According to the American Library Association (ALA), some 122,289
libraries of various types exist in the United States—public, academic,
school, corporate, medical, law, armed forces, and government.1
Yet the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) reported only 83 preservation
administrators among its 115 members in its 1996–97 report.2 Although
some non-ARL institutions also employ preservation officers, these figures
suggest that only a tiny percentage of the libraries in this country include
such positions. Another set of numbers, the rolls of the Association for
Library Collections and Technical Service’s Preservation and Reformatting
Section, shows 1,641 members: even if all of these were preservation officers,
the percentage of libraries employing such persons would still be
extremely small—considerably less than 2 percent.