Submission Deadline: 30 September 2020

IFLA JournalBest Practices for physical and digital storage

IFLA Journal, IFLA’s Preservation and Conservation Section, and PAC Centres are pleased to announce a call for papers for a special issue focused on storage as a strategic long-term function of libraries, including practices for physical and digital collections based on risk, value, and cost in terms of institutional mission and resources.

Storage of collections and information in ways that support their availability and accessibility is an ongoing requirement, and in many cases a very challenging requirement, for libraries around the world. It tackles both technical and organizational challenges and requires a good understanding of process management. Consideration of many factors are needed to determine how best to provide secure, reliable, and sustainable storage and access solutions in light of budgetary limits, environmental impacts, and the near term and long range goals and obligations of a particular library, archive, or information organization.

IFLA Journal invites papers for a special issue focused on strategic practices for long-term storage and access of both physical and digital collections. Papers should be written in English, of 5,000-10,000 word length, and have an abstract as part of the paper.

Guest Editors:

Reinhard Altenhöner
Deputy Director General
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Germany

Jacob Nadal
Director for Preservation
Library of Congress
United States

Papers should explore the general topics of:

  • Storage and access strategies and requirements for different types of collection, physical or digital, such as general published works, pre-print or unpublished works, rare or special collections, or collections with various usage restrictions.
  • Security issues for storage systems, or for different types of collections.
  • Balancing the goals and requirements for a storage strategy with the costs of storage and sustainability practices.
  • Deciding between commercial solutions, cooperatives and partnerships, or sole institutional responsibility for various storage strategies.

Topics of special interest related to physical collections storage are:

  • Best practice for one of the major climate zones (e.g. tropical, subtropical, temperate, or cold) in terms of temperature, humidity, light, and pest control.
  • Additional requirements for general, rare, or special format collections for these zones.
  • Security issues for different types of collections, such as by format, rarity, market value, ideological or political content, for example.

Topics of special interest related to digital collections storage are:

  • Best practice for security, access, reliability, and cost.
  • Requirements for multiple copies and locations including, light, dim, or dark systems.
  • Best practices for using commercial vendors, cloud storage, or institutional repositories.

Submission Deadline:

Articles for the special issue should be submitted to IFLA Journal for peer review before 30 September 2020.

How to Submit a Manuscript

IFLA Journal is hosted on ScholarOne™ Manuscripts, a web based online submission and peer review system SAGE Track. Please read the Manuscript Submission guidelines, and then simply visit the IFLA 

Journal Manuscript submission webpage to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is possible that you will have had an account created.

All papers must be submitted via the online system. If you would like to discuss your paper prior to submission, contact one of the guest editors or the journal’s Editor, Steven Witt.

For instructions on formatting your manuscript please consult the submission guidelines.

 

About IFLA Journal

IFLA Journal is an international journal publishing peer reviewed articles on library and information services and the social, political and economic issues that impact access to information through libraries. The Journal publishes research, case studies and essays that reflect the broad spectrum of the profession internationally. All articles are subject to peer review. Articles are published in English. Abstracts are translated by IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) into the other working languages of IFLA—Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Russian or Spanish—for publication.

IFLA Journal is published by Sage Publications and is the official journal of IFLA, and has an international readership consisting of academic institutions, professional organisations, and IFLA Members who all receive a free subscription to the journal.

Each issue of  IFLA Journal is made available Open Access upon publication on IFLA’s website. Authors are also encouraged to make the accepted version of their manuscripts available in their personal or institutional repositories.

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