cas de conflit armé ou de catastrophe naturelle. Le PAC est très impliqué dans les activités du CIBB et souhaite parvenir à un partage de l'information sur les régions et les sites menacés et discuter des types d'action à entreprendre. La création de comités nationaux, tout particulièrement dans les zones à risques, est l'une des priorités du PAC.

Le 31 mars 1998, Winston Roberts, Coordinateur des activités profession-nelles, a quitté l'IFLA. Je voudrais dire ici combien l'équipe du PAC regrettera son soutien constant, efficace et amical. Au cours des quatre dernières années, c'est grâce à sa détermination et à l'attention qu'il témoignait que le PAC a pu mener à bien la plupart de ses activités. Toujours présent quand il le fallait, Winston Roberts a ouvert la voie d'une coopération fructueuse entre le PAC et les autres groupes professionnels ou institutions, que ce soit au sein de l'IFLA ou à l'extérieur. Cette coopération, le PAC entend la poursuivre et la développer avec l'aide du nouveau coordinateur, Sjoerd Koopman.

* http://www.clir.org
Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff

Warning

Attention

La Numérisation Au Service De La Conservation Des Globes

On trouve les premiers globes dans les civilisations arabe et chinoise. Dès le Xème siècle, les Arabes réalisent des globes céleste et terrestre. En Europe, le plus ancien globe manuscrit est attribué à Martin Behaim et date de 1492.

La production de globes se développe à la Renaissance avec le renouveau des sciences et les grandes découvertes. Les globes sont composés de fuseaux gravés sur bois ou cuivre puis, imprimés sur papier vergé, découpés et collés sur des boules de carton recouvertes d'enduit. Ils sont le plus souvent produits par paires, un globe céleste accompagnant un globe terrestre.

Au XVIème siècle, la gravure en taille douce s'épanouit en Flandre et dans les Pays-Bas du Sud, important centre scientifique. Les globes hollandais se propagent dans toute l'Europe grâce à l'habilité des graveurs, cartographes et la puissance maritime de ce pays.

Les globes français s'imposent au XVIIIème siècle par leur exactitude et leur élégance, suivis des britanniques qui, forts des voyages du capitaine Cook, complètent les dernières inconnues de la carte des cites du monde.

Au XIXème, la production s'industrialise parallèlement au développement de la scolarité. De nos jours, la géopolitique impose un rythme de production effréné, relayé par la vente de masse qui offre les globes les plus divers, notamment interactifs ou hologrammes, mais de qualité inégale.

Depuis le début du siècle, les globes anciens ont été soumis à des conditions déplorables de conservation. Les changements brusques de température et d'hygrométrie provoquent l'éclatement du vernis, la dilatation des plâtre et carton ; l'accumulation de poussière encrasse le papier et rend la cartographie illisible. La lumière est aussi facteur de détérioration. Mais c'est surtout la forme spécifique des globes qui entra"ne des dégâts récurrents tels que coups crevant la structure en carton, griffures causées par le frottement de la boule désaxée contre la table d'horizon ou le méridien en laiton, disparition de la gravure à force de pression de l'index sur un lieu précis. La jonction des deux hémisphères en carton, collées au niveau de l'équateur, reste la partie la plus fragile et subit les plus gros dégâts.

Principes de restauration

Une recherche bibliographique est préliminaire à toute restauration. Tout au long du processus un dossier photographique, accompagnant l'oeuvre une fois restaurée, est constitué.

Une analyse des éléments constitutifs est nécessaire pour identifier les matériaux, les paramètres responsables des dégradations, et afin de retrouver la technique de fabrication utilisée. Elle permet aussi de déceler les restaurations précédentes. L'examen visuel donne les bases de l'analyse esthétique et historique de l'objet.

Plusieurs techniques scientifiques complètent ces informations : la micro-analyse à la lumière naturelle et aux UV permet d'analyser le vernis. L'analyse microchimique identifie les pigments, l'encre et les liants, la chromographie les différentes couches.

Au moyen de l'endoscopie, on observe directement et on évalue les éléments internes. L'endoscope est introduit à l'intérieur du globe à travers l'orifice aménagé près de l'os de mort.

Grâce au scanner, les dégradations sont repérées et archivées.

Plusieurs techniques sont nécessaires pour restaurer les diverses composantes du globe. Le nettoyage se fait à l'aide d'un aspirateur à poussière, d'un compresseur à air comprimé et d'une brosse souple.

Traditionnellement les fuseaux sont dévernis avec un tampon d'ouate trempé dans un solvant composé de 30 % de white spirit, 30 % d'éthanol et 30 % de méthyl-éthyl-acétate d'acétone. Ce travail s'effectue sous hotte aspirante, par mouvements circulaires, jusqu'à élimination du vernis, tout en évitant le contact prolongé du tampon avec les parties aquarellées.

Le nettoyage de surface par ultrasons consiste à fragmenter en fines particules la couche de poussière ou de vernis, sans aucune altération de surface. Les particules éjectées sont captées par un système d'aspiration. La faible puissance de mise en jeu évite tout effet thermique nocif.

Il est fréquent de découvrir des fragments de fuseaux collés sur le fuseau primitif. En effet, jusqu'à la fin du XVIIème siècle, les contours des continents, y compris de l'Europe, étaient encore flous et les longitudes fantaisistes. La création d'un nouveau globe étant trop onéreuse, on rajoutait des papillons rectificatifs sur les globes existants.

Des matériaux issus de la recherche médicale

On procède ensuite à la restauration du plâtre et de la boule en carton. Le globe est libéré du plâtre effrité, les fentes sont agrandies et assainies. Les fissures sont restaurées à l'aide d'un pinceau enduit de colle synthétique. Le plâtre utilisé est de même nature que l'original, en général à base de colle de lapin, de Blanc de Meudon et de kaolin. On peut aussi utiliser du plâtre dentaire.

Pour la restauration de la boule en carton, Alain Roger s'est inspiré des matériaux utilisés pour les prothèses en orthopédie : les plaques Orthèse ORFIT "S" de 2 mm d'épaisseur. Plongée dans un bain de 55 °C et préalablement découpée aux dimensions souhaitées, la plaque devient transparente et malléable pendant quelques minutes. Elle est ensuite posée sur la partie saine du globe et en épouse immédiatement la forme tout en retrouvant son opacité. Introduite dans le globe à l'endroit précis du manque de carton, cette prothèse est maintenue par simple pression et sert de support à la restauration. On reconstitue ensuite le carton avec des macules de papier ou de la pâte de carton encollée de méthylcellulose. La partie névralgique au niveau de l'équateur ainsi que les manques importants de plâtre sont renforcés avec une bande plâtrée.

Réintégration et repose des fuseaux

Il est très difficile de rapprocher Ethique et Esthétique en restauration de papier. D'après Emmanuel Kant, l'Ethique est passible de jugement de loi et l'Esthétique est d'abord plaisir de délectation, sensation, et échappe à toute législation. La réintégration des parties manquantes des fuseaux est pratiquée depuis une quinzaine d'années et fait à présent l'unanimité parmi les restaurateurs français, allemands et anglo-saxons. Le globe étant un objet décoratif, ce procédé joint l'esthétique à la rigueur scientifique.

Les grosses lacunes sont donc remplacées par des photocopies laser faites à partir de fuseaux originaux. Si ces derniers sont introuvables, on réalise une nouvelle gravure à partir des plaques de cuivre. Les globes étaient en effet produits en série et une recherche permet parfois de retrouver les fuseaux ou les plaques d'origine. Dans le cas contraire, les lacunes sont comblées manuellement par un simple papier de restauration.

Il convient de coller un papier intermédiaire entre la boule et les fuseaux. Après avoir calculé et tracé l'équateur et l'emplacement des fuseaux, on encolle la moitié du globe ainsi que les fuseaux auparavant humidifiés. L'ensemble des fuseaux est posé et massé avec un plioir en os à travers un papier boloré humidifé afin d'éviter les plis. Cette opération est renouvelée 72 h plus tard pour l'autre hémisphère.

Une fois tous les fuseaux remis en place, on les réencolle pour une meilleure imperméabilité du papier, une meilleure tenue des couleurs et pour empêcher le vernis d'imprégner le papier.

On applique ensuite une première couche de vernis, suivie par de petites retouches de mise au ton, puis une deuxième couche de vernis.
Pour certains globes rares et prestigieux, on réalise une protection en Altuglas. Deux cloches recouvrent alors le globe et le protègent de la poussière et des doigts indélicats.

