Archival Preservation Research Articles

DNA from lake sediments reveals the long-term dynamics and diversity of <i>Synechococcus</i> assemblages

Abstract. While picocyanobacteria (PC) are important actors in carbon and nutrient cycles in aquatic systems, factors controlling their interannual dynamics and diversity are poorly known due to the general lack of long-term monitoring surveys. This study intended to fill this gap by applying a DNA-based paleolimnological approach to sediment records from a deep subalpine lake that has experienced dramatic changes in environmental conditions during the last century (eutrophication, re-oligotrophication and large-scale climate changes). In particular, we investigated the long-term (100 yr) diversity and dynamics of Synechococcus,, PC that have presumably been affected by both the lake trophic status changes and global warming. The lake's morphological and environmental conditions provided the ideal conditions for DNA preservation in the sediment archives. Generalised additive models applied to quantitative PCR (qPCR; quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction) results highlighted that an increase in summer temperature could have a significant positive impact on the relative abundance of Synechococcus, (fraction of Synechococcus, in total cyanobacteria). The diversity of Synechococcus, in Lake Bourget was studied by phylogenetic analyses of the 16S rRNA gene and the following internally transcribed spacer (ITS). Up to 23 different OTUs (based on 16S rRNA), which fell into various cosmopolitan or endemic clusters, were identified in samples from the past 100 yr. Moreover, the study of ITS revealed a higher diversity within the major 16S rRNA-defined OTUs. Changes in PC diversity were related to the lake's trophic status. Overall, qPCR and sequencing results showed that environmental changes (in temperature and phosphorus concentration) affected Synechococcus, community dynamics and structure, translating into changes in genotype composition. These results also helped to re-evaluate the geographical distribution of some Synechococcus, clusters. Providing such novel insights into the long-term history of an important group of primary producers, this study illustrates the promising approach that consists in coupling molecular tools and paleolimnology to reconstruct a lake's biodiversity history.

Within the dialog between anthropology and museums: the Reference Center for Brazilian Football

This article presents the work conducted at the Reference Center for Brazilian Football (Sao Paulo), focusing on methodological aspects of information gathering and the transfer of data to a computerized database. By using an ethnographic method to discover archives and register memories and references related to football practices, the project allows reflecting on the limits and potential of ethnography for the museological work of preservation and promotion of archives.

소량 기록물의 효율적 보존을 위한 보존챔버 설계에 관한 연구

기록물 보존챔버란 소량의 중요기록물을 안정성 높은 보존환경에서 영구보존하는 데 적합한 장비이다. 이 장비는 소량의 기록물을 영구보존하기 위한 공공기관이나 민간단체에서 기록물을 경제적이면서 안전하게 장기보존하기에 적합한 장비이다. 본 연구는 지방기록관의 기록물 보존현황 조사를 통해 보존챔버의 필요성을 분석한 후 보존챔버의 핵심부분을 설계함으로 기록물을 안정적이면서 경제적으로 보존할 수 있는 방안을 모색하였다. 기록물 보존챔버는 크게 기록물을 보존하는 보존공간, 보존환경 유지를 위한 공기정화장치부, 보존환경을 모니터링하기 위한 환경측정장치부로 구성된다. 기록물 보존공간은 외부 공기의 출입을 막고 내부공기가 순환함으로 항온항습 유지 및 유해가스 제거가 가능하도록 하였다. 이렇게 설계된 보존챔버는 소량의 기록물을 서고에서 보존할 때보다 더 경제적으로 보존할 수 있는 것으로 산출되었다.

Documenting Regional Latino Arts and Culture: Case Studies for a Collaborative, Community-Oriented Approach

Despite years of constructive discourse about documentation theory, the complex nature of identity, approaches to ethnicity, and the role of the archivist in light of postmodernism, the call for archivists to collect the documentary heritage of minorities and other historically marginalized groups remains largely unanswered. With the exception of a relatively few specialized institutions and dedicated programs, the identification and preservation of Latino archives are not keeping pace with the nation's fastest growing and increasingly geographically dispersed population. This paper presents two related initiatives, developed in dialogue over the past seven years. It outlines operational practices related to identification of collections in private hands, outreach, trust, and long-term relationships. The paper then provides a practical model and insights for overcoming the day-to-day challenges of identifying and preserving the documentary heritage of the Latino experience and challenges others to underta...

