Preservation week and Kimball's oral history project

The Prairie Tales Oral History Project is a vital part of collecting and preserving the history of the area – Kimball County and the surrounding area. Interviewers have been active and have collected about a dozen stories.

Preservation Week is April 26-May 2, 2015. During Preservation Week, libraries all over the country present events, activities, and resources that highlight what we can do, individually and together, to preserve our personal and shared history. Memories and treasures should last a lifetime and be passed on to future generations. Preservation Week is designed to highlight this need. Sponsored by the ALA’s Association of Library Collections and Services and partner organizations, Preservation Week will inspire actions to preserve personal, family and community collections of all kinds, as well as library, museum and archive collections. For more information, visit http://www.ala.org/preservationweek.

“Preservation Week was created in 2010 because some 630 million items in collecting institutions require immediate attention and care. Eighty percent of these institutions have no paid staff with assigned responsibility for collections care; 22 percent have no collections care personnel at all. Some 2.6 billion items are not protected by an emergency plan. As natural disasters of recent years have taught us, these resources are in jeopardy should a disaster strike. Personal, family, and community collections are equally at risk.”

Why Do We Need a Preservation Week for Collections? We know the current economy has severely impacted most institutions’ progress in preservation. A key conclusion of the survey done by the 2004 Heritage Health Index was that people at all levels of government and the private sector must take responsibility for the survival of these collections. An essential step is strengthening everyone’s awareness of the importance and scope of preservation needs. The 14,500 institutions surveyed represented a population of 30,827 libraries, archives, and museums. The following is an edited, minimized version of the results of the survey.

- U.S. cultural heritage institutions hold at least 4.8 billion items. Libraries hold 63 percent of these—more than 3 billion items of all kinds, including digital items.

- An estimated 1.3 billion items are at risk - in need of treatment to be stable enough for use or of improved enclosures or environment.

- Eight percent of U.S. libraries, museums, and archives have no paid staff for collections care; 22 percent have no staff at all for this important function.

- Approximately 80 percent have no plan for, or staff trained to respond to collections emergencies of any kind.

- Forth percent of surveyed institutions have no funds allocated for preservation.

- Among collections whose condition is known, 78 percent of unbound items, 28 percent of historic objects, and 20 percent of digital and online files were at risk in 2004.

- In 2005 a small pilot survey to assess the needs of digital materials was carried out showing 92 percent of respondents created digital assets from physical source materials—significant amounts from on paper items, books, audio and video recordings, microfilm, and objects. Nearly 40 percent said the majority of items in their digital collections are unique, single-copy items. 88 percent were acquiring digital assets.

- Of these, 71 percent had no written plans or procedures for creating and preserving digital resources. 30 percent of surveyed institutions allocate no funds to digital preservation.

How does Kimball Public Library collections’ preservation needs fit this assessment? The library also has a variety of materials, but mainly books, newspapers, microfilm, audio and video cassettes and unbound papers. There are plans to digitize much of the materials collected and make them accessible to researchers. There is no paid staff, trained staff or funds to help preserve the materials. Volunteers work weekly to continue the collections that were started by updating obituary files, history files, stories of the people and area through oral and written histories, (current oral histories are being saved to computers, discs, and transcribed to hard copies). The library holdings are exceeding the space available for storage and there is a lot of work that needs to be done. If you are interested in this project by working through the Plains Genealogy Society or the Oral History Project, please contact the library at 308-235-4523.