No Library is an Island: Thinking More Cooperatively to Preserve our Legal Information Legacies

All libraries make choices about what we keep, since none of us have the space, staff, or financial resources to keep everything forever. We weed, stop or downgrade preservation efforts, and decline purchases all the time, relying on the assumption that some library somewhere will have, and keep, that material so we don’t have to.  Unfortunately, those assumptions no longer stand on as solid ground as they used to, as we all face the relentless challenges of shrinking budgets, space reductions, declining ILL networks, and vendor practices that impose licensing over ownership and fail to preserve their own older content. Those trends show no sign of reversing in the future, and the ABA’s recent revisions to the law library section of the accreditation standards have further removed some of the cover academic law libraries had for keeping physical materials other law libraries could not.

We are rapidly approaching the point – if we haven’t already passed it – where we can’t communally rely on the implicit promise that one of us will be the “library of last resort” for a given item and not withdraw that last surviving copy, or let it deteriorate to unusability on our shelves.  Instead of accepting the inevitability of the race to the bottom, law libraries can choose more cooperative approaches to legal information preservation, reaping practical benefits in terms of more efficient budgetary and space management as well as fulfilling our libraries’ fundamental mission of preserving access to critical information.

One such approach, collaborative collection agreements, is being undertaken by four Philadelphia-area academic law libraries with respect to steward Pennsylvania’s state and local legal history and ensure access to critical legal materials for students, scholars, practitioners and other users into the future. The Pennsylvania Collaboration is a pilot project by Temple University Beasley School of Law Library, Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law Legal Research Center, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Library, and the Biddle Law Library at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School to collaboratively collect and preserve Pennsylvania materials in print.

The first phase of the consortium's work, currently underway, will focus on primary materials, including case law, statutes, and regulatory materials. Building on a completed inventory of the member’s current holdings, each member institution will take on responsibility for specific geographic areas and the associated legal materials, providing space for storage, preferential ILL, and enhanced access to each other.  Following successful completing and analysis of the first phase, the members expect to extend the cooperation to selected secondary materials.

The members hope that this consortium will not only benefit us and our communities by ensuring that key materials are not lost, but also provide a framework for others to create collaborative collection development and preservation agreements. To that end, we plan to transparently document the process of establishing and maintaining the partnership, and offer insights to others from both our successes and our challenges along the way. Papers on the collaboration have already been presented at several conferences.

Similarly, LIPA is currently in discussions to make collaborating on collection maintenance and preservation easier by establishing a resource center for those interested in consortial arrangements, including a repository for policies, MOUs, and other functional documents. Stay tuned for information as that project gets started, and in the meantime, if you are weeding titles, consider joining and donating to the PALMPrint repository to ensure lesser-held or unique titles aren’t lost forever.

Preservation in the Neighborhood

I recently attended an excellent webinar titled Preserving and Providing Access to Historical Newspapers in Illinois Library Collections. The presenters, staff of the Illinois Newspaper Project discussed preservation and digitization best practices, how to undergo a newspaper digitization project, and what to do with newspapers once they've been digitized. They also provided an overview of the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections, a statewide repository for digitized Illinois historical newspapers, and discussed opportunities for collaboration.

The preservation and digitization best practices portion of the webinar provided practical guidance about proper storage for newspapers based on format (print and microfilm) – from ideal temperatures to container types. The presenters also referenced the Illinois Preservation Self-Assessment Program as a great guide for initial inspection of your collection. This guide is helpful not only for thinking about newspapers, but for preservation and digitization practices involving all kinds of library materials – from audiovisual to paper to objects.

The discussion of how to undergo a newspaper digitization project was both comprehensive and accessible. The presenters talked about project scale, funding opportunities, title selection, source material location, production planning, and post-production infrastructure. They pointed out the importance of ensuring that the materials intended for digitization are in good enough shape to withstand being scanned and result in a readable and usable digital copy. Researching copyright status of the materials was also discussed, with reference to the U.S. Copyright Office Public Records System as a useful resource. Among the many other helpful insights, the presenters noted that local and/or institutional history is always a great way to connect with potential donors, so to look for those connections and opportunities when considering potential digitization projects and support for the same.

It was also valuable to be reminded that the planning process can require several weeks or more depending on the scale of the project. This includes considering the infrastructure and method for providing access once materials are digitized. Questions such as “Who will host the content?” and “Will users be able to perform keyword searches?” and “What level of downloading will be available – individual pages, full articles, and/or issues?” are all key questions that should be discussed and answered early on. Time well spent thinking through the entirety of a project at the beginning will inevitably save time on corrections and adjustments later!

This webinar was not only informative and practical, but also served as inspiration and a great reminder to me of the opportunities for preservation collaboration in my own neighborhood (in my case, the state of Illinois!). My thanks and appreciation to the INP team!

Honoring Hispanic and Latin American Culture and Contributions through Preservation

Sylvia Mendez. Photograph by Richard Rivera, October 12, 2011. Image courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States spans from September 15 to October 15 each year. The timeframe aligns with the dates on which many Central American countries celebrate their independence days. To be clear, Hispanic and Latin American, or Latino or Latina or Latinx, do not hold the same meaning. The term Hispanic speaks to language, whereas Latin American speaks to geography. However, as one might imagine, it is not so simple.

U.S. observance of Hispanic Heritage Month began in 1968. For lovers of legislative history, the Library of Congress has got you covered with background on how this commemorative observance came about. Today, the Hispanic population in the United States continues to grow, cementing the importance of Hispanic and Latin American contributions to our country’s past, present, and future.

For a wealth of information on such contributions, visit this site, where numerous national cultural institutions are partnering to pay tribute. Included is the National Archives Document Display on Sylvia Mendez, whose family fought school segregation in Southern California preceding Brown v. Board of Education. The Mendez family’s story is an example of how preserved records become resources that courts, scholars, and the public rely on to understand context and the historical record that often frames later judicial reasoning.

This year’s Hispanic Heritage Month comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court granting an emergency application for stay in Noem v. Perdomo, addressing the practice of federal immigration officers relying on race and ethnicity, as well as other factors, to support decisions to detain people. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic person and the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, dissented. Judicial opinions are built on evidence and history, and archives safeguard much of that foundation. Legislative histories, agency records, demographic data, and prior court proceedings, preserved and made accessible by archivists, regularly appear in the reasoning that shapes opinions, concurrences, and dissents alike.

During this month of honor and celebration, I encourage each of us to ponder these questions. What does it mean to truly honor people and cultures? What constitutes true freedom and independence? Let us look inward and ask ourselves whether we are upholding the values we hold as our own. Preservation is not just commemorative. It is participatory in the rule of law. By maintaining accurate, inclusive, and accessible archives, we provide the sources that inform judicial understanding, illuminate lived experiences, and help ensure that courts can engage with the historical and cultural contexts that matter.