Tuesday 24th October 2006

Two brief items provided information for the group to discuss the implications for our own libraries of the 2005 Heritage Health Index:

• an abstract of Yakel, Elizabeth. "Examining the implications of the Heritage Health Index" OCLC Systems and Services; 2006: 22(2), 92-96 and
• Heritage Health Index: valuable library collections at risk. Available http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6291703.html. Accessed October 2006.

The full report is available at http://www.heritagepreservation.org/HHI/index.html

This survey commenced in 2001 and was completed with the December report in 2005 with the support of the Luce Foundation and at a cost of $100,000. It provides an assessment of the condition of 4.8 billion cultural heritage resources held in 30,000 archives, libraries, museums, historical societies and scientific research insitutions.

Initial discussion was around the types of materials that are being held in Australian and American institutions in comparison to European instutions and how these would possibly contain a higher proportion of modern materials. The nature of modern materials creates archival problems.

The group discussed what is being done within our region and other Australian regions - in particular NSW and WA.

Chapter 9 of the full report discusses how preservation can be used as a tool, delivered via the web, tours and workshops, to attract donors and visitors. The article discusses this in terms of "extending the mentorship model". Local experiences indicate that demonstrating preventive conservation methods in place by means of a tour attracts donors and library users. Extended mentorship can also include Friends groups of volunteers and custodians.

Many of the American institutions lacked emergency plans. In the Territory situation, there is a high level of informal cooperation and now a formal MoU exists between the major cultural institutions.

The next Journal Club to be held Tuesday 14th November 2006 Speaker's Cafe Parliament House 9:00 - 10:00. Topic still to be announced. Please forward any recent articles which you think have implications for local practise to journal blog for future discussions.