Nonprint Materials: A Definition and Some Practi- cal Considerations on Their Maintenance

NEWIDEAS ABOUT LIBRARIANSHIP are important for a number of reasons. We have entered an era in which information has a tremendous bearing on the evolution of our society, and in which the library as a traditional information source has been challenged by new information providers. Technology has been directed to meet the information needs of society, methods have been developed for storing astronomical amounts of information in relatively small spaces, and information often can be retrieved almost instantaneously. At issue in all this is the fundamental role of the library, since libraries, as social institutions, cannot remain unaffected by change. This is particularly the case with the emergent information technolo-gies which challenge libraries to respond to technological change. A number of prominent library theorists have offered their own observa-tions on this subject, observations that are as divergent as they are important.1 If we are to assess the library profession’s response to technological innovation, we must include the role of nonprint collections in the overall picture. While there certainly has been an agreement in princi-ple that information comes in a variety of forms, most libraries (espe-cially academic libraries) have in practice done a poor job of handling nonprint materials. That little attention has been given to the conserva-tion and preservation of media materials, in fact, typifies the basic neglect of nonprint materials themselves