What this guide is for
Preservation tools help a venue, family, board, or community move from good intentions to controlled records. The work is not only collecting. It includes provenance, consent, description, storage, access, rights, risk, and a plan for who will care for the material next.
Before opening a tool
- Define the collection, property, story, campaign, or stewardship decision in scope.
- Identify the owner, donor, interviewer, rights holder, custodian, and decision authority where applicable.
- Use stable identifiers and a consistent naming system.
- Clarify consent, privacy, access, cultural sensitivity, and restrictions before publication.
Working method
Complete the work in five phases
Establish identity
Assign a unique identifier and record what the item, place, story, or project is and how it came into the collection.
Describe context
Record dates, people, locations, creators, use, condition, relationships, and the source of the information.
Protect the original
Plan handling, storage, backup, environmental protection, and emergency priorities appropriate to the material.
Control access and rights
Record ownership, permission, restrictions, attribution, privacy, and publication decisions instead of assuming possession equals permission.
Plan continuity
Name future custodians, review dates, funding needs, migration or backup steps, and what should happen if the current steward can no longer continue.
Quality check before use
- Every record has a stable identifier.
- Provenance and source information are captured.
- Original files or objects are not replaced by a single derivative copy.
- Rights, consent, and restrictions are recorded.
- The plan names a next steward and a review date.
Save, print, and control the record
Review restored browser fields before relying on them. Confirm dates and assumptions are still current, then create the finished print, PDF, copied summary, or portable document. Put the date, preparer, approver, status, and revision on records that will guide other people. A browser draft and a finished exported record are separate versions.
Do not place confidential, medical, payment-card, protected employee, investigative, or other sensitive information in a shared browser. Delete local working data when the record has been safely retained elsewhere and the browser copy is no longer needed.