Evolving Roles of Preservation Professionals: Trends in Position Announcements from 2004 to 2015

Authors

  • Mary M. Miller
  • Martha Horan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.61n4.183

Abstract

As research libraries continue to expand the scope of content they acquire, manage, and make accessible, the preservation charge within organizations is broadening. Libraries and other cultural heritage institutions must balance the preservation of books, manuscripts, archives, and audiovisual materials with born-digital and digitized content. As preservation challenges and strategies evolve, professional positions in preservation must also evolve to meet the needs of academic and other cultural institutions. The ability to quantify how preservation positions are changing, and to identify the required skill sets and educational backgrounds needed for preservation professionals, is central to navigating this shift. To begin to address this, the authors collected and analyzed announcements for professional preservation positions in libraries and archives from 2004 through 2015. They compared the contents of announcements between earlier and more recent years to identify potential trends in preservation employment.

Author Biography

Mary M. Miller

Mary E. Miller (memiller@umn.edu) is the Director of Collection Management and Preservation, Wilson Library, University of Minnesota Libraries. Martha Horan (martha.horan@yale.edu) is Preservation and Collection Management Librarian at Yale Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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Published

2017-10-09

Issue

Vol. 61 No. 4 (2017): October

Section

Features

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