Why Does Digital Preservation Matter?

In conversations with professional colleagues, I find we rarely talk about “the why” of digital preservation. We take it as an article of faith that what we do is important, so much so that we worry that we should be doing more, saving more.

Why? by Myles! on Flickr

Why? by Myles! on Flickr

Sadness arises when we hear about loss, such as when a 1990s video game company executive says “all the source code for our games has disappeared along with all the e-mail and a lot of the design documentation.” Our collective mood swings to joy when we hear about successful efforts. When the British Library captures a large batch of websites documenting the 2012 Olympics and Paralympic games, for example, happiness reigns.

Strong as our personal and professional commitment is to preservation and stewardship, we need to remember that people outside our circle can have trouble appreciating–or even understanding–our efforts. Someone I work with has a short answer to the what-do-you-do question: “I archive the internet!” she happily declares. That’s a better response than I can usually muster, tending as I do to talk about “how digital content is replacing hard copy and we need to make sure new media is kept available in the same way that books are….” (eyes glaze, smile turns too polite).

But even the snappiest answer still has trouble conveying the sense of importance and passion that most digital stewards bring to their work. This is a problem that goes beyond feeling awkward at parties. As I’ve written before, for digital stewardship to thrive as an undertaking, we need to do better in how we convey the message about its importance.

The answer has two basic parts. The first is tying into the deep reverence our culture has for books, learning and libraries. During the Library’s recent National Book Festival, I was struck by the outpouring of positive emotion. “There are so many good authors here. I don’t know why everyone in America doesn’t come,” said one grandmother. I dream of grandmothers gushing about digital preservation.

The second part is dryer but just as important. This is the need for an evidence-based business case. The 2011 Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access urged preserving institutions to articulate a compelling value proposition, stating that “without well articulated demand for preserved information, there will be no future supply.” I’m glad to say this idea is moving forward through efforts such as Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: The Balanced Value Impact Model, which outlines a method to prove how digital resources help people.

I’m confident we can make persuasive progress as long as we can keep a broad audience in mind. Personally, I’m always sharpening my digital preservation cocktail chatter and trying to change things one party at a time.

Planning for National Preservation Week 2013

As this calendar year comes to a close, I’m thinking about my favorite work highlights from this past year. I’m happy to say there have been many, but Preservation Week tops my list. For the past few years, the Library of Congress has celebrated ALA’s Preservation Week, holding public outreach events to promote the importance …

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Before You Were Born: We Were Digitizing Texts

We are all pretty familiar with the process of scanning texts to produce page images and converting them using optical character recognition to full-text indexing and searching. But electronic texts have a far older-pedigree. Text digitization in the cultural heritage sector started in earnest in 1971, when the first Project Gutenberg text — the United …

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Digital Technology Expands the Scope and Reach of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collections

I am happy to have had the chance to interview Jan Ziolkowski, Director, and Yota Batsaki, Executive Director, of Dumbarton Oaks, about some recent developments involving use of technology to enhance the institution’s collections. Bill: The Dumbarton Oaks collections are as fascinating as they are diverse, relating as they do to Byzantine, Pre-Columbian and Garden …

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Raising Digital Preservation Awareness to Combat Complacency and Fear

This post is adapted from remarks I gave to the judging panel for the 2012 Digital Preservation Award on behalf of The Signal. We were honored to be among the finalists for the award, which was subsequently won by The Digital Preservation Training Programme, University of London Computing Centre (to whom we offer hearty congratulations!). …

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Call to Action to Preserve Science Discourse on the Open Web

Fifty years from now, what currently accessible web content will be invaluable for understanding science in our era? What kinds of uses do you imagine this science content serving? Where are the natural curatorial homes for this online content and how can we work together to collect, preserve, and provide access to science on the …

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December 2012 Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter

The December 2012 Library of Congress Digital Preservation Newsletter is now available. http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/news/newsletter/201212.pdf In this issue: Digital Preservation Pioneer: Martha Anderson, Director Program Management NDIIPP Levels of Digital Preservation Candidate One Release Find out about the latest PDF/A specification: PDF/A-3 Did you know that museums had computer networks in the 1960′s? Read about a recent …

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The Foundations of Emulation as a Service: An Interview with Dirk von Suchodoletz, Part Two

This is Part Two of a two-part interview. Part One ran on Monday Dec. 10, 2012. In this installment of the Insights Interviews series, a project of the Innovation Working Group of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Innovation Working Group, I’m talking to Dirk von Suchodoletz from the Department of Computer Science at the University …

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