On June 3 I had the opportunity to do a webcast for the American Library Association's Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), in which I discussed a number of issues related to digital preservation, stewardship of the cultural record, and the impact of the recent economic problems. The archive of this presentation (audio, and slides, such as they are) can be found at:

http://www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/events/springboard.cfm

One additional note. In the webcast, I briefly discuss some of the fine work that Professor David Kirsch at the University of Maryland has been doing to preserve business records as part of the Library of Congress NDIIPP program. A few days after doing the webcast, I had an opportunity to read his article in the journal Library Trends, "The Record of Business and the Future of Business History: Establishing A Public Interest in Private Business Records" (Library Trends, Volume 57 Number 3, Winter 2009, pp. 352-370, online at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/library_trends/toc/lib.57.3.html but access protected; note that the entire issue is on the LC NDIIPP program and is likely to be of interest to many CNI-announce readers). Kirsch's paper forms an excellent complement to my discussion of issues surrounding business records in the webcast, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in this topic.


Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI