A few weeks ago I was honored to attend the National Digital Stewardship Alliance meeting. The NDSA was planned by the Library of Congress as part of their NDIIP project.  There were more people there than I expected and it was a humbling experience to hear some of the brightest and most creative brains in Digital Preservation speak.

The high volume of information was overwhelming.  I spent more than six hours at the end of the conference compiling a PowerPoint of the important research highlights.   A small sample of this information is included below.

There were many wonderful presentations giving case studies on how institutions used their own creativity to try and enhance the longevity or migratability (new word?) of their digital files.  The amazing work often was done on a shoestring which though unfortunate, also forced a certain level of imagination and invention.

A few examples are:

Jack Brighton, of campus radio station WILL, gave a wonderful presentation on what a small station is doing to make their civil rights collection more accessible.

Kickstarter.com did a great presentation on how they are helping arts projects get funded and we hope that as they branch into community work that digital preservation might fit into that.

The UK Web Archiving project covered some of the complexities and true effort that it takes to try and tackle capturing the online history of its nation.   http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/

- As of December 2010 – 9 million sites with .uk, probably 1M more

- 10,027 websites archived

- Need skills in Linux, Java, Hadoop, and SOL

5 keys processes to web archiving

- Selection

- Harvesting

- Storage

- Preservation

- Access

http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/ngram/

So after taking in all this good information, what is it that I have left the conference with?

People just like us are doing some wonderful problem solving out there.  There is some potential being unlocked, but there is so much to do.

As I see it the Action Items are:

1)    Greater broadcasting of the successful case studies for migration and open solutions.

2)    Training classes in how to boil this down for each type of format/issue.  The NDSA Outreach group held a session called “Digital Preservation in a Box”.  This is the beginning of standardizing the tools that we need.

3)    Overarching education to information and production professionals, as well as, the general public about the dangers of digital fragility and the need for migration (at the least).

I have mentioned to my classes for years that future anthropologists, sociologists and historians will have little to sift through from the late 20^th century.

Some of it is being worked on by archivists now but much is gone.  Let’s keep making progress so that the future of our current history is not lost, like the way of silent films.

More informational tidbits from NDSA:

Other Great Projects

—       ThatCamp.org

—       http://www.scola.org/scola/sampledigitalarchive.aspx

NYPL Labs

—     http://search.creativecommons.org/?q=nypl+map+rectifier&sourceid=Mozilla-search

—     http://menus.nypl.org/

Archiving Facebook

Grad student designed Firefox add-on for individual archiving of Fb.

www.Bit.ly/archivefb

Preserving Virtual Worlds

—      www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/17097

Cool Tools

—  http://www.google.com/landing/historypin/

—  http://blogs.yu.edu/cpa/2011/02/23/open-source-video-platforms-kaltura-vs-entermedia/

Great Quotes

—    JackBrighton”(DAM) is more like an appliance than an Ecosystem.”

—    Michael Nelson “We need to raise the level of user expectations.”

—    Michael Nelson “In all good computer science functions you solve the problem through indirection.”

—    Wheatley and Frieze “The world does not change one person at a time.  It changes as networks of relationships form among people        who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible.”

—    Tim O’Reilly(?) “Teach preservation as a mindset.  Bake this into the tools.”

New Phrases

—    Social Curation

—    Metadata Ecologists

There has been much written recently about digital fragility. Researchers and archivists have heard dueling longevity and futuristic projections. In trying to push this dire need without appearing like Chicken Little, I have embarked on serious primary research to expose the sheer volume of the problem. The in-depth article will be coming out in a professional journal within the year. Until then, I felt that I needed to speak up a bit about the need for our activism.

