Preserving the Whole: A Two-Track Approach to Rescuing Social Science Data andMetadataAnn Green, JoAnn Dionne and Martin Dennis; Washington, DC: Council on Library andInformation Resources, Digital Library Federation, 1999. 45 pp., price not reported,softcover, ISBN 1887334688

This report presents a case study of migration as a preservation strategy. The two-trackspreservation approach described here involves converting deteriorating paper (the documen-tation) to digital form, and migrating digitized numeric data to an archival format that can beread by future operating systems and applications software. The goal of this project was todocument hands-on experience in the preservation of digital information and the accompa-nying paper records (metadata) and to collect information that can help build the infrastruc-ture necessary for its long-term maintenance.

In 1996 the Commission on Preservation and Access commissioned the Social ScienceLibrary and the Social Science Statistical Library (Statlab) at Yale to identify and evaluatethe formats that would most likely provide the ability to migrate social science statistical dataand accompanying documentation into future technical environments. The materials to bepreserved were in the Yale Roper Collection and consisted of social sciences data files incolumn binary format and accompanying paper documentation in generally poor quality. Theauthors, who head the preservation project team, stress the importance of preserving code-books along with the data sets, for without codebooks data sets will be indecipherable. Theyalso recommend consideration of system-independent archival formats.

This is a meticulously documented study, concluding with findings about data conversionand document conversion, and recommendations to data producers in their design of format.The authors provide a URL for information, including sample programs and documentsrelevant to the project. The volume contains a glossary, including sources of the glossaryterms, a list of references, and appendices. Though brief, this is an informative and inter-esting publication providing an important building block in developing a systematic ap-proach to preserving social scinces data and metadata.

Peggy JohnsonAssistant University Librarian,

University of Minnesota Libraries,499 Wilson Library,

309 19th Avenue South,Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

E-mail address:m-john@tc.umn.eduPII: S1464-9055(00)00210-4

Reference Sources for Small and Medium-sized Libraries. 6th ed.Eited by Scott Kennedy; Compiled by Reference Sources for Small and Medium-sizedLibraries Editorial Committee, Collection Development and Evaluation Section,Reference and Users Association. Chicago: American Library Association, 1999. 368 pp.,$60.00 softcover, ISBN 0838934684

A work of this sort demands a reason for existing and then an explanation of how theauthors (nine for this book) went about their business and what principles guided them. The

243Review Section / Libr. Coll. Acq. & Tech. Serv. 25 (2001) 235–245