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Preserving Our Heritage aims to introduce students and professionals to readings that will help them in their studies and their professional practice. Curated by an advisory board from across the cultural heritage sectors, it offers a unique compilation of key texts from a range of international contributors, charting the development of preservation from its origins to modern day practice.
Drawing on historical texts, this all-encompassing, accessible volume provides a comprehensive understanding of preservation for librarians, archivists and museum specialists. By grounding key readings in context, Michèle V. Cloonan offers students and professionals an overview of longevity, reversibility, enduring value and authenticity of information preservation. In considering the history and context of preservation, she provides significant insight into conservation, historic preservation, moving images, and other cultural heritage institutions.
The text is divided into eleven themes designed to provide specific readings in context with this broad subject:
- Early perspectives on preservation
- Perspectives on cultural heritage
- Preservation in context: libraries, archives, museums, and the built environment
- Collections: development and management
- Risks to cultural heritage: time, nature, and humans
- Conservation
- Frameworks for digital preservation
- Preservation policy
- Ethics and values
- Multicultural perspectives
- Sustainability
Each section has historical works that form the basis of contemporary thinking and practices, readings from a variety of fields that are primarily concerned with the preservation of cultural heritage, and hard-to-find publications that shed new light on how to approach contemporary problems. Cloonan's selections and her insightful commentary on each comprise a truly global view of preservation.
1. Early Perspectives on Preservation
2. Perspectives on Cultural Heritage
3. Preservation in Context: Libraries, Archives, Museums, and the Built Environment
4. Collections: Development and Management
5. Risks to Cultural Heritage: Time, Nature, and Humans
6. Conservation
7. Frameworks for Digital Preservation
8. Preservation Policy
9. Ethics and Values
10. Multicultural Perspectives
11. Sustainability
12. Epilogue
Michelle Valerie Cloonan is Dean Emerita and Professor at the Graduate School of Library & Information Science, Simmons College.
"This volume makes a diverse array of articles and some from hard-to-find sources easily accessible for students of architecture, cultural heritage, historical conservation, book arts, and related programs of study. Taken together, the readings included here provide an excellent single-volume overview to introduce readers to the wide concerns of preservationists."
– Choice
"There is a good balance between the historic roots of preservation and contemporary challenges surrounding digital preservation [...] A sound investment for anyone seeking an overview of the field of preservation."
– Library Journal
"A wonderful contribution to the preservation literature. The readings are expertly selected and organized in a highly successful way that cumulatively tells us much about where the profession has come from and where it is headed."
– Technical Services Quarterly
"Preserving Our Heritage is an excellent collection for preservation professionals, supporters, and students, and would work well as a textbook. While it can be read selectively for one or two chapters relevant to specific concerns, as a whole it provides a well-rounded, balanced perspective on the preservation concerns of generations past and present."
– portal: Libraries and the Academy
"Highly recommended."
– Technicalities
"Overall, the book achieves its aims in assembling core texts [...] They are seminal papers and provide a solid foundation for students and new entrants into the profession. The juxtapositioning of the papers creates discussion which in turn provides an impetus for moving the subject matter forward."
– Birthe Christensen, Archives and Records
"The crossdisciplinary approach of this anthology is immensely useful and revealing as to how professionals across disciplines have been thinking and talking about longevity, reversibility, enduring value, and authenticity, among other topics."
– Christina Thomas, Brigham Young University, Journal of Western Archives