Une méthode révolutionnaire : la numérisation des fuseaux

Trois étapes sont essentielles : en premier lieu, on fait des photographies numériques du globe, "de pôle à pôle, selon la direction des fuseaux" grâce à un appareil couleur de très haute qualité garantissant une résolution de 1500 par 1000 pixels en couleurs 24 bits. On obtient une résolution de 300 DPI sur un globe de 50 cm de diamètre et un parfait rendu des couleurs.

Le transfert des images vers l'ordinateur n'implique aucune perte de qualité. Les clichés sont positionnés sur un globe virtuel selon la géométrie de prise de vue (voir photo n° 5) puis la projection de l'image sphérique est calculée. Les plus petits caractères peuvent être numérisés avec 10 pixels de hauteur et restent tout à fait lisibles.

Il faut néanmoins retravailler l'éclairage général de l'image, car il existe des différences de luminosité entre le haut et le bas du globe qui se traduisent par un effet d'écaille qui n'appartient pas à l'objet original. En troisième lieu, les projections calculées sont reproduites sur papier, par flashage.

C'est au cours de la deuxième étape, lors du traitement des images, qu'intervient le restaurateur. Quitte à lui désormais de faire dispara"tre une tâche marron due au phénomène de "foxing" ou de remplacer une lettre manquante en cherchant sa réplique ailleurs dans le mot.

Les avantages offerts par la numérisation sont multiples

Les difficultés liées à la restauration et repose des fuseaux disparaissent. Plus de problème de dilatation de papier ni de repose délicate sur la forme convexe. Il faut néanmoins pour cela que le double du globe à restaurer existe et soit lui-même en bon état.

Les différentes étapes de la cartographie d'un globe (superposition de papillons correctifs par exemple) peuvent être révélées.

La numérisation permet de restaurer à l'écran les parties détériorées, comme cela se pratique déjà sur les peintures et monuments anciens.

Cette méthode concilie l'antinomie propre à la conservation, à savoir la préservation et l'accès. C'est pourquoi il serait à terme souhaitable que les images numérisées des fuseaux soient archivées et disponibles en salle de lecture ou pour la consultation à distance.

La consultation électronique peut se faire par fuseaux photographiques (de pôle nord à pôle sud), par projection demandée (cylindrique déployée, conique ou gno-mique 2) ce qui rend possible la comparaison des globes et des cartes, par survol virtuel du globe, l'oeil du lecteur jouant alors le rôle d'un avion ou d'un satellite d'observation.

Le chercheur peut recourir à diverses fonctions d'analyse dont celle du zoom court ou long sur les documents, la fusion de plusieurs couches topographiques (pour la comparaison d'un globe avec une autre représentation de la surface terrestre), l'accès aux toponymes par une base thématique.

Cette technique permet aussi de trans-former la projection d'une carte plane en une autre et de créer un globe à partir d'une mappemonde.

La consultation par le réseau Internet est en revanche plus difficile en raison du principe même de transmission : le "télélecteur" demande la visualisation d'une portion de l'image sphérique que le serveur WEB doit calculer pour lui transmettre. Or il est presque impossible, car beaucoup trop long, de télécharger l'image sphérique d'un globe avec les débits "grand public" actuels.

Le chercheur peut aussi étudier un globe sous forme de fuseaux imprimés et cela dans des dimensions supérieures à l'original s'il le désire, ce qui permet un plus grand confort de lecture du fait combiné de la grandeur des fuseaux et de la consultation à plat. Les grandes largeurs qui existent actuellement sont parfaitement adéquates et peu onéreuses.

Le globe restauré est soustrait de la communication, il peut alors être conservé dans des conditions adéquates de conservation.

Enfin, l'aspect décoratif propre aux globes anciens retrouve tout son sens. Grâce à une restauration utilisant les techniques les plus récentes, on dispose ainsi d'une oeuvre esthétique, lisible et consultable, telle qu'elle existait au moment de sa création.

Références

Hubert, Christophe et Laurent Lucot. Photogrammétrie sur globes. Paris : Atelier holographique, 1998.

e-mail : oculaire@cyberstudio.fr//oculaire

Alain Roger

Christophe Hubert

Digitisation Completes The Preservation Of Globes

La Digitalizaciàn Permite Completar La Restauraciàn De Globos TerráQueos

1. Photogrammétrie : technique permettant d'associer une couleur à un point de l'espace, à partir d'une photographie. La photogrammétrie aérienne est une technique permettant de créer des cartes "photographiques" à partir de prises de vue aériennes du sol.

2. Type de projection usuellement utilisée dans l'histoire de la cartographie.

The Digital Dark Ages ? Challenges In The Preservation Of Electronic Information

Monks and monasteries played a vital role in the Middle Ages in preserving and distributing books. It was their work which provided much of our present knowledge of the ancient past and of the rich heritage of Greek, Roman and Arabic traditions. With the advent of the printing press, this monastic tradition disappeared. However, the reverence for the historical record of text has been carried by librarians and archivists within private and public libraries to this very day.

The tenor of our time appears to regard history as having ended, with pronoun-cements from many techno-pundits claiming that the Internet is revolutionary and changes everything. We seem at times, to be living in what Umberto Eco has called an 'epoch of forgetting.' Within this hyperbolic environment of technology euphoria, there is a constant, albeit weaker, call among information professionals for a more sustained thinking about the impacts of the new technologies on society. One of these impacts is how we are to preserve the historic record in an electronic era where change and speed is valued more highly than conservation and longevity.

The digital Dark Ages

Enormous amounts of digital information are already lost forever. Digital history cannot be recreated by individuals, and organisations cannot recreate a digital history because it was not archived or managed properly or it resides in formats that cannot be accessed because the information is on out-dated word-processor files, old database formats, or saved on unreadable media. Many large data-sets in governments and universities world-wide have been made obsolete by changing technologies (think of punch cards and 12" floppy disks) and will either be lost or subject to expensive 'rescue' operations to save the information. Unsurprisingly, the Report of the Task Force On Archiving of Digital Information has identified in its recommendations, the development of 'effective fail-safe mechanisms to support the aggressive rescue of endangered digital information.'(2)

There will be a demographic bulge of electronic materials coming into libraries and archives as the Baby Boom generation of authors and academics begin to wind down their careers and begin off-loading their materials to various libraries and archives. These materials will come to libraries on a wide variety of storage devices, perhaps even in entire computer systems, and will probably have equally significant paper collections associated with them. To assist the archivist of 2015, we need to find methods for helping organise this infor-mation today.

Information technologies are essentially obsolete every 18 months. This dynamic creates an unstable and unpredictable environment for the continuance of hardware and software over a long period of time and represents a greater challenge than the deterioration of the physical medium. Many technologies and devices disappear as the companies that provide them move on to new product lines, often without backwards compatibility and ability to handle older technologies, or the companies themselves disappear.

Anachronistic libraries versus trendy Internet

Financial resources available for libraries and archives continue to decrease and will likely do so for the near future. The argument for preserving digital information has not effectively made it into public policy. There is little enthusiasm for spending resources on preservation at the best of times and without a concerted effort to bring the issues into the public eye, the preservation of digital information will remain a cloistered issue. The importance of libraries has been diminished in the popular press as the pressures from industry encourage consumers to see libraries as anachronistic while the Internet and electronic products such as Microsoft Encarta are promoted as inevitable replacements. Until this situation changes, libraries and archives will continue to be asked to do more with lessÑboth in terms of providing traditional library services, as well as new digital library services: preservation will have to encompass both kinds of collections.

Increasingly restrictive intellectual property and licensing regimes will ensure that many materials never make it into library collections for preservation. These will be corporate assets and will not be deposited into public collections without substantive financial and licensing arrangements that few libraries will be able to afford. From a positive perspective, this fact will allow libraries to essentially ignore the preservation question for many kinds of key information resources (examples will include newspapers, electronic serials, directories) as these may be preserved by their corporate owners. The flip-side of this argument is whether corporate owners will develop a public-spirited interest in providing this archival role for future generations and whether the resources will be accessible to the public.

The challenge is a sociological one

The Commission on Preservation and Access suggests that the first line of defense against the loss of valuable digital information rests with the creators, providers and owners of digital information. (3) This fact is a critical one for preservation purposes as it strongly suggests that the role that librarians and archivists must play will be an increasingly public one. Preservation is a desktop issue, not merely an institutional one.

The role of preservationists must be to interact with users and to address preser-vation and information management issues on their desktops, not the archivists' desktop.

Standards will not emerge to solve fundamental issues with respect to digital information. The challenge in preserving electronic information is not primarily a technological one, it is a sociological one. The dynamism of the market for information technologies and products ensures the fundamental instability of hardware and software primarily because product obsolescence is often key to corporate survival in a competitive capitalist demo-cracy. Product differentiation manifests itself at the very level of the document standard. Proprietary systems provide commercial enterprises with profitable products whereas static (i. e. preservable) formats do not create a continuing need for upgrading which software and hardware companies depend upon. This situation conspires against standards that create a stable nexus of hardware, software, and administration.

