Contributor: Ann Kearney

This year’s Preservation & Reformatting Section (PARS) Forum was held on Sunday, June 25, and featured reports on two innovative programs. The session was introduced by Chair Kris Kern, who briefly announced the two segments and their presenters. The first speaker was Katie Risseeuw, Preservation Librarian at Northwestern University, who led the second annual “Preservation in Action.” Tom Clareson, Director for the Performing Arts Readiness project, gave the second presentation.

The second annual Preservation in Action (PiA) event was held on Friday, June 23, 2017. The day-long preconference was sponsored by the American Library Association’s Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Preservation & Reformatting Section (PARS), and was held at Chicago’s Rebuild Foundation’s Stoney Island Arts Bank.

This year’s debate posed a statement to two teams, which took respectively “pro” and “con” positions on a topic. This year’s statement was: “The preservation of analog audiovisual media is the single most important preservation issue facing libraries (and archives and museums) in 2017.”