Late Quaternary floodplain reworking and the preservation of alluvial sedimentary archives in unconfined and confined river valleys in the eastern interior of South Africa

In this study, geomorphological, sedimentological, and geochronological work was conducted on unconfined and confined reaches of three rivers in the eastern interior of South Africa in order to quantify the relative rates of floodplain reworking and alluvial preservation along river courses with variable valley confinement and lithology. Using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating techniques, new chronologies for the Schoonspruit and Mooi River were created and the existing Klip River chronology was expanded. The results suggest that floodplains in both unconfined and confined reaches preserve complex spatial and temporal patterns of alluviation, although differences in boundary conditions lead to variation in the processes and rates of floodplain construction and reworking. On the Klip and Mooi Rivers where local base levels are stable, channels in unconfined reaches rework floodplain sediments through slow lateral migration punctuated by local erosion during avulsion events. On the Schoonspruit where base level has lowered, the channel in the unconfined reach is incised, the floodplain is abandoned, and a large gully has formed. In the confined reaches of all three rivers, the narrow floodplains are reworked by scour and fill activity and limited lateral migration. The OSL results suggest that unconfined reaches preserve relatively continuous alluvial records that extend into the Pleistocene, while the floodplains in the confined reaches preserve relatively discontinuous alluvial records biased toward the late Holocene. The alluvial geochronologic records in these systems preserve signals of changes in local base level controlled by variation in lithology and incision rather than climate change. By defining the processes, rates, and patterns of floodplain reworking in reaches with different degrees of valley confinement and channel incision, the findings contribute to understanding how rivers build, modify, and preserve alluvial sedimentary archives.

Materiały do przewodnika po archiwaliach hetmanów koronnych w zasobach archiwalnych i zbiorach bibliotecznych

This article is an overview of archival collections with provenance of hetman's archives, but physically separated into collections in archives and libraries across Poland (Krakow, Kornik, Łodź, Poznan, Warszawa) and also Ukraine (Kiev, Lviv). Research, which later became an inspiration for this overview, has been conducted mainly in the early 90s. In the light of the above, this article does not claim to be called a guide to the royalhetmans' archives of the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century, but it could be viewed as an outline of such archival finding aid. This overview focuses on characteristics of different types of archival material, which author considered integrally connected to holding of an office of hetman, i.e.: personal, administrative and military, judiciary, financial, and also correspondence. Qualification criteria may raise some concerns, because selection of archives is subjective by nature, but also because in the discussed time period there was social consensus on the fact that one's private life and public sphere would overlap. Most of the archival materials used in this study comes from the hetman's archives of the eighteenth century (Jan Clement Branicki's; Franciszek Ksawery Branicki's; Stanislaw Mateusz, Waclaw, Seweryn Rzewuski's and Adam Mikolaj Sieniawski's). Eighteen century is considered to be the peak of development of private archives, which - without a doubt - had great impact on the preservation of hetman's archives of that period. Moreover, the fact that there is significantly larger collection of hetman's archives of that period, compared to previous two centuries, is the result of the hetman's office having a special place within the political system of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Molecular characterisation of dryland soil organic matter: implications for preservation in Quaternary sedimentary archives

Molecular characterisation of dryland soil organic matter: implications for preservation in Quaternary sedimentary archives

“Archival Power” and the Future of Environmental Movement History

In the spring of 1998, I began work on a history of air pollution control policy, focusing on new mechanisms of local control that more actively included representatives of the public. In Pittsburgh, these new possibilities for local activism had contributed to the rise of the Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) in 1969. When I went looking for archival documents that could explain the history, demographics, rhetoric, and strategy of this environmental advocacy group three decades later, I found only strangely scattered pieces. By the late 1990s the leadership of GASP did not know if any material had ever been donated to any local archive; they were several generations removed from the original activists, many of whom had passed on, left the cause, or moved to Florida. Over the next twelve years, I attempted to chase down the records of individuals and the group. I swooped in to claim and sort discarded garbage bags full of paper when the group moved offices, and pursued material that some activists had donated to a library (which did not have any provisions for archival storage) without the knowledge of the rest of the group’s leaders (who did not know where the records had gone). The only point in time that all of the records I used to write my dissertation came together in one place, with professional archivists assessing, sorting, and organizing the material, was after I had finished the resulting book—thirteen years after the spring of 1998. I take this experience as one piece of evidence that the archival records of environmental activism in the 1960s are only now becoming ripe for historians. After all, with the transformation in the archival status of GASP records over the last decade, I can safely say that the book I have just finished would be a very different one if I were to write it today. Simply acquiring and organizing the materials consumed most of my time in the disserta-tion research. Today, with the same materials now located in professionally managed archives, I could spend more time concentrating on the context in which this organization developed its political responses to changing legal and legislative opportunities. I would also have a significantly different perspective on these materials were I to encounter them as a chronologically or thematically organized set of records inside an archive. While these anecdotal observations feel logical, when I began discussing the point with other schol-ars I became unsatisfied with my own limited viewpoint. This article results from an attempt to test out these assumptions through journalistic interviews with archivists throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. In so doing, I hope to consider the ways that “archival power” has shaped, and will continue to direct, the future of environmental history in the Mid-Atlantic.