Libraries and archives will be required to continue their existing archival and preservation practices as the current paper publishing boom continues. Clearly, digital collections are not going to be a substitute for existing and future library collections and plans must be made to accommodate both. A significant concern of libraries and archives is that the financial resources necessary to address expensive IT upgrades, embark on data rescue operations, and undertake digital preservation will have detrimental impacts on other aspects of library and archival operations such as building collections and providing services for the public.

The preservation nexus

• Developing a topology of major data types and formats and identifying issues affecting preservation of each category of material.
• Investigating the attitudes of originators and rights owners to the responsibilities of digital preservation.
• Examining costing models for long-term preservation of digital materials.
• Examining the three main methods of digital preservation: technology preservation; technology emulation; information migration.
• Investigating the digital preservation needs of universities and research funders.
• Investigating progress towards permissive guidelines for digital preservation.
• Reporting on sampling methods and techniques for collecting materials, on the nature and extent of institutional electronic archives, and or the relevance of current archival practice to digital preservation .
• Investigating post hoc rescue, or data archaeology, of high value digital material which cannot be accessed because the required IT environment is no longer available. (4)

Other organisations such as the National Digital Library Federation and Research Libraries Group are at a similar point in their conclusions.

How to preserve on a cost-effective basis ?

The archiving of digital information is not a conservation problem. To quote a conclusion of the Technology Assessment Advisory Committee to the Commission on Preservation and Access, 'Preservation means copying.'(5) It is the 'contents' that must be preserved not conserved. Unlike conservation practices where an item can often be treated, stored and essentially forgotten for some period of time, digital objects will require frequent refreshing and recopying to new storage media. Keeping the 'original' digital artifact is not important.

Further, refreshing or 'copying' of digital information will not be confined to merely moving from one storage medium to another but will also entail translation into new formats or structures. It is also likely that this translation will be an imperfect copy, as well as a costly and ongoing expense that must be budgeted for accordingly. Some types of digital objects will not be transferable to either new media or to new formats, for example: software executable files; self-extracting archives coded for particular operating systems; and formats unique to a software implementation. Even maintaining materials on a particular storage media like CD-ROM will not be easy. Multimedia materials that require particular hardware and software platforms to access the contents will disappear and will not be easily migrated to any new system. It is quite possible that a significant portion of multimedia CD-ROM titles presently in-print today will not be accessible to the next generation operating systems.

The handling of the physical storage of the digital object is the least of our worries. However, as a profession, librarians and archivists know how to do this wellÑhow to have climate controlled environments, how to conserve and store materials of various types, how to ensure that disaster recovery practices are in place, and so on.(6) What is lacking in our knowledge base, and in that of technologists, is how to preserve over time, and on a cost-effective basis, the relationship between the storage, retrieval and display hardware and software Ña relationship which is required to make 'being digital' also being understandable.

What is to be done?

What must libraries do to address the challenges of digital preservation? There are a number of key areas in which concerned institutions and professionals can contribute:

Knowledge creation: contribute to Research and Development

There is an urgent need to augment research in the area of digital preservation. Projects which further our knowledge in the challenges of preserving various types of materialsÑmaps, archival materials, color documents, bound volumes, data-sets, music, and electronic formats like SGML, PDF, ASCII, HTML_must be undertaken. The research needs to include a careful accounting of the actual costs of preserving these materials. If projects do not provide cost-effective preservation solutions or have only marginal benefits, we need to be informed of this. If some techniques or strategies work better than others, we need this information clearly stated.(7)

Digital triage: developing guidelines for what can and should be saved

There should be informed skepticism about the claims of organisations that say they will archive the Internet.(8) The library and archival communities already know that not everything can and should be saved. What is key is selecting which digital resources to preserve and which ones not to preserve.

Librarians and archivists must develop digital collection development and evaluation guidelines to assist in deciding what can be saved and what should be saved, and what can't be, on a case-by-case basis. The Research Libraries Group's Preservation Working Group on Digital Archiving, as well as that of the JISC in the UK, have identified the development of guidelines for appraisal, selection, and priority setting for preserving digital information as being a key task for future work. (9)

Rescue operations: ensure vital electronic documents are preserved now

Digitally produced images of documents are not a substitute for microfilm preservation. Digital copying will not necessarily ensure the preservation of a digital document. The fact is that digital information may be outputted to microfilm for preservation purposes and it may even be appropriate to print an electronic document on acid-free paper and handle it according to established archival practices. These hybrid methods may be an effective transition step until stable guidelines and technologies evolve for long-term digital preservation.

Librarians and archivists need to work with industry to develop simple and cost-effective print-to-microfilm systems; this will enable archives to preserve documentary collections that are provided in proprietary formats such as word-processors in a cost-effective fashion to be effectively preserved.

By transferring electronic information into non-electronic form there will be a loss of functionality for some kinds of information. Paper or microfilm documents may no longer have active hypertext links or be searchable by keyword and there will be some cases where it is not reasonable to migrate the information to non-electronic forms as it would render the information useless, e.g. software or large data-sets. Re-coding information of this type will be sharply constrained by the resources and in many cases will not be feasible.

Document formats: so many to choose from

Mixed media and multiple document formats will continue to remain the fly-in-the-ointment of digital collections. Multiple formats may require maintaining multiple hardware/software platforms and will confound simple migration to new storage media.

Whether possible or even preferred, requiring that data be stored in a common format is unlikely for the foreseeable future. Similarly, existing translation software available for the migration and translation of document formats illustrates that the problems are significant and the results are often less than satisfactory. The simple case of conversion between the most popular document formats, MS-Word and WordPerfect, provide ample illustration of the challenges that are faced and argue for skepticism about claims for future systems which will make this task easier.

There will probably be no effective solution to this problem. If a library will be receiving electronic objects from content providers such as authors or publishers, they may want to specify a limited range of acceptable document formats. Working with creators to bring these problems to their attention and providing guidance on how to organise files and which formats to use for purposes of archiving will help. Once again, more research and effective communications with content and technology providers are required to address the issue of multiple formats.

Being legal: rights management and access control

The management of rights and access controls for electronic objects is an increasingly complex area of concern for libraries and archives. A library may have the rights to access and use electronic materials, but the right to preserve the materials may not be the same thing. Restrictions on access placed by rights-holders or by licensing arrangements for particular resources need to be addressed when questioning whether the information can be preserved. A simple example is the case of whether a library can retain old versions of a CD-ROM database to which it may subscribe or whether the CD-ROM must be discarded after the subscription is finished or destroyed when a new version is issued. More complex legal issues arise with the automated collection of Internet information for preservation purposes in efforts such as the Internet Archive, where it seems that intellectual property rights are being ignored. Similar intellectual property concerns about the legality of unauthorized and automated indexing of Internet WWW sites are also being raised.

Licensing will be one of the most important things that a library will be required to do in the electronic realm. The management of diverse licensing arrangements promises to be a significant administrative and technical challenge for preservation purposes. For example, the University of California Digital Library framework is quite explicit about the need to ensure that where digital materials are printable, the licenses and contracts associated with them allow you to print a copy on acid-free paper for preservation purposes. (10)

Librarians need to work on contractual issues. There must be a concerted effort on the part of all libraries to work together to get the best contractual arrangements possible and to be more aware of the contractual issues associated with the licensing of electronic resources. The Council on Library Resources, Commission on Preservation and Access and Yale University's initiative with the LibLicense Project is an important starting point for this work. (11)

Technical advances such as those in the EC COPEARMS (Coordinating Project for Electronic Authors' Right Management Systems) (12) and IMPRIMATUR (Intellectual Multimedia Property Rights Model And Terminology for Universal Reference) (13) projects will assist significantly in rights management. However, these technologies remain in the prototype stage and formidable challenges exist in the formalization and intellectual description of rights and in developing common contractual languages. The efforts to provide these descriptions are only beginning and are key to effective rights management. As a result, rights management systems are probably 5-10 years from commercial deployment.

Wave the flag: promoting the importance of preservation

Librarians and archivists must engage in a concerted effort to raise the profile of preservation. (14) The Commission on Preservation and Access (15) and Research Libraries Group (RLG) (I6) in the United States, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) (17) in the UK and PADI Working Group (18) and National Library (19) in Australia, among others, have all been active in framing the problems of digital preservation within their constituencies. This work needs to be supported, expanded and brought to greater public attention.

As a profession, librarians and archivists need to encourage critical thinking and be highly pragmatic about the nature of the new medium and the challenges of digital preservation. Although there are positive benefits to digitisation, particularly in providing remote and enhanced access to information, as Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, Director General of Die Deutsche Bibliothek warns, there is a danger here as well. The problem is that 'digitisation may come to be regarded as a panacea for all of the real and imagined problems libraries now face in connection with the preservation of physical collections: the growing need for storage space, the deterioration of books due to acid paper, and the rising costs of library operation.' (20) Only by increasing public support and understanding of the issues of preservation, both digital and analog (i. e. physical collections) can we hope to address the shortfall in fiscal and human resources that continue to hinder preservation efforts and impact upon library services.

All for one, one for all: working together

Archiving decisions for materials which are common to many libraries will be made in consultation with other libraries to deter-mine the appropriate forms and sharing-mechanisms. Few libraries will be positioned to effectively archive large quantities of electronic information. Any given library will necessarily be required to select re-sources that they can archive and preserve according to their particular mandates and user requirements. In many cases, it will not make sense to duplicate efforts. Digital pre-servation efforts will need to be coordinated. In other situations, it may make perfect sense to duplicate archival efforts, particularly if the information is too valuable for historic purposes to be entrusted to only one institution. Efforts such as the U. S. National Digital Library Federation and the Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries are examples of important first steps.

Digital preservation as a public good

Librarians and archivists protect the public interest by making information available to the community and by asserting the importance of maintaining a record of our collective intellectual heritage. This task will be a continuing challenge because libraries and archives are too often considered to be competitors to publishers, document delivery services, and other private sector content providers. It is unlikely, unless a substantive ground-swell of public support is generated, that libraries will win in the battle against commodification of infor-mation resources or be able to generate the public support (and fiscal resources) necessary to meet the challenges.

Despite the present lack of public interest in digital preservation, it is necessary to believe, perhaps as an article of faith, that the efforts of librarians and archivists will be appreciated in the future. The traces of information that we are able to save from our digital vellum will be valuable sources of information to the future. Even if the task of digital preservation remains thankless, it is a vital one and must still be undertaken. The objective is a noble and necessary one even as the many problems appear insurmountable.

Digital collections facilitate access, but do not facilitate preservation. Being digital means being ephemeral. Digital places greater emphasis on the here-and-now rather than the long term, just-in-time information rather than just-in-case. The research programme for digital preservation has only recently been initiated to develop strategies, guidelines, and standards. Although tremendous work has been undertaken in defining the problems and challenges, much more remains to be done, and the tough task of actually doing digital preservation (and digital rescue) remains ahead.

A critical appraisal of where we are vis-a-vis our digital culture, and what we want for the future something which may not be defined in technical terms at allÑis required both inside and outside of the library and archival professions. If history and cultural heritage are to be important, then it will likely fall to librarians and archivists, the monastic orders of the future, to ensure that something of the heady days of our 'digital revolution' remains for future generations. The challenges to digital preservation are considerable and will require a concerted effort on the part of librarians and archivists to rise up to these challenges and assert in public forums the importance of protecting a fragile digital heritage.

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'.
George Santayana,
The Life of Reason, 1906.

The author would like to thank his colleagues, Michael Williamson and Fay Turner, for their comments and sharp pencils, and accepts all responsibility and is unrepentant for hyperbolic outbursts.

Terry Kuny

Comment Sortir Du Moyen Âge Numérique?

Les bibliothèques doivent aussi préserver des documents numérisés existant déjà sous d'autres supports. Toutefois les droits de propriété industrielle toujours plus restreints inciteront les auteurs et sociétés à conserver leurs propres archives mais dans quelles conditions et avec quelle garantie de service public? Les spécialistes de la préservation ont ici un rôle important à jouer mais ne peuvent compter sur la normalisation pour simplifier le problème, le marché étant trop lucratif pour les fabricants qui sortent régulièrement de nouvelles générations de produits.

Personne ne sait comment archiver l'information numérique même si sa préservation n'est pas difficile en théorie. Il ne s'agit pas seulement de recopier mais de transférer sur de nouveaux supports et structures. Pour sortir du Moyen âge numérique, diverses démarches doivent être entreprises dès à présent, en poursuivant les programmes de recherche et développement concernant la préservation des différents supports à des cožts raisonnables, en identifiant les techniques et stratégies les plus performantes.

Il faut aussi opérer une sélection et établir des principes directeurs sur ce qui peut et doit être sauvegardé ; transférer les documents actuels d'importance sur des supports non numériques tels que microfilm ou papier non acide, même si cette solution intermédiaire implique la perte des facilités de connexion telles que liens hypertextes ; inviter les auteurs à travailler sur des supports compatibles.

Les bibliothèques doivent mettre au point des contrats d'exploitation et de préservation (deux choses différentes du point du vue légal), promouvoir auprès du grand public l'importance de la préservation et travailler de concert pour se répartir les tâches entre institutions.

À Càmo Salir De La Edad Media Digital ?

Las bibliotecas deben también perservar los documentos digitalizados que ya existen en otros soportes. Sin embargo, los derechos de la propriedad industrial cada vez más restringidos incitan a los autores y a las empresas a conservar sus propios archivos, perà À en qué condiciones, y con qué garant'a de un servicio pœblico? Los especialistas de las preservaciàn desempe-an aqu' un papel important, pero no pueden contar con la normalizaciàn para simplificar el problema, ya que el mercado es demasiado lucrativo para los fabricantes que sacan regularmente nuevas generaciones de productos.

Nadie sabe càmo archivar la informaciàn digital aun cuando su preservaciàn teàricamente no es dif'cil. No se trata solamente de recopiar sino de transferir a nuevos soportes y estructuras. Para salir de la Edad Media digital, se deben emprender varias acciones desde el presente, continuando los programas de investigaciàn y desarrollo relativos a la preservaciàn en distintos soportes a costos razonables, identificando las técnicas y estrateg'as más productivas.

Es necesario también hacer una selecciàn y establecer los principios rectores sobre lo que se puede y se debe salvar. A pesar de que la transferencia de los documentos actuales relevantes a soportes no digitales, tales como el microfilm o el papel libre de ácido, constituye una soluciàn intermedia, implica la pérdida de posibilidades de conexiàn tales como los enlaces de hipertextos. Hay que invitar a los autores a trabajar en soportes compatibles.

Las bibliotecas deben definir los contratos de comercializaciàn y de preservac'on (dos cosas diferentes desde el punto de vista legal), promover en el pœblico en general la importancia de la preservaciàn y trabajar de comœn acuerdo para repartir las tareas entre diversas instituciones.

References

1. Making distinctions between 'electronic records' or 'electronic texts' or other semantic debates are of questionable utility. The emergence of multi-media forms of communication and the increased complexity of the 'document' in the digital era argues that we must begin to consider that what we are really looking to manage and preserve is electronic objects.

2. Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information. Preserving Digital Information: Final Report and Recommendations. Commission on Preservation and Access and the Research Libraries Group. May 1, 1996.
   http://www.rlg.org/ArchTF/index.html

3. Preserving Digital Information: Final Report and Recommendations.

4. . For background information on the workshop that led to this programme, see Long Term Preservation of Electronic Materials. A JlSC/British Library Workshop as part of the Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib). 27th and 28th November 1995. University of Warwick.
   http://ukoln.bath.ac.ukfresko/warwick/intro.html

5. Michael Lesk, Preservation of New Technology : A report of the Technology Assessment Advisory Committee to the Commission on Preservation and Access. October 1992.
   http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byauth/leskesk2.html

6. Those interested in finding out more information about the conservation of electronic materials are directed to the following resources: Commission on Preservation and Access : . Library of Congress Preservation Directorate:
   http:/cweb.loc.gov/preserv/preserve.html
   Conservation OnLine: http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/

   A useful overview of imaging and storage technologies is the 'Long-Term Access Strategies for Federal Agencies: Digital-lmaging and Optical Digital Data Disk Storage Systems' (Technical Paper No.12, July 1994) published by the U. S. National Archives and Records Administration.

7. For example, in December 1996, researchers at the Yale University Library engaged in a project to migrate data tapes of public opinion research from an older system to a newer one. Their literature search was unable to locate significant information on the subject of copying data files and changing the way they were coded. For further information about this project, see Ann Gerken Green and JoAnn Dionne, Preserving the Whole: A Two-track Approach to Rescuing Data and Metadata. Commission on Preservation and Access, December 20, 1996.
   http://clir.stanford.edu/pubs/

8. The work of Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive is a notable effort here. An important caveat is that the 'archive' is, at best, a fuzzy snapshot of the electronic materials which are most easily available. The vast majority of Internet resources are not amenable to the kind of 'sweep' that Kahle's Archive is attempting to undertake as the resources reside in databases which cannot be traversed by automated systems. There is also an interesting legal question about whether the Internet Archive has the right to copy entire websites into its database. This question will likely be the most significant one for the success of such operations in the future. For details, see
   www.archive.org .

