A Natural Collaboration: Preservation for Archival Collections in ARL Libraries

In-house collaboration between the archives and preservation departments of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries is not well established. This article presents data from a survey of special collections repositories in ARL member libraries, conducted in 1995 and repeated in 2006, that document the low levels of collaboration. The authors probe the history and development of preservation efforts in archives and in libraries and make a case for further examination of how the expertise and resources of archives and preservation departments can be shared in managing the preservation of archival materials.