Building the Budget: Meeting Major Funding Demands for Preservation and Security and Successfully Promoting Your Program
Funding Library Preservation and Security Programs
Jim G. Neal
Dean of University Libraries and Sheridan Director, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University

Library collection preservation and security programs increasingly compete for resources with an expanding array of rigorous collection, service, and technology needs. In a recent survey of Association of Research Libraries member libraries on preservation programs, lack of funding was overwhelmingly identified as the leading preservation challenge. Libraries are developing innovative strategies to build budget support and to attract new external funds through grants, fundraising campaigns, and entrepreneurial initiatives.

This presentation will focus on the range of preservation and security strategies now available to libraries, the infrastructure and tools needed to advance a successful program, the various audiences requiring education and advocacy, and the core qualities of a preservation effort. How each of those elements intersects with resource development activities will be discussed.

As libraries seek to expand financial support for preservation activities, there are several key issues of priority and commitment that require debate and resolution. These include: program versus projects, comprehensive versus specialized focus, local needs versus national interests, working versus special collections, in-house versus outsourced operations, traditional practices versus innovative strategies, institution versus consortium activities, one-time versus base funding, and internal versus external financing.

Institutional budgets and national preservation funding programs have fallen woefully short of the needs. New preservation demands, such as the archiving of digital resources, have only further eroded library capabilities. Few libraries have been able to integrate substantively preservation into their development priorities. Progress will require fiscal agility, innovative packaging of collection and preservation needs, and entrepreneurial strategies.