9. RLG Preservation Working Group on Digital Archiving. Progress Report. May 6, 1997.
   http:lyra.rlg.org/preserv/digarchl.html

10. The University of California Digital Library: A Framework for Planning and Strategic Initiatives October 1996.
    http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/.
    Another interesting comment in this report is that 'caution must be exercised by those who would assume that the UCDL obviates the need for new buildings and building renovations.'

11. See LibLicense Website at URL: . The LIBLICENSE-L Mailing List is a key place for discussions on library licensing issues. Contact: liblicense-l@pantheon.yale.edu

12. COPEARMS:

13. IMPRIMATUR:

14. In the past five years, I can recall only one article of significance on digital preservation in literature intended for the general public. Jeff Rothenberg, 'Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents', Scientific American, January 1995.

15. http://clir.stanford.edu/cpa/

16. http://lyra.rlg.org/preserv/

17. http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/jasper/intro.html

18. Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) Working Group : http://www.nla.gov.au/dnc /tf2001/padi/padi.html

19. http://www.nla.gov.au/3/npo/epres.html

20. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, 'Making the Transitory Permanent: The Intellectual Heritage in a Digitised World of Knowledge.' Daedulus. Fall 1996, p. 310.

A Cd-Rom For Safeguarding Latin American And Caribbean Photographs

XIXth century Latin American photography has gained increased importance thanks to systematic activities that have been undertaken to locate, define, safeguard and preserve photographs.

These concerns have been translated into the idea of producing a CD-ROM with photographic pictures of Latin America and the Caribbean from the late XIXth and the early XXth century.

The methodology went as follows: Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff, Director of the IFLA-PAC, wrote a first draft report gathering information about the condition of conservation of photographic collections in Latin America. In order to crystallize this idea, a questionnaire was sent to all national libraries of the Region, which in turn, was sent to other interested institutions in their countries. This questionnaire was intended to obtain further information on the types of collections preserved and their condition. Even though not all the libraries responded it, this first step allowed us to make a preliminary assessment.

In 1996, thanks to PAC and support by the National Library of Brazil and Unesco, a round table was organised in Rio de Janeiro, in order to discuss preservation and to set the criteria to access these collections. One outcome of this meeting was the need to disseminate information throughout the Region about the importance and fragility of this photographic heritage and the need to preserve it in our institutions.

The third step was the submission of a proposal to Unesco to include this heritage in the 'Memory of the World' programme and produce a CD-ROM. Coordination was assigned to the National Library of Venezuela as it is headquarters of the IFLA-PAC Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The main objective of this project was to organise, register and digitise 3,000 Latin American and Caribbean photographic images dating from late XIXth and early XXth centuries. The aim of this was to understand the photographers, their work and printing techniques, and as a consequence, make access easier to their pictures at international level.

The project was divided into three main phases

Phase one:

• photographs dealing with XIXth and XXth century Latin America and the Caribbean were collected;
• each photograph was described technically and physically and introduced with a brief historical summary and a biographic description of the photographer;
• invitations to nineteen national libraries and photographic archives in twelve countries of the Region were sent out;
• a database for entering the material was designed;
• initial responses were analysed;
• selection and reproduction of the photographic material was initiated;
• a sample was sent for evaluation to the University of Colima, Mexico, which would be responsible for the production of the CD-ROM.

Phase two:

the creation of the database was continued. The National Library in Venezuela analysed the data and designed the structure of the CD-ROM. The prototype prepared by the University of Colima was compared to the sample previously sent.

Phase three:

the CD-ROM was edited and distributed to institutions in the Region.
On completion of the project, 1,000 copies of the CD-ROM are expected to be released. They will be distributed among participating institutions and on request. The CD-ROM will be an excellent reference tool that will be available in the information market. In addition it will allow the retrieval of historic images contained in such fragile documents.

Coordination of the project

First and foremost, photographic images from ten countries in the Region had to be compiled with their corresponding technical description. Not all the institutions invited to participate could be involved because of time or funding limitations. This prevented us from looking for other images from other institutions and compelled us to complete the committed number of images with a selection from the Audiovisual Archives of the National Library of Venezuela. Thus most countries in the Region could be represented in the CD-ROM. This meant that additional effort was contributed by the Audiovisual Archives of Venezuela for evaluating the pictures, within the deadline established.

Selection procedure comprised the following steps:

1. A review of Latin American collections dating from the XIXth century (approximately 8,000 images).

2. Selection, according to the importance of the photographer, the historical event, and the quality of the picture.

3. Identification of the material. In the case of Venezuelan images, a historian was appointed to place every image in its historical context (approximately 300 images).

4. Reproduction of the material: the images were reproduced in 3x3 cm color slides, to make this process easier for the majority of institutions.

5. Linking the slides with their technical description: upon reception of a copy, each slide was linked with its original and assigned an identification number.

6. Database input: all the information included on the data gathering form (both from Venezuela and other countries) was entered into the database, and a final identification number assigned to the slides in order to link both image and text for the digitisation process.

7. Sending of the information to the University of Colima where technical data was transmitted.
   The production of the 1,000 copies of the CD-ROM relies on the experience of the University of Colima. Once the CD-ROM is completed, information will be accessed through various headings: photographer, title, country, key word, etc.

Our CD-ROM will include an introduction, academic references about the evolution of the Region, the creation of its republics, their industrial and urban development, their peoples and customs. All this information will be based on the previously unknown and unique selection of photographs and their technical description, drafted by the historian El'as Pino Iturrieta, Director of the Ràmulo Gallegos Centre for Latin American Studies.

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all the institutions involved in this wonderful project, who worked so hard to process their images in such a short time. Also, we sincerely thank Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff for her encouragement and commitment to the preservation of this valuable photographic material which is of such importance for the Latin American and Caribbean cultures.

Contribution of the countries to the CD-ROM: 3,008 pictures

7 countries, including:

Brazil                 331
Colombia           425
Cuba                 112
Chile                  056
Mexico              029
Peru                  416
Puerto Rico       122
Total:             1,461

Countries represented as a result of the contribution of the Audiovisual Archives of Venezuela:

Central America       134
Caribbean                436
Venezuela                308
South America         639
Total:                    1,517

Ramàn Sánchez Chapell'n

Un Cd-Rom Para La Fotograf'as En Am?Rica Latina Y El Caribe

D'a a d'a la fotograf'a latinoamericana del siglo XIX ha adquirido mayor importancia, lo cual se evidencia a través de acciones sistemáticas que se realizan para localizar, rescatar, preservar y difundir estos documentos.

Como consecuencia de estas inquietudes surge la idea de realizar un CD-ROM con imágenes fotográicas de América Latina y Caribe en el siglo XIX y comienzos del XX producto de la preocupaciàn por la preservaciàn de dicho material. La se-ora Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff, Directora del Programa de Preservaciàn y Conservaciàn IFLA-PAC, tuvo la iniciativa de la creaciàn de un reporte que reuniera informaciàn sobre el estado de conservaciàn de las colecciones fotográicas de América Latina. Con el fin de cristalizar esta idea se envià un cuestionario a las bibliotecas nacionales de la Regiàn y éstas a su vez lo remitieron a otras instituciones de su pa's que poseyeran colecciones fotográicas de este per'odo; dicho cuestionario persegu'a conocer las condiciones de conservaciàn y la descripciàn de estas colecciones, y aun cuando no todas las instituciones contestaron el llamado, este primer paso nos premià con la informaciàn que necesitábamos para un diagnàstico preliminar. Posteriormente en 1996 a través del programa PAC, con el apoyo de la Biblioteca Nacional de Brasil y con el financiamiento de la Unesco, se organisà una mesa redonda en R'o de Janeiro, para discutir la preservaciàn y acceso unificado de estas colecciones. Como resultado de esta reuniàn surge la necesidad de divulgar tan importante acervo fotográico de la Regiàn, as' como también la preservaciàn y concientizaciàn de nuestras instituciones de la importancia y fragilidad de dichas colecciones. Continuando con esta preocupaciàn surge un tercer paso que fue la propuesta de desarrollar, dentro del marco de Memoria del Mundo y con el financiamiento de la Unesco, un proyecto para la creaciàn de este CD-ROM; designándole la coordinaciàn del mismo a la Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela en su carácter de sede del Centro Regional IFLA-PAC para América Latina y el Caribe.

