The Conspectus, part of the National Collections Inventory Project (USA), is used to described and evaluate the depth and scope of library collections. Together with the Gourman report (a ranking of undergraduate programs), the associated research council's assessment of doctoral research programs, and local academic program assessment, it was used at Yale University to identify areas of the collections where preservation needed to be intensified. The way existing preservation efforts were expanded is described. The most time-consuming part was determining which titles had already, somewhere in the world been micro-filmed or reformatted. The preservation scope news, being developed for use in the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) was not yet in place).