The fictional Albatross Library is the main library of the University of Booster. The university is considered important and progressive. The library has around 2 million volumes and a local on-line catalogue system. Special collections has a good general collection of rare books and manuscripts, but its crowning glory is the ornithology collection, which contains many older manuscripts, hand-colored prints of birds, several thousand recorded bird songs, and many of naturalist Thomas Heron's early-20th-century papers and field manuals. The library has his entire collection.

The Thomas Heron collection has been rather neglected, but appears to be in generally sound condition with the following exceptions: the bird books are soiled from unmonitored handling and clumsy exhibition procedures; the bindings have cracked, crumbling leather; the bird sounds are recorded on a wide variety of media from numerous sources; the collection is still stored in Heron's original boxes and paper portfolios the field manuals are on fragile paper; and none of the collection records is in machine-readable form. The bird books are catalogued, the recordings are inventoried, and the Heron papers have a list.

The preservation program, quite new, is limited to a preservation administrator, Penny Wise. Penny's field managerial experience is limited, as she was appointed directly from a library school that offered extensive courses in preservation but little practical experience. However, she has a good theoretical grasp of general preservation issues and is eager to build the program. Penny's staff consist of five technicians: three for the preparation of materials for commercial binding, book plating, and call number marking, and two for the repair of damaged books. The technicians are at the lower end of the library's pay scale and have little library experience beyond their immediate work assignments.

The problem
Wise has located George Heron, grandson of Thomas, and he has expressed an interest in supporting the preservation of the collection. However, as a fervent believer in self-help, he insists that the library obtain funding from an outside source first. When outside funding has been awarded, Heron will match dollar for dollar what the funding agency has provided. Penny Wise must devise a strategy that will develop the preservation program, preserve part of the collection, and take advantage of Heron's offer. How should Wise proceed?

Possible solution
There are a number of ways Wise could respond to this challenge. Ideally, she should develop a long-term plan for preservation, identifying where she expects the preservation program to be in five years. The five-year plan would cover all aspects of preservation, from basic collection care to remedial treatment, and microform to digital imaging. The plan should lay out requirements in terms of space, equipment, and staffing.

She should share the five-year plan with a funding agency and George Heron, and try to come to an agreement over what parts of the preservation program to focus on. A conservation facility, for example, could be built and named in honor of Mr. Heron or his grandfather.

The external funding agency could be asked to either share the cost of the facility with Heron or fund a different portion of the preservation program, such as a reformatting operation. The need for the conservation operation must be justified in terms of the value of the Heron artifacts and/or the need for a reformatting operation. A compelling case can be made that accomplishing portions of the five-year plan will result in conservation of the Heron collection.