Susan Hamburger126 Paterno Library

Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, PA 16802, USA

E-mail address: sxh36@psulias.psu.edu

doi:10.1016/S1464-9055(03)00077-0

Local Studies Collection Management.Ed. by Michael Dewe. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002. 208 pp. £45.00 hard ISBN0566083655.

This book aims to provide practical guidance on various aspects of local studies work andto report on developing areas of local study activity. “Local studies” is an umbrella termcommonly used in the United Kingdom to encompass collections of materials related to aspecific geographic area, usually the community in which the library is located. Suchmaterials are often used in historical and genealogical research. Other terms used for suchcollections are “local history” and “community history.” Local Studies Collection Manage-ment is modeled on the two-volume Local Studies Collections: A Manual (Gower, 1987-1991), also edited by Michael Dewe.

The first chapter, by the editor, offers an overview of local studies and libraries. Dewe alsois the author of the second chapter on resource providers. In the next chapter ElizabethMelrose explores the management of local studies collections. Jill Barber’s chapter addressesmaterials and marketing. Diana Dixon explores collection management and Eileen Home andAlice Lock are co-authors of a chapter on information access and retrieval. This chapterincludes images taken from Web sites. Nicola Smith explores the inquiries that come to localstudies collections and suggests approaches for responding. Michael Dewe concludes thebook with a chapter on the international context of local studies and their future.

Local Studies and Collection Management offers practical advice on local studies workand reports on developing areas, including family history and genealogy, digitizing localcollections, and using the Web. Although it focuses on local studies in the United Kingdom,some chapters provide information that has international application. Librarians counselingpatrons who seek to conduct local studies research, especially genealogical research, inEngland, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will find it useful.

The volume has a good index and provides biographical sketches of the editor andcontributing authors. Most chapters include extensive notes and bibliographic references.The chapter on information access and retrieval contains images from various Web sites.This book is aimed primarily at public librarians, but may be of interest to academic, school,and special librarians, archivists, those working with local history, and library schoolstudents.

372 Book Reviews / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 27 (2003) 367–374

Peggy JohnsonUniversity of Minnesota Libraries

499 Wilson Library309 19th Avenue South

Minneapolis MN 55455, USAE-mail address: m-john@tc.umn.edu

doi:10.1016/S1464-9055(03)00079-4

The State of Digital Preservation: An International Perspective.Conference Proceedings Documentation Abstracts Inc. Institutes for Information Science,Washington, DC, April 24-25, 2002. Washington DC: Council on Library andInformation Resources, 2002. 95 pp. US$20.00 soft ISBN 1887334920.

The first in a series of international symposia “to address key issues in information sciencerelating to digital libraries, economics of information, or resources for scholarship,” thisvolume contains all but one of the presentations from the conference held in Washington,DC, April 24-25, 2002, sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources’Institutes for Information Science. Warner Brothers did not approve for publication thepresentation, “How Warner Brothers is Approaching the Preservation of Its Digital Content.”

In “Overview of Technological Approaches to Digital Preservation and Challenges inComing Years,” Kenneth Thibodeau presents a complex technical explanation of the prob-lems of preserving the three classes of digital objects (physical, logical, and conceptual), eachwith different properties. He describes methods of digital preservation that alter or replacesoftware, hardware, or data. Thibodeau believes the Open Archival Information System(OAIS) reference model is too generalized for implementation and looks toward the Inter-PARES IDEF (Integrated DEFinition) process model to preserve authentic digital records.

Margaret Hedstrom focuses on three aspects of digital preservation research: needs andopportunities that distinguish current efforts from previous attempts, potential frameworksfor research, and recommendations for research programs that are methodologically andconceptually sound as well as useful to a broad community. She recommends designingresearch projects that fit into “use-inspired basic research” in testbeds of digital objects to testthe effectiveness, cost, and user acceptance of different preservation strategies.

Meg Bellinger discusses OCLC’s strategies for building their digital archive in phases,and based on OAIS. Laura Campbell gives an update on the national digital infrastructureinitiative at the Library of Congress. This consists of a master plan to test various approaches,develop partnerships in the archival community and the content distributor/creator commu-nity, and test and evaluate the partnerships to talk about the most sustainable options forlong-term preservation.

From the international community Titia van der Werf offers how the National Library ofthe Netherlands is preparing to create a mass storage system while working with IBM onlong-term digital preservation issues. Colin Webb outlines the Australian system and itsapproach using layers—different types of digital collections, stages of action (archiving, and

373Book Reviews / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 27 (2003) 367–374