Between my teaching digital archiving courses and my work with clients, this issue has been prevalent in each work day. In fact, while re-processing an archives for a client, a case of 5 ¼” floppy discs were found. No one in-house knew exactly if these were of value, what was on them or even if they were created by the organization. When we offered to open them on a computer with a floppy drive, we were told just to throw them out. This is the fear that archivists are living with. Each time an archivist approaches this obsolete media, the questions come: How many others are out there? How many are being thrown out because it is easier? How many are left? How long do I save them? If I am able to find a player/drive/ etc. will I be open the software that the data is formatted in? Will it even be playable? Are we missing decades of human knowledge? How long will this continue? How can archivists slow down the moving train of media change? Can archivists increase re-formatting awareness? Is reformatting my only option? Where does emulation stand? Who do I call? Who do I write? How do I make a difference in this loss that flies in the face of everything my profession holds dear?

A colleague, Tom Featherstone, once told a class “Archivists get paid for throwing things out.” After the horrific silence, he explained that we cannot save everything. Archivists place value on what is received, appraisal occurs and the kernels of importance are retained.

In today’s Digital Age, few are seeing the kernels, the wheat, and perhaps even the farm!

A recent IDC/UC San Diego study estimated that the average American is taking in 34 gigabytes of information per day. As an archivist, let’s think about the volume of data that is being created and disseminated. If even half of one percent were historically significant, we still have a large preservation problem.

The loss of corporate, academic and personal data from the late 1980s to the current time is tragic for future generations of historians, technologists, anthropologists and sociologists. We are nearing twenty-five years with little implementation of preservation processes. This is not to say that Archivists have not offered plans. This is to say that they are not being followed. In pure sales terms, we have NOT “sold” the crisis to the people. This is not to imply that the issue is not real, it means that the dry facts were not enough to convince people of the crisis. More facts had to be gathered. Now a true implementation plan with typical business practices needs to be created.

Here are the options:

1) Do nothing and continue to sweep up after mass dumps of data. Process what passively comes to us. Complain a little (or a lot) and do the best that we can with the little that we receive

2) Be moderately proactive to educate the general public on the loss of human knowledge. Start education workshops at local archives, issue press releases individually and work at the grassroots level to educate your donors and users.

3) Be passionately proactive and begin a coordinated media campaign aimed at the public and the computer industry to work with archivists, historians, sociologists and anthropologists to stop the destruction of electronic records on all media. Work this campaign hand in hand into a reformatting program that is easy. Much like the environmentalists needed to educate consumers (e.g. “Reduce Reuse Recycle”). Catchy phrases work.

One of the biggest complaints leveled against our largest member associations is that they do not get involved in the issues that are most impactful for our day to day work. There is NOTHING bigger to archives than this, right now. Member associations are built on exactly that, their members. We can choose to have a voice.

How each professional decides to act on this data is an individual choice, but a large percentage of archivists and other professionals impacted by this severe and irreparable data loss would be a dominant force in the media, to donors and to the computer industry.

For twenty five years, archivists have been that little chick crying about disaster. It is time we grew up and became the rooster at the farm, crowing for the populace to wake up.

In an age where music is so easily copied and accessed, it’s hard to imagine that any valuable recordings could ever be lost. But a new study predicts a grim future for millions of recordings across America.

The National Recording Registry was established ten years ago, following the passing of a congressional bill. The purpose of the NRR is to “maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant, and for other purposes” (Public Law 104-474; H.R. 4846). Recently, the NRR released a 181-page report, The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States: a National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age. This report was the first “comprehensive, national-level study of the state of sound recording preservation ever conducted in the U.S.” 130 years since the invention of the phonograph, it’s about time the subject was addressed.

The report found that an estimated forty-six million recordings are held in American libraries, archives, and other institutions. Efforts made nationally in collecting and creating recordings are not matched by efforts to preserve them and this puts recordings of all types at stake. Furthermore, inconsistent local, state, and national laws have caused a “lack of national coordination… in addressing the challenges of preservation, professional education and public access.” The report states that not enough is being done to prevent a “permanent loss of irreplaceable sound recordings in all genres.”

