Preservation
is the key to providing access, a cornerstone of librarianship.
Preservation
takes place in varying degrees within general,
special, and digital
collections. By microfilming newspapers, encapsulating brittle
documents, or digitizing images, for instance, information is
made available for everyone's consumption.
Whether
or not librarians are directly involved with preservation and
conservation, they promote and ensure the existence of information
in all of its forms.