7. Preservation

The library must be equipped with adequate and frequently maintained machinery, including copying facilities. Every recording selected for preservation should be copied for use, and the original then carefully protected. Production staff should not be permitted to cut up archive material for insertion in new programmes; they should copy it.

Expert advice on storage conditions should be available from within the organisation itself, because the archivist's problems will have been encountered already by his technical colleagues. Whatever is arranged (disposition of the racking, temperature, relative humidity) must suit the staff as well as the material, since the former is closely engaged with the latter. It is also suggested that in practice the main factor in the preservation of material is less the conditions in which it is stored and more the way in which it is handled.