Why does all of this matter? While most commercial recordings are not at stake at being lost, millions of recordings of performances, interviews, and broadcasts are at risk. So while the average Joe doesn’t have to worry about his precious Eagles and Zeppelin records ever being irreplaceably lost or damaged, scholars and historians face losing incredibly valuable resources. Someone conducting a study on race relations, for example, might use recordings of Minstrel shows as to demonstrate the willful acceptance and ignorance of racism in the late 19th century. A researcher for a film, be it a documentary or historical drama, might need to find old radio broadcasts for a project. The need for access to obscure recordings is far-reaching.

A huge part of the sound recording preservation problem is the “restrictive and anachronistic” copyright laws currently in place. Ironically, the copyright laws designed to protect recordings are essentially destroying them, by heavily restricting preservation methods. The report explains, “All US recordings, both commercially released and unpublished, created before February 15, 1972, are protected by a complex network of [copyright] laws.” As a result, any recording made before 1972 will not enter the public domain until 2067—95 years after the bill was passed. So, for example, a recording made in 1900 will not be able to legally be copied without permission until 2067, or 167 years after its creation. There’s no question that a considerable—if not irreparable—amount of decay will happen in that timeframe.

The good news is that copyright laws are not widely enforced, and library and archive facilities have some leeway in preservation and digitization. However, without legal rights to sound recordings, many institutions cannot procure the funding needed to restore and maintain their own collections.

Initiating a nation-wide study on the subject of sound preservation was a good first step on tackling the issue. What should be done next? Change the copyright laws, obviously. And while it would take years or decades to make copyright laws relevant to the digital age, librarians and archivists can take action in the meantime. The study states, “an individual representing one institution has noted that, unless or until instructed to cease and desist certain practices, his organization was compelled to ‘fly under the radar’ to support its mission.”

Awareness of the issue can also be a huge step in fighting loss of sound recordings. Educating record collectors and owners of original recordings on how to maintain and store their collections could go a long way in ensuring a better outlook for sound preservation.

A recent question posted on the AMP blog, “Is preservation cost-prohibitive?,” made me think about costs related to archives in general. As a former corporate archivist, I am painfully aware of budgets and bidding out work! Now that my shoe is on the other foot, and I am consulting in the field, the issue is even larger for me. When I was the “client” and was requesting bids for work, I (and my coworkers) were always concerned by the process. We knew many vendors were underbidding to get the work and that could pose a financial risk for them if they got the project. We also were forced to consider those bids because there was quite a bit of paperwork to do if the lowest bid was not selected. In the end, we could often work around it by choosing the firm with the most expertise in an area as long as their bid was not too much higher than the lowest one.

It’s easy for a client to forget about the hidden costs of operations related to projects. There are often random emails with questions, monthly or more frequent conference calls, technology testing or review, on-site meetings or visits, etc. All of these items take up staff time – and not just a little bit of it either – it really adds up. I think many clients might be shocked if they realized exactly how much time. Often a fair amount of this time can be billed back as project management time, but only if the client is willing or that category has been built into the project.

I recently took on some work that was priced out on a per-item basis. This method really made the most sense since there was a huge quantity of digital files to review. As any vendor would, I priced the project as low as I could while still hoping to cover any time required for emails, phone calls, meetings, technology issues, etc. Luckily for me, so far my pricing seems to be working for me and for them.

The project brought up another interesting financial concern though. The quantity of items is so high and the quality isn’t always great, that the client and I started to wonder if there was a better way to upload fewer items so as not to flood their database with useless information. I think I have found a workable solution, but the main issue with trying to cull out the bad items was the time required to do it and the cost associated with that. It’s a pure and simple appraisal issue along the lines of “More Product, Less Process,” although this time it’s “More Process, Less Product!” It’s been a unique budgetary issue for me and my client in that it could easily be cheaper for them to add thousands of images to a database rather than to review the images and pick the best ones – or more importantly, to delete the bad ones.

In the end, I employed some digital photo software that allows quick-ish review and refoldering of files so that I can at least remove the “worst of” images for the client. The system isn’t perfect, but in the end, I needed to present a plan to the client that would save them money. It didn’t make sense to have the project cost more money to give them fewer images even when fewer images was more desirable. Now the project is a mix of hourly review time and per item upload time (engineered never to exceed what the total upload time would have cost if no review was done), but the client is left with better quality images and a slightly cheaper overall cost.

