Current Activities at the Council T he preservation of books The Council i involved in two activitie related to the pre ervation of book, pamphlet, drawing, and map . (Million of book and other printed material in librarie throughout the United State and the world are in variou tage of di integration becau e of the acidic content of mo t paper pr duced ince the mid-19th centur .) The fir t of the e activitie i the Council' participation on the National Advi ory Council on Pre ervation. David L. ill, the Council' Executive A ociate, erve a it repre entative on the National Council, which i advi ory to the Commi ion on Pre ervation and Acce , an agency e tabli hed with the encouragement and upport of the Council on Librar Re ource . Among its other activitie, the Commi ion i a i ting in the di tribution of a quite wonderful documentary film- low Fires: On the Pre ervation of the Human Record. Reader intere ted in renting or purcha ing thi film, or in learning more about the Commi ion' program, hould write to the Commi ion, do Council on Library Re ource , 17 5 Ma achu etls Avenue, N.W., Wa hington, D. . 20036. The film will be hown on mo t Public Broadca ting tern televi ion tation on Frida , December 11, at 10 p.m. The econd activity in which the ouncil i involved i a program pon ored b the joint committee on Ea tern Europe and oviet tudie. The pre ervation of publi hed and unpubli hed bibliographical material from the viet Union i a particularl vexing problem, e peciall a nearly all viet-period ource are printed on paper with a ver high acidic content. Con equentl , the knowledge generated by oviet ociety during the pa t 70 year i quite literally turning to du t. The problem i a global one a the proce of di integration i occurring in all librarie regard Ie of geographic location: ever copy of a book publi hed in Mo cow in 1926 can be expected to elf-de truct at approximately the arne time. Unle tep are taken to pre erve at lea t one copy, the world cholarly community will find it elf ignificantly poorer in ju t a few year . Therefore, the two joint committee and their Subcommittee on Bibliography, Information Retrieval, and Documentation, are working with various Slavic collection in thi country to a i t in pre ervation efforts. The committee and IREX are 4
exploring various po ibilitie for joint U .s.-Soviet pre ervation activitie a well.
T he cognition and measu rement of pain The recall of ymptom i an important ingredient in variou health status survey . Among all ymptom , pain may be one of the mo t widel experienced. It may al 0 be one of the mo t elu ive to tudy. It ha numerou dimen ion including, for example, inten ity, location, and quality (e.g., burning, aching). It may be sen ory, affective, or cognitive. It may be measured subjectively (e.g., by a king omeone to report hi or her experience of it); objectively (e.g., through a pre ure algometer); or by its operant manife tation (e.g., ob erving the gait of patients or the manner in which a patient ari e from a chair). Pain i e pecially difficult to mea ure becau e an important part of it appear not to be as ociated with damaged tissue. On April9-11, 1987, the Committee on Cognition and Survey Re earch ponsored a work hop on the cognition and mea urement of pain in Re ton, Virginia. The workshop brought together a variety of di ciplinary per pective 0 that each tradition could interrogate the other' under tanding of and mea urement of pain and 0 that efforts currently under consideration by the National Center for Health Stati tic for a national urvey of chronic pain might be enriched. The per pective repre ented at the work hop ranged from clinically-ba ed tudie of population undergoing acute pain (e.g., tho e undergoing chemotherapy) to national urvey of the incidence of pain (e.g., the Nuprin Pain Survey). An article ba ed on thi meeting, "Toward an Epidemiology of Chronic Pain," is currently under preparation by Stephen E. Fienberg and Robert W. Pear on. The article eek to draw on our knowledge of cognitive a pects of urvey re earch and on an under tanding of the trength and weakne e of different urvey de igns to inform current propo al for a national pro pective urvey of chronic pain. The participant at the work hop included: tephen E. Fienberg Dalla Anderson Lawren e Bradley C. Richard Chapman Kathleen Danchik
Carnegie Mellon Univer it , chair ational In titute of Health Bowman Gra hool of Medicine, Duke Univer it Universit of Washington National Center for Health tati ti VOLUME
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