The first edition of Helen Forde's Preserving Archives was published in 2006. This second edition, seven years later, indicates that its predecessor was well received. A joint author, Jonathan Rhys-Lewis, whose brief biography on the book cover notes his experience as conservator and preservation consultant, has assisted with the second edition.
If you aren’t an archivist, don't let the title of the book put you off. This book is definitely relevant to librarians (a point made in the preface) although archivists are more conscious of preservation than are librarians because of their professional training and emphasis on keeping records. Preserving Archives is “designed to give readers the tools to manage preservation issues; it is not a manual on how to cope with every eventuality” (p. 1) and the chapter structure shows how the book does this. It starts with general topics: the importance of understanding the material that is being preserved (Chapter 2), why appropriate buildings are essential to preservation (Chapter 4), and safeguarding the building and collections (Chapter 5). It then gets to specifics, such as managing storage (Chapter 6), and managing risks and disasters (Chapter 7). The final chapter (14, “Putting preservation into practice”) pulls everything together. Two chapters (9, “Moving the records” and 10, “Exhibiting archives”) focus on two of the danger areas for collections. Chapter 13 (“Training and use of volunteers”) seems at first glance out of place in this book, but the relevance of this short chapter to preservation is identified, even though much of the chapter is of more general application. A solid chapter on digital preservation is now essential in any preservation book. Chapter 3 (“Managing digital preservation”) claims not to cover the technical aspects but does, in fact, provide some starting points and offers practical guidelines (p. 34), as also do other chapters.
The layout of this book is attractive, making effective use of concise case studies that illustrate the general points made in the text, and including a large number of black-and-white photographs. The book tends a little towards a “schoolmarm” approach, especially in its summaries at the end of each chapter, which seem to me to be unnecessary. This perhaps results from the book's roots in classroom material, noted on page xiii
I highly recommend this book. The competitor is Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler's Preserving Archives & Manuscripts, also in its second edition (Society of American Archivists, 2010). It is more focused on treatments than is Forde's book, and in this respect complements Forde's more general text. If you are adding only one of these books to your collection prefer Forde, but ideally buy both.
