Archival administrators are beginning the search for administrative tools that rationalize difficult preservation priority decision-making processes. Some are suggesting that the new appraisal literature be evaluated for its application to preservation selection. This article reviews the literature covering archival appraisal's role in the process of selection for preservation in archives, and addresses recent efforts to create archival preservation assessment and selection tools. It also provides overviews of some modern appraisal models which are intended for collections and preservation archivists who are working with selection-for-preservation issues. The author suggests that archivists need to concern themselves less with implementing preservation selection tools. They must concentrate first on understanding the values that make archival records significant, and then rationalize their preservation selection decision-making processes. Then, and only then, should the decisions' hierarchy and flow be incorporated into a preservation assessment and selection tool that is adaptable to individual archival institutions, yet consistent enough to yield comparable data.

A profusion of new preservation literature has rapidly developed from current research, technological experimentation and pilot projects, task forces, and conferences. The drive to disseminate new approaches in preservation management to practicing collections managers has also contributed to this new base of literature. This essay introduces recent advances in preservation administration and their implications for archival practice, through an examination of the preservation-related publications released in the last few years. It also confirms a growing interest among archivists in preservation ideas from other information management fields, particularly in the areas of selection for preservation, standard preservation assessment methods, preservation of electronic media, the use of digital technology in preservation reformatting, and specialized media preservation.

This article reports and interprets data collected from a 1995 survey of special collections repositories at Association of Research Libraries institutions. It covers part one of the survey—current practices in preservation management. One hundred thirteen institutions represented by 170 archives/manuscripts repositories were asked to participate, of which 143 institutions, or 84.1%, did so. This is the second largest sample of archives' preservation activities ever gathered in the United States. The goals of the study were, first, to create a base of data on the development of archival preservation programs in research institutions and interpret that data and, second, to understand the extent to which the archives and library preservation departments interact in their common mission to ensure the availability of research materials to present and future generations. The study is unique in its investigation of the interrelationships between the archival repository's and the library's operational functions. This article recognizes that there is potential for a certain amount of preservation program development and integration between libraries and archives.

The author explores the need for the Master of Archival Studies (M.A.S.) degree in the United States and its expression through the Society of American Archivists' Guidelines for the Development of a Curriculum for a Master of Archival Studies. He contends that the substantial and distinct body of archival knowledge, coupled with the emergence of new information technologies that have changed the way archives are created, maintained, and used, make an autonomous two-year degree curriculum necessary. The article examines SAA's history in educational guidelines development, the Canadian experience with educational guidelines and twelve years of M.A.S. degree programs, the growth of U.S. graduate archival education during the 1980s, and major features of the 1993 draft M.A.S. guidelines

The USMARC AMC format was developed for the control of archives and manuscripts. It is designed to organize and provide access to both bibliographic and internal collection management information. Today's USMARC AMC-supporting library bibliographic utilities and local system software focus on bibliographic aspects while support for managing internal administrative information is sorely underdeveloped. This article looks at the development of the NOTIS system as an example of one major AMC-supporting bibliographic system along with the functional requirements of archival information systems and general considerations when employing library utilities and software in archival management.

This article reports and interprets the data collected from the author's 1995 survey of 142 archives and manuscripts repositories at Association of Research Libraries institutions and their automated access practices. The goals of the study are, first, analyzing the data gathered to understand the development of archives' automated access programs and, second, understanding the extent to which libraries'cataloging and automated systems units interact with their institutions' archival repositories in their common mission of creating and maintaining intellectual access to research materials. These interactions are analyzed in areas such as automated applications development and maintenance, use of specific automated access tools, overall responsibility for program planning, and the provision of training.