El objetivo principal de este proyecto es organisar, registrar y digitalizar tres mil imágenes fotográicas sobre América Latina y el Caribe correspondientes al siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX para editar un CD-ROM, a fin de crear conciencia sobre la importancia de estas colecciones, conocer a los fotàgrafos y sus técnicas de registro e impresiàn y en consecuencia facilitar el acceso a nivel internacional de la memoria fotográica de la Regiàn del siglo XIX y las primeras décadas del XX.

Etapas del proyecto

• consistià en la recolecciàn del material fotográico que reproduzca lo que fue América Latina y el Caribe en el siglo XIX y comienzos del XX,

• dise-o de la ficha técnica con la informaciàn necesaria para la descripciàn f'sica de cada fotograf'a, breve resumen histàrico y rese-a biográica del fotàgrafo,

• env'o de las invitaciones a participar en el mencionado proyecto a diecinueve bibliotecas nacionales y archivos fotográicos de doce pa'ses de la Regiàn,

• dise-o de una base de datos para el ingreso del material,

• análisis de la respuesta inicial enviada por las bibliotecas y archivos,

• inicio de la selecciàn y reproducciàn del material fotográico y env'o al Centro coordinador,

• env'o de una muestra a la Universidad de Colima para su evaluaciàn, quienes son los responsables de la producciàn del CD-ROM.

Segunda etapa :
en esta etapa se continuà con el enriquecimiento de la base de datos. Análisis de los datos y dise-o en Venezuela de la estructura del CD-ROM.

Evaluaciàn del prototipo elaborado por la Universidad de Colima con la muestra remitida.

Tercera etapa :
ediciàn y distribuciàn del CD-ROM a las instituciones de la Regiàn.

Al finalizar el proyecto se espera obtener 1000 copias del CD-ROM y enviarlas a las instituciones participantes y a otras solicitantes, para as' disponer de una herramienta referencial de primer orden en el mercado de la informaciàn, que permita la investigaciàn de los procesos histàricos a través de estos documentos tan frágiles.

Coordinaciàn del proyecto

El compromiso era recopilar tres mil imágenes fotográicas con sus respectivas fichas técnicas, las cuales provendr'an de diez pa'ses de la Regiàn que hab'an revelado poseer este tipo de colecciones, sin embargo no todas las instituciones convocadas participaron por limitaciones de tiempo y disponibilidad de recursos.

Por falta de tiempo no se pudo insistir en la bœsqueda de imágenes con otras instituciones de la Regiàn, por lo que fue necesario completar la cantidad de imágenes con la que nos hab'amos comprometido, con la selecciàn del Archivo Audiovisual de Venezuela de la Biblioteca Nacional, y as' estar'an representados la mayor'a de los pa'ses de la Regiàn.

La selecciàn de las imágenes faltantes para el proyecto significà un inmenso esfuerzo en el Archivo Audiovisual de Venezuela, dentro del l'mite de tiempo requerido. Esta selecciàn tuvo los siguientes pasos:

1. Revisiàn de la colecciàn latinoamericana del siglo XIX (aprox. 8000 imágenes)

2. La selecciàn se realizà tomando en cuenta: a) la importancia del autor; b) del momento histàrico representado en la imagen, y c) la calidad de la imagen.

3. Identificaciàn: una vez seleccionado el material se procedià a su identificaciàn (ficha técnica). En el caso de las imágenes de Venezuela, se contratà un historiador para la contextualizaciàn de cada imagen dentro de la historia (300 imágenes aproximadamente).

4. Reproducciàn del material. Las imágenes se reprodujeron en diapositivas en color, de 3x3 cm, lo cual facilitar'a este proceso a la mayor'a de las Instituciones.

5. Enlace de la diapositiva con la ficha técnica: Una vez recibida la reproducciàn, se procedià a cotejarla con el original y a asignarle su nœmero de identificaciàn.

6. Ingreso a la base de datos: se procedià a ingresar toda la informaciàn contenida en el formato de acopio (tanto las de Venezuela como las provenientes de otros pa'ses) a la base de datos dise-ada para este fin y a asignarle el nœmero definitivo de identificaciàn a las diapositivas, para enlazar imagen y texto, en el proceso de digitalizaciàn.

7. Env'o de la informaciàn a la Universidad de Colima.Para la elaboraciàn de las mil copias de este CD-ROM contamos con la gran experiencia que posee la Universidad de Colima, México.

Una vez confeccionado el CD-ROM, se tendrá acceso a la informaciàn a través de mœltiples entradas: fotàgrafo, t'tulo, pa's, palabra clave, etc.

Nuestro CD-ROM contará con la presentaciàn; un marco teàrico que tratará sobre la evoluciàn del territorio, la formaciàn de las Repœblicas, el desarrollo industrial, urbano, la gente y sus costumbres basado en las hermosas imágenes que integran el CD-ROM, escrito por el destacado historiador venezolano El'as Pino Iturrieta, director del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Ràmulo Gallegos; y con tres mil maravillosas y desconocidas imágenes de las colecciones de nuestra Regiàn, acompa-adas de su descripciàn técnica.

Queremos agradecer profundamente a todas las instituciones participantes en este bello proyecto por el gran esfuerzo que, estamos seguros, representà para ellos procesar sus imágenes en tan corto tiempo. Igualmente agradecemos a Marie-Thérèse Varlamoff por su empuje y su compromiso con la preservaciàn de este valioso material.

Participaciàn de los Pa'ses en la composiciàn del CD-ROM: 3.008 imágenes

7 pa'ses:

Brazil                 331
Colombia           425
Cuba                 112
Chile                  056
Mexico              029
Perœ                  416
Puerto Rico        122
Total:               1,461 imágenes

Centro América       134
Antillas                    436
Venezuela                308
Sur América             639
Total:                    1,517 imágenes

Ramàn Sánchez Chapell'n

The Photographic Archives Of The City Hall In Lisbon

It was only in 1990 that the City Hall decided to renovate the 'Arquivo Fotográico' . The long tradition of use by the public was an important factor in this decision. The AFCML was given new facilities in a building devoted to this very institution. It includes a storage room with isolation and environmental control, an exhibition room, darkrooms and a reading room. It was the wish of those responsible to achieve the best conditions possible for the preservation of photography collections, to make access to images as easy and as fast as possible, and to start a programme of exhibitions and catalogue production to publicize the photography collections. The new facility was opened in 1994.

The Collection

The collection grew significantly during the renovation and after the new facilities were opened in 1994. Since 1990, about 100,000 new images have been added to the existing collection, including private donations and purchases. This enormous growth is a challenge to our capacity for treating, cataloguing and digitising a great number of new images, considering the limited resources and staff (seven conservation technicians and six cataloguing and digitising technicians.) In order to address the needs of this increasing number of images, the conservation treatment of new collections was simplified. We want to reduce the time a collection must undergo treatment before it is made available to the public.

Use of the collection

Computer images are stored on the computer hard disk in PCX format. The computer catalogue format includes the following fields: captions, image locales and dates, authors, collections, bibliographies, exhibitions, and copyright restrictions. Image and Boolean research is possible via the computer. The part of the collection available through the computer is the most searched and used.

Conservation strategies

Another aspect of our conservation activity is our concern to reduce the handling of originals as much as possible. The viewing of photographs on the computer screen is a key aspect of this protection. The use of computer- generated-prints for research, instead of photographic prints, is another important element. The use of cotton gloves to handle prints and negatives is the golden rule at AFCML and is respected by all the technicians including darkroom printers.

A negative duplication programme was established in 1996 in order to replace unstable nitrate base negatives and also some acetate and glass negatives in bad or deteriorated condition. These were duplicated onto a polyester base, a very stable, modern negative base. Duplication work is carried out in our darkrooms.

The activity of photography restoration is reduced to its most basic aspects. It is viewed as a process of stabilization in cases of broken glass negatives, emulsion lifting stabilization, and torn print stabilization. We do not go beyond basic treatment and no risks are taken in this field.

Working procedures

1. Compatibility should exist between the project and the resources available.

2. Every conservation project should be followed by its presentation in an exhibition or catalogue. These two aspects of our work should always go hand in hand.

