National Library of South Africa

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National Library of South Africa

• Preservation Services

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NLSA Vision

• A leading National library and information centre
  of excellence in Africa, and the world

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Preservation Services

• The task of the Preservation Services Programme
  is to ensure that the National Library maintains
  and develops world class in-house preservation
  policy and practices, and a national preservation
  function capable of providing preservation and
  conservation services on a national basis

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Key Objectives

• Establish active and passive preservation
  measures
• Provide leadership and support to other SA
  institutions respect of preservation management
• Enhance preservation by reducing handling of
  originals

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Key Objectives II

• Establish strategic partnerships with local and
  foreign institutions
• Explore the legal, organisational, technical and
  economic aspects of digital preservation

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Operations

• Reprographic Digital Services
• Stack Management
• Conservation Services
• Both at Pretoria and Cape Town campuses
• Digital preservation (new)

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Reprographic Digital Services

• Documents too fragile to be handled or
  photocopied are reformatted onto photographic
  film, microfilm, microfiche or in digital format

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Microfilming CT
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Microfilming PT
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Microfilm scanning
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DISA project

• Digital Imaging South Africa
• Anti-apartheid publications
• Phase 1 Journals
• Phase 2 Archival collections
• National Library, National Archive, universities
  (Natal, Wits, UCT)

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Digital Preservation (new)

• Research over past years
• Participated in LOCKSS project
• Pilot project planned
• South African scholarly e-journals

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Stack Management CT

• 11 000 square metres of stack rooms
• 970 000 titles (excluding volumes)
• 2 building sites in town
• One off site storage for newspapers
• Special collections (post cards, manuscripts,
  photographs, press clippings)
• Formats (paper, digital, film negatives)

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Main Library building CT
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Cape Town campus
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Center for the Book
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Current newspapers
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Bound newspapers
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Sorting of press cutting files
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Stack Management PT

• 9 700 square metres of stack rooms
• 1 035 000 titles (volumes excluded)
• Two separate sites
• Special collections (foreign official
  publications)
• Formats (paper, film, digital)

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Main Library Building PT
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Pretoria West site
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Conservation Services

• Treatment of individual items
• Binding, book repairs restoration
• Preventive measures
• New project de-acidification

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Conservation lab
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Assistant Conservator
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Prepare for exhibitions
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Tombouctou Manuscripts
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Community Development
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Binding Book Repairs
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De-acidification (proposal)
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Vertical treater (Bookkeeper)
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2007 Challenges

• Plan move of collections to new building at
  Pretoria campus
• De-acidification system
• Digital preservation SA e-journals
• Storage needs Cape Town campus
• Training skills development

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Thank You