Devotion and Defacement: Reading Children's Marginalia

The study of children's marginalia in manuscripts and printed books enables us to reassess traditional assumptions about bibliography, subjectivity, and the literary imagination in the English and American traditions. Commentaries, signatures, and scribbling defacements—together with fictional representations of young people writing in books—illustrate relationships among canonical authority, playful subversion, commodity value, and archival preservation that all contribute to (and may critique) our current fascination with book history as a discipline.

Conservation and Preservation of Archives: A Case Study of Punjab Digital Library

Archives contain millions of documents like manuscripts, rare books, paintings, photographs, and historical records. All these constitute human heritage. Paper manuscripts, with the passage of time, are getting fragile and brittle because of various reasons. Lamination does not seem to be a permanent solution of preserving this cultural heritage for posterity. Digitization technology brings with it untold benefits for heritage preservation and access. Once a document has been properly digitized, it becomes immortal and can remain accessible long after the original has ceased to exist. The option of digital access further aids in preservation of originals through reduced need for physical handling. The Punjab Digital Library is a new approach to preserving Punjab's heritage for future generations. The central digital archive, developed over the last six years, grants electronic access using powerful searching and browsing capabilities for the researcher to sift through vast amounts of data. PDL has been instrumental in digitally preserving over 2.5 million folios from 3,400 manuscripts, 2,200 book, 1,990 issues of periodicals, 5,578 issues of newspapers, 3,152 photographs, 248,000 legal documents, and some 168 hours of video recordings. The current collection of data amounts to about 15,000 GB.

Easing the Creation of Mappings between Metadata Formats

Being able to exchange metadata is the key to ensuring access to collections, establishing interoperability among collections, and between different types of cultural heritage institutions, such as across libraries, museums and audiovisual archives. Motivated by two use cases, one for audiovisual archives and one for museums and general archives, we present an approach for automating mapping between different metadata formats. The mapping approach uses an intermediate ontology and formalises the relations to each of the metadata formats supported. An intuitive web-based configuration user interface is provided in order to build and customise mappings. Based on the two use cases, we discuss two ways of applying the mapping approach: as a web service, which can be included in processes of an audiovisual archive's preservation system and integrating of the generated mapping instructions into collection management applications for museums and archives. The proposed approach reduces the effort for defining metadata conversions. It thus allows overcoming interoperability issues between cultural heritage institutions and facilitates content provision to portals like Europeana and Archives Portal Europe.

Innovative electronic publication in plant systematics: PhytoKeys and the changes to the “Botanical Code” accepted at the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne

Innovative electronic publication in plant systematics: PhytoKeys and the changes to the “Botanical Code” accepted at the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne

Elizabeth Bishop's Closet Drama

Elizabeth Bishop's Closet Drama Kamran Javadizadeh (bio) On the evening of april 11, 1973, elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill shared a stage at New York City's 92nd Street YM-YWHA. The Y had been trying to get Bishop to read there for many years; when at last she accepted their invitation, June Fortess, the executive secretary of the Poetry Center, wrote a jubilant letter of thanks to the poet, predicting, "April 11th will surely be one of the greatest evenings in Poetry Center history" (92nd St. Y Archives, Fortess to Bishop, 1/17/73). Indeed the Poetry Center did its best to preserve the evening archivally, as an historical event, an effort which was the cause, as Bishop would explain in a letter to Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, of considerable anxiety: I was very upset by an insistent photographer who just wouldn't leave me alone. After saying she wouldn't, I could actually see her snapping away from the wings and once lost my place—also I could hear a tape recorder going. So I think I've tried to obliterate the whole thing from my mind. (One Art 579) 1 What Bishop didn't tell Gold and Fizdale was that she had "tried to obliterate the whole thing" not only from her mind but from the archives of the Y as well; at her request, the audio recording that had been made of the reading was erased, and the negatives produced by Mara Pilatsky (that "insistent photographer") destroyed. That Bishop would have reacted this way is not surprising—she disliked giving poetry readings (especially if they were being recorded) and hated to be photographed—but the evening in question is not merely typical. Nor was Bishop's attempt to "obliterate" the evening from any kind of archival preservation wholly successful. In her papers at Vassar, one can find, in her hand and on the back of a postcard from the Cosmopolitan [End Page 119] Club, a list of the poems she planned to read that night. The final poem on that list is "Crusoe in England," a dramatic monologue whose newly-famous speaker is himself made anxious by "the local museum's" request to "leave everything to them." In a variety of ways, this particular poem allowed Bishop to stage (from the eminently theatrical stage of the auditorium at the Y) an intricate performance of her own identity as a recently-acknowledged cultural celebrity. That celebrity has grown since Bishop's death in 1979. Within the academy, her rapid occupation of a position of centrality has seemed, paradoxically, a function of the various ways in which, throughout most of her life, Bishop could have been described as a marginal, minor poet. 2 David Jarraway's article, "'O Canada!': The Spectral Lesbian Poetics of Elizabeth Bishop," is exemplary in its revaluation of Bishop's poetry, insofar as it foregrounds Bishop's homosexuality and makes of central concern that aspect of Bishop's identity that she was, in life, least willing to expose to public view. Here, as in much recent criticism, Bishop's sexual identity is seen as a singularly determining factor in her poetry. Jarraway argues that Bishop's is an importantly "lesbian subjectivity" and implies that her identity is divided between an authentic, lesbian, and "Canadian" self and a culturally enforced, closeted, and "American" self. Employing a psychoanalytic approach (Lacan by way of Žižek), Jarraway claims that while Bishop's true self is "spectral," and therefore elusive and nonreferential, and unlike the "fictional" order imposed by a dominant culture, in her work, nevertheless, "the spectral becomes foreshortened by the fictional in the structuring of poetic experience" (148). To be sure, Bishop's "poetic experience," like her ordinary lived one, was delimited and, at least in that way, partially determined by her relative silence on the topic of sexuality, but it would be misleading to suggest that Bishop had some authentic self that existed anywhere except in her mediation of private and public roles, all of which were in some sense culturally bound constructions. And it would be to miss a crucial feature of Bishop's poetry, to say nothing of her life, to...

A restauração na trajetória de um teodolito do acervo do MAST

O Museu de Astronomia e Ciências Afins (MAST) é um museu de ciência e técnica situado no conjunto arquitetônico e paisagístico que pertenceu ao antigo Observatório Nacional, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. No âmbito da criação do museu, o patrimônio de valor histórico ali existente, relacionado a período importante da história da ciência do Brasil, foi tombado pelo Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (Iphan) em 1986, e pelo Instituto Estadual do Patrimônio Cultural (Inepac) em 1987. Os estudos que resultaram na restauração de um teodolito da coleção do MAST iniciaram-se a partir de uma avaliação do estado de conservação da coleção de instrumentos científicos da instituição, possibilitando a seleção, segundo critérios pré-estabelecidos, desse objeto, que se encontrava em situação crítica de conservação. Seguiu-se pesquisa histórica sobre o instrumento, determinação da composição de suas peças principais, estudo sobre seu funcionamento e, finalmente, a intervenção propriamente dita sobre o objeto. O procedimento de restauração foi dividido em três etapas - conservação de peças, restauração de peças, e substituição de partes faltantes -, sendo acompanhado pelo registro fotográfico exaustivo de todas elas. Esse procedimento, implantado com esse estudo, possibilitou outras intervenções posteriores de restauração. O desenvolvimento dos estudos de conservação de artefatos científicos e, por outro lado, aquele de pesquisas relacionadas à construção de trajetórias de objetos e coleções no âmbito do Grupo de Preservação de Acervos, sediado no MAST, possibilitou identificar a restauração como momento singular dessas trajetórias.