Let us examine a few practical aspects of this:

a. In order to make the treatment of new collections more sound and more consistent we have created a standard procedure. According to this standard, the first step is observation and pre-inventory of the new collection. This is done in order to assess the extent of the collection, identify the processes needed in view of their present physical condition and the main problems, if any. We also need to ascertain what the necessary housing materials will be, whether duplication is required or not, the number of technicians responsible, and the prediction of time and costs. Steps for treatment are then defined and a calendar drawn up for the conservation process. A decision is then taken on the creation of a catalogue or an exhibition of the collection. Treatment generally consists of procedures for general description, cleaning, ordering, numbering, storing, digitising, cataloguing and duplication (or copy). Afterwards the collection is made available to the public. Sometimes it is exhibited and a catalogue is published.

b. The images that we digitise are the result of selection. Low quality images and images that are very faded or heavily deteriorated are rejected, as well as those images that do not meet the purposes of our organisation. However, these are described in another database that is available for consultation. Avoiding identical images in the computer is also necessary and a survey is done so that only one, in a group of similar images, is digitised. This selection allows us to significantly speed up the treatment of the collections.

c. The help of interns has been very useful in activities such as compiling archive inventories, cleaning negatives, organising, digitising, and cataloguing. This work is particularly significant in the treatment of the small collections recently acquired. We have interns from Portuguese schools and from institutions that own photographic collections, some of them are from Spain and Brazil.

d. We hold many negatives that have no prints. Digitised negative images are converted to positives by computer software so that we can show and supply these images to readers. This also saves photographic paper and a lot of darkroom work.

Accomplishments

Luis Pavao

Arquivo Fotográico Da Câmara Municipal De Lisboa

Em 1990 a Câmara Municipal decidiu proceder à remodelaç‹o e modernizaç‹o do Arquivo Fotográico, até ent‹o instalado em situaç‹o precária. Foi-lhe atribuido um edificio pràprio, especialmente remodelado e equipado para cumprir esta funç‹o da melhor forma; criaram-se depàsitos climatizados e isolados, salas de exposiç›es, câmaras escuras e uma sala de leitura. Os objectivos ent‹o definidos visavam assegurar a preservaç‹o das colecç›es nas melhores condiç›es, facilitar a consulta das imagens e a pesquisa, permitir a sua utilizaç‹o por um nœmero maior de leitores em boas condiç›es e ainda desenvolver uma acç‹o constante de divulgaç‹o da colecç‹o e da fotografia em geral. As novas instalaç›es abriram ao pœblico em 1994.

Que tipo de colecç‹o temos?

A colecç‹o cresceu com a remodelaç‹o: desde 1990 entraram no AFCML cerca de 100 000 novas imagens, em vários conjuntos, resultantes de compras ou doaç›es. Este crescimento é um desafio sério à nossa capacidade de tratar, catalogar e digitalizar, dadas as limitaç›es da equipa que aqui trabalha: 7 técnicos na conservaç‹o e 6 técnicos na digitalizaç‹o e base de dados. Foi necessário simplificar os tratamentos e desenvolver métodos de trabalho que acelerassem o processamento das novas colecç›es. Pretendemos evitar que decorram anos desde que uma colecç‹o entra até que possa ser posta à disposiç‹o do pœblico.

Que tipo de utilizaç‹o tem a colecç‹o?

A consulta é geralmente realizada em computador. Recorre-se ás provas fotográicas para imagens que n‹o se encontram informatizadas. A sala de leitura está equipada com 14 postos de consulta em simultâneo, que utilizam a base de dados LISI, uma parametrizaç‹o do programa Mini-Micro CDS / ISIS.

As imagens, no formato PCX, estando armazenadas em disco r'gido. A ficha de catálogo, descritiva de cada imagem, inclui legenda, local, autor, data, descritores, colecç‹o, bibliografia, exposiç›es e eventuais restriç›es de utilizaç‹o, sendo poss'vel a pesquisa boleana. A parte da colecç‹o mais estudada é sem dœvida a que está informatizada e digitalizada.

Quais as estratégias de conservaç‹o?

Outro aspecto da importante da politica de preservaç‹o é a reduç‹o ao m'nimo do manuseamento dos originais. A consulta da colecç‹o em computador tem, neste sentido, uma importância fundamental. Muitos dos pedidos de imagens s‹o realizados em impressora de computador, evitando-se, mais uma vez, manusear excessivamente os originais. Uma regra de ouro (que seguimos escrupulosamente) é o uso obrigatàrio de luvas em todas as etapas do tratamento e consulta dos originais; esta regra estende-se aos técnicos das câmaras escuras e da digitalizaç‹o.

Em 1996 foi estabelecido um programa de duplicaç‹o dos negativos instáveis (nitrato de celulose), ou negativos em pelicula ou vidro deteriorados e fragilizados, que é realizado pela equipa do Arquivo. Estes s‹o duplicados em pel'cula de poliester, estável, sendo a qualidade dos duplicados identica à dos originais fragilizados.

O restauro é reduzido aos seus aspectos mais elementares e encarado com uma forma de estabilizaç‹o. E praticado em negativos de vidro quebrados ou com a emuls‹o a descolar e em provas rasgadas ou frágeis, n‹o indo para além dos tratamentos básicos, que n‹o apresentam riscos de maior.

Quais s‹o os nossos métodos de trabalho?

1. Adequar os nossos projectos aos meios de que dispomos.

2. Manter sempre em simultâneo o trabalho de conservaç‹o e o trabalho de disponibilizaç‹o das colecç›es.

Vejamos alguns aspectos práticos da nossa forma de trabalhar:

a. Para simplificar o tratamento de novas colecç›es e o tornar mais consistente e homogéneo, foi criada uma norma de tratamento. Este começa por uma observaç‹o e pré-inventário, onde s‹o avaliadas as dimens›es da colecç‹o, o tipos de espécies presentes e seu estado de conservaç‹o e as principais carências. S‹o contabilizados os materiais necessários, as necessidade de duplicaç‹o, os técnicos e o numero de dias de trabalho necessários e os custos. Estabelece-se assim um calendário, etapas no tratamento e as formas de apresentaç‹o ao pœblico. Seguem-se as operaç›es de descriç‹o, limpeza, ordenaç‹o, numeraç‹o, instalaç‹o em embalagens, digitalizaç‹o, catalogaç‹o e duplicaç‹o. Depois de tratada a colecç‹o é posta à consulta do publico e por vezes, é alvo de uma exposiç‹o e catálogo.

b. As imagens a apresentar ao pœblico s‹o alvo de uma selecç‹o criteriosa. N‹o s‹o digitalizadas as imagens de fraca qualidade técnica, repetidas ou cuja temática n‹o tem interesse para o tipo de consulta que os nossos leitores fazem. Desta forma reduzimos de forma significativa o nœmero de imagens a digitalizar e catalogar e aceleramos a conclus‹o do tratamento das colecç›es.

c. A ajuda de estagiários tem-se revelado muito proveitosa na realizaç‹o das tarefas de inventariaç‹o, limpeza, arrumaç‹o, organisaç‹o, digitalizaç‹o e catalogaç‹o. O trabalho dos estagiários tem contribuido de forma significativa para o avanço dos tratamentos, sobretudo de pequenas colecç›es recentemente adquiridas. Temos recebido estagiários provenientes de escolas de conservaç‹o em Portugal e de instituiç›es com colecç›es de fotografia, alguns deles oriundos de Espanha e Brasil.

d. Muitas das nossas imagens s‹o negativos em pelicula ou vidro, de que n‹o temos provas. A digitalizaç‹o permite-nos obter imagens positivas sem recorrer à impress‹o fotográica, já que a passagem de negativo para positivo é feita em computador. Desta forma podemos apresentar ao pœblico imagens de negativos sem ter que os imprimir, poupando-se papel fotográico e muito trabalho de camara escura.

O que é que já realizámos?

Luis Pav‹o

The Exhibitions Of Photographs

I PREAMBULES

1. Objectives

The establishment of conditions to be observed for loan to temporary exhibitions obeys three commands:
• to remind each of those who are involved in the loan process that photographs are the most fragile of graphic works;
• to reduce at each step of this process the risks of deterioration, immediate or for a term of years, brought about by the handling and exhibition of a photograph;
• to permit each establishment to give a better basis to the decisions it will have to take, and which arise from a delicate balance between the obligations of communication and those of long-term conservation.

The following recommendations, which draw inspiration from the procedures and standards regularly in force in museums and libraries, apply to all types of institution.

2. The stakes

What is at stake is preserving to the maximum the historic, artistic and documentary potential of pictures which their support and their texture make very vulnerable: a priori the sensitive layer of each of them is liable to deteriorate within a short or long time; in other words, each document finds itself at various stages of an evolution which leads from the picture in good condition to the deteriorated picture.
Strict respect for the sometimes cons-training rules considerably increases the chances of chemical and mechanical survival of these prints, and their conservation in a form as near as possible to their initial condition.

