What’s Your Library Doing for Preservation Week?

Preservation Week is just around the corner and if you haven’t made plans to celebrate, there’s still time to pull something together. As the sponsor of Preservation Week, ALA has a toolkit of resources – from handouts, to free webinars (with the bonus that previous years’ webinars are archived here as well), to bibliographies of resources. All of these resources can be used to help promote preservation in your library at any time of the year, and can even be used as an event (or the event) during Preservation Week.

In addition to these resources there is also a preservation expert willing to answer your questions. She also does a monthly raffle to give away a document preservation kit to one lucky individual who asked a question! Ask Donia is a great tool for seeing what some of the current concerns in preservation are. Topics include digitization, preserving fragile types of materials, displaying archival or fragile materials, and performing conservation tasks.

While some libraries are able to make Preservation Week a big event, it by no means needs to be. Start small – send a message to your staff with links to preservation resources (you can even use link to ALA!) or put together a small display to raise awareness with your patrons. And don’t feel like you have to have an event during the week of April 24. Preservation is important year round so events and awareness should always be on your radar!