A task force of scholars and librarians sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources has been investigating the crucial preservation and access issues that face artifactual collections—the information that is recorded on physical media and that forms the bedrock of evidence upon which scholarship and teaching have been built for centuries.

The task force has produced a draft report, The Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections, and is inviting interested members of the research community to comment and help shape the recommendations and outcomes of its work. The report is designed to advise academic officers, funders, library administrators, government funding bodies, and scholars on what is at stake as library and archival collections age and as demands to build digital services and collections threaten to eclipse the continued need for core preservation investments. The report can be found at http://www.clir.org, and the review period runs until June 10, 2001.