3. Limits

The rules stated concern temporary exhibitions and apply to heritage photography.
Knowledge of the risks incurred through a print leaving the environment in which it is usually conserved leads to reducing the length and the frequency of the loan. A permanent exhibition or an excessive duration is not contemplated.

To be included in the category of heri-tage photography is any print having a cultural value by reason of its manu-facture and its representation (or of one or the other of these elements) and whe-re a copy, in case of loss or deterioration, would not be able to replace it in the collection.

II. GENERAL CLAUSES

1. Programme planning

What happens at an exhibition in respect of conservation must be taken into account through a programme which permits the definition of the objectives to be achieved and the resources of the various partners. The tasks of each of them must be clearly defined for all phases of the exhibition.

a) Organisation

It defines the limits of responsibility of everybody involved_designer, techni-cians, architect, restorer, etc._all must see to it that the chosen photographs will not be damaged either in the preliminary of final periods (removal, handling, mounting, framing, transportation, etc.) or during the entire time of the exhibition and during receptions and the shooting of films and videos.

A specific budget for conservation is sometimes necessary (examination, treatment of unstable works, protection, control measures, etc.).

b) Place

The study of the place reserved for the exhibition must permit the appraisal of possible risks incurred by the works in order to remedy them.

These risks can be of a physico-chemical order, concern security, maintenance, possible parallel activities or the method of utilization of the premises.

c) Length

This must take into account the total time of removal of the works from the place of conservation, including preparation and return. Defining a possible length of exhibit demands a preliminary individual examination in each case, taking into account the study of the parameters relating to the place and the photographs concerned.

The demands in respect of the technical conditions for the exhibition will be likewise adjusted in terms of the anticipated time of the exhibition.

d) Selection

The choice of the works is always justified by a purpose, but their integrity takes precedence over any other imperative. In the case where a requested piece cannot be loaned, replacement solutions are possible: substitution of an equivalent print or an excellent copy. Likewise, one can limit the length of the display of certain works by proposing a rotation.

2. Preparation of the works

a) Loan protocol

The conditions required for borrowing must be specified through a text with contractual worth, giving the general rules issued by the lending institution and pledging the responsibility of the borrowers. Acceptance of the loan request must be subordinated to the scrutiny of a technical questionnaire bearing on the exhibition conditions (cf. Exhibition conditions, p. 27-29).

b) Condition reports

A visual inspection must be carried out before and after each move of the works and the notes recorded in a file.

The condition report has a twofold objective:

• to determine if a picture can be exhibited and transported;
• to allow checking of the possible effects of the exhitions at the time.

It must involve information on the identity of the photograph, its descriptive techniques, its degree of fragility and its state of conservation (physical, chemical or biological surface changes, as also possible previous restoration). The nature of its mounting or of the framing must be described. Location by areas of the alterations is facilitated by a diagram and a photograph of the work.

c) Control measures

The eye is a good instrument for comparing works, but it is not very reliable for estimating the change over time of the optical density or the colour of the pictures.

To complete the visual control of the changes, the ability to follow the evolution of the density of photographs which are fragile or at risk, before and after the exhibition, with a densitometer, is recommended.

d) Duplication

It is important that loaned items not yet copied photographically be copied before their departure. The quality of the duplicate must be optimal as much for the standard of the reproduction as for the stages of development.

e) Protection before the exhibition

This consists above all in stabilizing the pictures on the physical plane and in limiting the handling and the environmental attacks, thanks to mounting systems, framing and ade-quate presentation. The materials must be of good quality and the design of the systems of protection must procure effective isolation from sources of alteration of the photographic materials. The framing work must be framed in the lending institution or under its control. The absence of any competent service at the place of exhibition must be taken into account in the loan decision and organisation. Once framed, the loaned works should never be dismantled except with the consent of the lending institution.

3. Transportation and handling

All the conditions concerning the storage, packing and transportation of the items are to be observed going as well as returning.

a) Storage areas

The items borrowed will not form the subject of any handling capable of modifying the condition in any manner; only qualified persons will be able to effect the necessary handling. Any incident or accident arising in the course of the packing or transportation ope-rations, resulting in damage to a loaned item, will immediately be drawn to the attention of the lending body. Any inter-vention having as its object the repair of the damage will not take place without the authorization of the lender. The borrower will meanwhile take any use-ful conservation steps.

The storage of the items, before packing or after unpacking, in the period preceding or following the exhibition, must be done in locations chosen solely for this use (at least during the length of the loan), protected against important variations in humidity and temperature, and offering all the guarantees of security against regular risks (burglar-proof device, no water leaks, no smoking, drinking or eating, etc.).

Those items whose fragility or rarity dis-tinguishes them from the others should be placed in a box under lock and key. The inspection of the loaned items must be done by the borrower, at the time of unpacking, 24 hours after their arrival on the premises (acclimatization time) and in the 24 hours which follow this delay.

b) Packing

The loaned pieces must be the subject of packing which preserves from bumping, from dust and from inclement weather. The glasses of the frames will be covered with adhesive tape in order to avoid a fragment damaging the print, in case of breakage. The frames should be arranged in a box equipped with grooves or separated by polyethylene foam or bubble plastic. In case of transport over long distances, the boxes should be air-tight and contain a product which will control the humidity. Powdery materials, disintegrating or emitting noxious vapours, will be banned. The lending establishment will initiate checking of the items at the moment of closing the boxes and will oppose their departure if the packaging seems inadequate.

The re-packing must be done with the same materials and in the same way as the packing. Only qualified persons from the borrowing establishment (or an approved shipper, specializing in works of art) will be able to carry out this operation. In the case of a removal guaranteed by the borrower itself the latter will provide for appropriate packing (boxes, foam, wrappings, straps).

c) Taking charge

The loaned items cannot leave the establishment more than 15 days before the inauguration of the exhibition. They should return there within 15 days following the closing of the exhibition. Taking charge of the items by the borrower cannot take place without the previous presentation of the certificate of insurance against all risks from the lender's premises to the borrower's (the policy taking effect on the date the items leave the lending establishment up to the date of their return).

d) Transportation

Transportation must take the most direct and the most rapid route possible. The method chosen is that which offers the maximum guarantee in respect of security, loading and transshipment of the works. In the case of transportation by road, the use of a vehicle specially equipped for this kind of moving is required as well as the presence of an escort; a fire extinguisher will be placed on board.

On stopping, whatever may be the length of parking, the vehicle must be the subject of continuous supervision.

Recourse to a specialized company will be the rule for all exhibitions presented in countries where admission is subject to customs formalities: in addition to packing and transportation, the company will undertake these formalities. The same will hold true for exhibitions taking place elsewhere than in these countries, if the nature and value of the loaned items necessitate. The lending establishment reserves the right not to accept the shipper proposed by the borrower and to recommend another. Items of an exceptional nature will be separated from the set and made the subject of separate consignments, for reasons of security.

e) Escorting

If the nature or the importance of the loan necessitates, the lending establishment can require that one or more persons of its choice accompany the consignment and watch over the setting-up of the particularly fragile or precious items at the place of exhibition. At the time of the outward conveyance, these escorts will be authorized to take back the items if the conditions of security and conservation seem inadequate to them.

4. Place of exhibition

a) Materials

Paints are often the source of change in works. The complete drying of paints will be awaited, and the ventilation of the rooms ensured, before bringing in the works. It will be necessary to rule out glycerophtalic paints and prefer acrylic. It will also be necessary to pay attention to the nature of the organic solvents present in the maintenance products, the adhesives, and the varnishes, for some of them are injurious.

b) Furniture

It is preferable to avoid the presence of wood (solid, chipboard, plywood) in direct contact with or close to the prints. Stainless steel, aluminium, metal covered by a thermosetting paint, glass, plexiglass, archival boxes, are approved materials.

c) Security of the works

The place of exhibition will comply with the security standards and instructions intended to ensure the protection of personnel, visitors, and of the works and include in particular protection devices against theft, vandalism, assaults and fire.

5. Exhibition conditions

a) Systems of presentation

Framed photographs should never be unframed or manipulated without agreement of the responsible person. Any cleaning product encouraging the entrance of moisture in frame must not be used. Their placement on the walls or panels must be remote from sources of heat or cold.

In the case of a presentation in a glass case, tightness must be assured, the climate controlled and, if necessary, guaranteed by the use of materials stabilizing the relative humidity and trapping injurious emanations.

b) Climate

A relative humidity round about 40% and a temperature not exceeding 21 °C (70 °F) are recommended. These condi-tions must be as stable as possible, fluctuations not going beyond 10% RH and 4 ° C. (40 °F).

c) Lighting

The lighting of exhibitions must be under control, also artificial lighting is often preferable to natural lighting too prone to variations.

Three parameters are to be checked: