Don’t Panic! Don’t Panic!!

Today saw shocking news for the conservation world, the closing of the consdistlist.

The stupid economy has today hit hard on both a group of heritage professionals jobs, which is by far the worst aspect of all this, and also the ability for those still in work to effectively carry out their task.

I can’t really comment here on the effects of redundancies, that are sweeping the heritage world. But, I can make a short comment on the closing of the dist list.

The ConsDistList is (was) an email list for conservators around the world. For a long time it was the only international and independent forum for conservators, and to a large extent until this morning it remained so. It remains a truly visionary achievement by Walter Henry, who put so many years of dedication into making the list, and associated Conservation OnLine (CoOL) website the most significant conservation website, ever.

The ConsDistList for many of us had become our “go to guy” for information on nearly anything to do with conservation, and if you couldn’t find the information in the archives, you could simply write a request and be reasonably sure that the world wide conservation community would do what they could to help. What happens now it no longer exists is anyone’s guess!?

I include below Walter Henry’s final, and wonderful, statement to the list… and before that I’d just like to say once again, Thank you to Walter for all the hard work and dedication to the conservation community, whilst I am sure if sometimes feels as if it may be taken for granted at times, I can assure you that the distlist is, was, and hopefully will be, the backbone of the conservation community. The distlist is our support network of colleagues around the world, I am sure whatever happens in the near future, the distlist (in whatever format) will rise again.

“It has been a great pleasure and privilege to work with this community and I look forward to finding ways to continue to do so. I’ve always held that conservation professionals were, as a class, unusually committed to the cause they serve; we really do care deeply about the cultural materials we are lucky enough to work with, and that care takes form in a remarkable dedication to the
profession, to the ethical foundations upon which it is built, and to the community of practitioners from whatever discipline or specialty.

So, at the beginning of what would have been the DistList’s twenty third year it is with great sadness, but also with some sense of pride, that I finally give up this enterprise and that of Conservation OnLine as a whole. I don’t know exactly what will happen to the resources here but I have every faith that their fate will be in good hands.

I would like to thank, with all sincerity, Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources, my own department, the systems and IT staff, and most of all the directorate, who have been unfalteringly supportive of my work all these years, and I know would continue to be so were the world in just a little better shape than it is now.

As DistList tradition demands, I leave you a final accounting: As of this day, the Conservation DistList comprises 9696 people from at least 91 countries. Conservation OnLine contains, at a very rough guess, 120,000 documents, possibly quite a few more. I hope they have been useful to you all, and I hope to be of service to you as we move into the future.

onward,
walter”