Trusted Digital Repository Design: a Policy-Driven Approach

The “Distributed Custodial Archival Preservation Environments” project, DCAPE, proposes a framework to support institution-specific preservation policies and to build a distributed production preservation environment that meets the needs of archival repositories for trusted archival preservation services. The project focuses on the development of trusted digital repositories driven by institutional policies that can be highly customized. The DCAPE team is composed of technologists and archivists from state archives, university archives, and cultural institutions. Our approach is based on the emerging ISO/DIS 16363 standard on “Audit and Certification of Trustworthy Digital Repositories.” The services proposed follow a particular flavor of microservices and rules, based on an iRODS [1] implementation.The DCAPE framework is built on a state-of-the-art rule-based data management system. The system provides developers with the mechanism to design customized workflows as rules that will be executed by the internal rule engine. The DCAPE project hides the complexities of designing these rules and provides a user-friendly interface for users to select from the list of predefined rules to implement their policies. These policies can be applied at an institution level or at the collection level. In this paper, we will discuss the design of the framework, the preservation workflow, and the interface.

An Endangered resource: the preservation of liberation struggle archives in East and Southern Africa

The struggle to liberate the continent of Africa from colonialism during the second half of the twentieth century represented an important epoch and, as such, this history needs to be documented in whatever form for the benefit of posterity and for all, irrespective of class, as the struggle for independence was a collective effort. Accordingly, east and southern Africa's liberation struggles have been well documented over the past few decades and the efforts are still ongoing and gathering momentum as a consequence of the onset of digital technologies as custodians of this heritage battle to move with the times in search of permanence. Custodians of this unique and irreplaceable heritage are mostly political parties that spearheaded the struggle for emancipation. Ironically very few of these liberation movements possess proper archives and much of the primary material such as manuscripts, letters, photographs, publications, tapes etc is in the custody of individuals’ private archives (Mazarire 2009).

Elevated Pressure Improves the Rate of Formalin Penetration while Preserving Tissue Morphology

Formaldehyde fixation and paraffin-embedding remains the most widely used technique for processing cancer tissue specimens for pathologic examination, the study of tissue morphology, and archival preservation. However, formaldehyde penetration and fixation is a slow process, requiring a minimum of 15 hr for routine processing of pathology samples. Routinely fixed samples often have a well-fixed outer rim, with a poorly-fixed inner core of tissue. In this study, we show that the application of elevated pressure up to 15,000 psi improves the rate of formaldehyde fixation by approximately 5 to 7-fold while preserving the tissue morphology of porcine liver. The tissue also exhibited much more uniform formaldehyde penetration after 30-60 min incubation under elevated pressure than samples fixed for the same length of time at atmospheric pressure.

Image Technologies for Preservation in Libraries and Archives

Image Technologies for Preservation in Libraries and Archives

Der Einsturz des Kölner Stadtarchivs. Eine erste Sichtung der Situation aus archivfachlichem Blickwinkel

The collapse of one of the most prestigious municipal archives in Europe attracted attention all around the world. On March 3 , 2009 , the building of Cologne's city archive collapsed and fell in the neighboring excavation site of a local subway line. This article presents the chain of events from an archivist's point-of-view, calls to mind Cologne's outstanding archival holdings, and offers information regarding the rescue work and other special issues - including the need for archival preservation measures. This event raises questions regarding the security standards of archives, libraries and museums and leads most notably to calls for improving the protection of cultural heritage assets and related precautionary measures.

Challenges of Digital Heritage Materials Preservation in Botswana

The media for recording information has evolved over time. In the past, stone, wood, metal, clay and paper served as information storage media. Developments in science and technology over the past two centuries have now necessitated the transition from paperbased formats to a variety of media and further deepened the challenges of materials preservation. Increasingly, information is now in electronic multi-media form occasioned by its creation, storage and dissemination in picture, sound, text or combination of these. Information resources in the electronic era now range or exist in the form of simple text-based files such as word processing files, to highly sophisticated web-based resources such as databases, websites, mails and storage mediums such as diskettes, flush drives, CD ROMs and others. This paper documents work undertaken to assess the current practices for heritage digital materials preservation in Botswana with a view to identifying strategies and policy issues for the long-term preservation of digital materials. The study sought to establish the current situation regarding digital materials preservation in national archives, libraries, museums, media organizations and other public institutions involved in the creation, collection, and storage of heritage materials. It also investigated the institutional capacities (human and material) for collection, storage and preservation, and provision of access to digital information in Botswana. The paper further makes several recommendations on the policies and strategies for improving the state of national digital material preservation in Botswana. Keywords: Botswana, National digital material, Preservation ESARBICA Vol. 27 2008: pp. 171-202