Preservation encompasses conservation, repair, restoration, replacement, deselection, and retention of materials in all formats. Decisions regarding the preservation of materials are not the sole responsibility of any one person or department, but rather a joint effort among individual staff members and various departments. Repair and restoration is generally the responsibility of the Cataloging Department. Binding procedures for materials not repairable in-house, but deemed worthy of retention, are the responsibility of the Serials Department. Deselection involves the removal from the active collection of materials to be discarded, stored, or transferred to a special collection.
Replacement involves the acquisition of materials previously held and deselected by the library.
Teaching faculty will be consulted when appropriate. Materials deselected for reasons of poor condition will be replaced if they meet the selection criteria, are available, and budget permits. If replacement copy is unavailable for an item still needed for the collection, every effort should be made to preserve it. Materials that contain obsolete or erroneous information and do not retain some historical, seminal, or research value should be deselected. This factor is particularly applicable in rapidly changing fields such as technology and the sciences.