Providing Access and Preservation Services to Collections in Remote Storage Facilities

摘要

As libraries continue to acquire, catalog, and preserve paperbased collections, and the early promise of digital technologies to put everything online has not yet been fully realized, the need to physically retain little used analog collections has intensified. Thus a growing trend in the field of academic and public libraries is an increased awareness of the importance of remote storage facilities (RSF). A recent American Library Association meeting featured speakers who were involved with such a facility. The speakers offered tips and hints on surviving and even thriving in one successfully. The authors of this article hope that by documenting the highlights of these presentations, other librarians and staff in the planning, construction, or implementation phase of a RSF will be better prepared for the challenges and difficulties they will face when trying to provide access to and physically maintain a collection geographically distant from their main library.