About
April 26 – May 2, 2026
As a part of Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures, Preservation Week inspires action to preserve personal, family, and community collections in addition to library, museum, and archive collections. It also raises awareness of the role libraries and other cultural institutions play in providing ongoing preservation education and information.
The 2025 Preservation Week theme is, Is This Thing On?: Preserving Memory and Building Archives.
Are you hosting an event for Preservation Week? Find promotional materials here. If you would like us to highlight your event on social media, please contact core@ala.org.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is Preservation Week?
2026: April 26 – May 2
2027: Coming soon!
How did Preservation Week start?
In 2005 the first comprehensive national survey of the condition and preservation needs of the nation’s collections reported that U.S. institutions hold more than 4.8 billion items. Libraries alone hold 3 billion items (63 percent of the whole). A treasure trove of uncounted additional items is held by individuals, families, and communities. These collections include books, manuscripts, photographs, prints and drawings, and objects such as maps, textiles, paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, and furniture, to give just a sample. They include moving images and sound recordings that capture performing arts, oral history, and other records of our creativity and history. Digital collections are growing fast, and their formats quickly become obsolescent, if not obsolete.
Recognizing this need, ALA and its Association for Library Collections and Technical Services inaugurated national collections Preservation Week, May 9-15, 2010, along with national partners that include the Library of Congress, Institute of Library and Museum Services, American Institute for Conservation, Society of American Archivists, and Heritage Preservation.
Why is preservation awareness important?
Some 630 million items in collecting institutions require immediate attention and care. Eighty percent of these institutions have no paid staff assigned responsibility for collections care; 22 percent have no collections care personnel at all. Some 2.6 billion items are not protected by an emergency plan. As natural disasters of recent years have taught us, these resources are in jeopardy should a disaster strike. Personal, family, and community collections are equally at risk.
Who runs Preservation Week?
Preservation Week is managed and maintained by Core and the Core Preservation Outreach Committee.
Are there materials available for promoting Preservation Week?
Visit the Promotional Materials page for Preservation Week logos for websites, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram; for PSAs featuring the Honorary Chair; and for handouts.
Have a preservation question you’d like answered?
Contact us!
Honorary Chairs
Read more about Past Chairs and their contributions to Preservation Week
Librarian, literary ambassador, the library’s number one fan (according to himself, admittedly) and the new host of Reading Rainbow
Mychal Threets
2025
Award-winning fiction and non-fiction author, Cherokee nation citizen, and a former federal Indigenous law attorney and policy advocate
Traci Sorell
2024
Pediatrician, Scientist, activist, and author recognized as one of USA Today’s Women of the Century for her role in uncovering the Flint water crisis
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha
2023
#PreservationWeek