jan11b.indd


C&RL News January 2011  46

Jane Hedberg is senior preservation program officer 
at Harvard University Library, e-mail: jane_hedberg@
harvard.edu; fax: (617) 496-8344

BL booklet revised
The Preservation Advisory Center of the 
British Library (BL) has published a revised 
version of its 2006 booklet “Bookbindings.” 
In 20 pages, it provides an introduction to 
caring for historic bookbindings and their 
cultural significance, types of binding struc-
tures, causes of damage, and how to best 
protect, preserve, and conserve bookbind-
ings. It also includes a list of online resources 
and a bibliography.

The booklet is available as a free PDF at 
www.bl.uk/blpac/pdf/bookbindings.pdf. For 
access to other free BL booklets, go to www.
bl.uk/blpac/publicationsleaf.html.

Implementing ICS
Heritage Preservation and RescuingRecords.
com have published “Implementing the In-
cident Command System at the Institutional 
Level: A Handbook for Libraries, Archives, 
Museums, and Other Cultural Repositories” by 
David Carmicheal of the Georgia Division of 
Archives and History. The Incident Command 
System (ICS) is employed by federal, state, 
and local government agencies to manage 
emergency response activities and coordinate 
cross-agency efforts. The 208-page book ex-
plains how ICS can be used on a temporary 
basis by cultural heritage organization to man-
age emergency situations or one-time events. 
It also describes staff roles and includes 
charts, duty statements, sample forms, and a 
step-by-step incident description.

The book costs $55, plus shipping, for the 
hardcover format or $47, plus shipping, for 
either perfect or spiral bound formats. For 
more information, go to www.RescuingRe-
cords.com/ics.html.

File format guidelines
The Library and Archives of Canada (LAC) 
has mounted on its Web site “File Format 
Guidelines for Preservation and Long-term 
Access, Version 1.” It documents LAC’s digital 
content preservation strategy, the file formats 
that it will support in its Trusted Digital Re-
pository, and the rationale for selection of 
those formats at this time. Each format was 
evaluated for openness and transparency, 
the extent to which it has been adopted as a 
preservation standard, stability and compat-
ibility, dependencies and interoperability, and 
whether it has been through a rigorous formal 
standardization process. The recommended 
formats permit ingestion of content as text, 
audio, digital video, still images, Web pages 
for archiving, geospatial data, structured data, 
and computer aided design.

The guidelines are available free-of-
charge at www.collectionscanada.gc.ca 
/digital-initiatives/012018-2210-e.html.

NC digital guide
The North Carolina Department of Cultural 
Resources’ State Library and State Archives 
have mounted a new Web site about digital 
preservation. Intended to aid government 
employees in preserving public records, it 
offers a general introduction that might be 
of interest to other cultural heritage profes-
sionals. Contents include: “What is digital 
preservation?” “What can you do?” “Why 
is digital preservation important?” “Digital 
preservation as a process,” “More about key 
concepts,” “Potential digital preservation solu-
tions,” “Institutions to watch,” “Latest news,” 
“Interesting research projects,” and “Major 
funding partners for U.S. institutions.” It also 
offers a sign-up service to receive e-mail 
about digital preservation approximately ten 
times per year.

The URL for the Web site is digitalpreservation. 
ncdcr.gov/. 

P r e s e r v a t i o n  N e w sJane Hedberg