The American Library Association National Preservation Week is taking place between April 21–27, 2013. As part of this annual effort, NYPL is joining institutions across the country in highlighting the work of its own program as well as helping to inform the public about how to care for personal collections.

Join the expert staff at NYPL for the following programs:

Caring for Your Home Photo and Paper-Based Collections
Hear two of NYPL's conservators give their top tips on how you and your family can care for your treasures. This presentation will focus on proper housing and storage of collections in a home environment, providing simple advice that anyone can follow to prolong the life of books, paper documents, and photographs.

Preservation of Personal Media Collections and Digital Files
Unsure of how to care for your home movies, audio recordings, or other film, video or audio materials? Worried about the long-term preservation of your personal digital materials, including documents, photos, and websites? In this presentation, NYPL staff will share strategies for protecting and archiving your personal audiovisual collections and digital files, focusing on approaches that you can use at home to help ensure the survival of your materials.

Introduction to Film Preservation with NYPL's Reserve Film and Video Collection
Join us for a presentation and screening from NYPL's Reserve Film and Video Collection, where you will see illustrative examples of "before" and "after" preservation of 16 mm films held in the collection. In this introduction to film preservation you will learn about the history, scope and depth of this very special collection at NYPL. With holdings comparable to archives held within major American museums and universities, the Reserve Film and Video Collection contains over 6,000 16mm films, 5,000 VHS tapes, and 1,800 DVDs, with a primary focus on independently produced works. Particular strengths of the collection are its political, social, and cultural documentaries; experimental films; video art; animation; short fictional works; and films and videos created by and for children and young adults.

NYPL's Barbara Goldsmith Preservation Division
The New York Public Library has one of the oldest, largest and most comprehensive institutional preservation programs in the United States, with activities dating back to the 1911 opening of the landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The Barbara Goldsmith Preservation Division cares for the Library's permanent assets in all formats housed in more than ninety buildings in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, as well as a high-density preservation storage facility in New Jersey. The Division preserves both the artifacts that comprise the Library's vast and diverse collections as well as their intellectual content. Programmatic areas include audio preservation, moving image preservation, general collections care, special collections conservation treatment, field services, and the registrar's office for exhibitions, loans and special collection movement. The work done by Preservation Division staff significantly contributes to the long-term survival of the Library's renowned collections held for public access and use.