Use-Based Selection for Preservation Microfilming

Abstract

The national brittle books program and, by extension, the development of a nationally preserved collection have followed a very narrow selection approach that excludes those portions of the nation's research libraries that are used. Sole reliance on the collection-based, or subject-based, approach to preserving brittle books has dominated microfilming activities in the nation's research libraries. Even though use has served historically to trigger other preservation treatments, such as repair, it has become practically extinct as a method of identifying brittle books for preservation microfilming and, thus, contributing to a nationally preserved collection of scholarship. The author questions the sole reliance on the collection-based approach to preserve brittle books and, at the same time, argues for the development of a more coherent strategy for the long-term preservation of brittle, circulating materials.