Back to the question at hand: Is preservation cost-prohibitive? I guess it certainly can be – as can any archival procedure, but in the end, that’s what Archives are for – preserving and making available items of historical importance. Let’s just hope that all the holders of the purse strings continue to agree!

In a national economy in which double-digit unemployment figures travel in the opposite direction from the signs that things are said to be improving and a local economy that would jangle the nerves of the most fiercely optimistic, I am frequently riddled with doubt as to my decision to return to school for the academic qualifications to do something I truly enjoy. It was easy to buy into the notion of getting paid for doing a job for the sheer happiness it brings. I didn’t anticipate that timing is everything and having the know-how, energy and desire to take on an all new career was only half the battle.

Recently, while enjoying the company of my three granddaughters during their weeklong break from school, I was reminded why I decided to enter library school and select archival administration as my area of study. As usual, the eldest of the girls was shadowing me, eager to help with any little thing I asked her to do. I sent her to the spare room where she was to take a good long look and devise a plan to organize the boxes and boxes of stuff stacked among the cats’ toys, feeding dishes and litter boxes. After a few minutes she returned with her report. “There’s a lot of stuff in there, she said, but I found a box full of CDs.” I immediately wracked my brain in an attempt to remember if I had been remiss in the clutter-reducing organization of the CDs and DVDs I had painstakingly organized into albums.

Anticipating my next request, my granddaughter left the room and quickly returned holding an old milk crate filled with individually boxed audio cassettes. One glance at the plastic crate and I was instantly reminded of the reason I had upset the status quo by leaving behind a reasonably well-paying job and switching my academic focus to continue on in graduate school. “Those aren’t CDs, I said. “They are cassette tapes recorded by your great-grandfather, and they are in need of processing, along with the rest of his collection.” If at that moment my granddaughter didn’t quite understand what I meant, by the time she returned home at the end of the week, not only had she become somewhat acquainted with the great-grandfather who died shortly before she made it to 3 years old, she attained a basic understanding of the important role archivists play in the preservation of history and culture, and she began to comprehend why her Nana always gets a little misty whenever we go through the dozens of boxes, albums and other containers filled with photographs of people she will never actually meet.

To quote my esteemed mentor, “as archivists we wear multiple hats.” Our professional responsibilities require us to step away from the photographic and/or moving images in our personal collections and devote our time and energies to the clients and organizations from which we endeavor to earn a living. When we are presented with a collection, we delight in the discovery of the information contained therein. Our sense of history is sharpened (or dulled) when set upon a path to learn something new and/or review, organize and disseminate what we already knew. As we focus on these bread and butter tasks, the records of our personal histories all too often get short shrift, and containers filled with items in need of organization and care are left to languish and suffer the deterioration that results from the necessity of putting off until later the donning of the hat we wear as preservers of our family histories.

For most of his life, my father was a musician. He played music, wrote music, breathed ate and drank music – all the time. Although he earned a living as a civil servant, he never strayed far from his first love. He had been a music teacher and a choir director, an actor and a playwright, a lay minister, videographer, photographer and a broadcaster. He had also performed in prestigious productions and with some of the most legendary names in the business. But what my father really, really loved to do was sing, and boy could he sing! My earliest and best memories include the velvety sound of Dad’s rich baritone voice singing from one of the many American musicals he counted among his favorites. Contained among the scores of audio cassettes my granddaughter recovered from the spare room closet is a series of lecture concerts on the history of the American musical theater from 1866 to 1970, Dad’s recreation of his doctoral dissertation. Imagine my surprise when making this discovery. To say that the processing of my father’s collection will be both an arduous task and a labor of love seems inadequate upon the realization that Dad’s audiocassettes, photographs and sheet music very likely hold a cultural, historical, academic and possibly commercial value beyond family sentiment and the enormous pleasure I receive from hearing that rich, velvety baritone waft from the speakers of my stereo.

As I embark upon the journey represented by processing my father’s collection – a journey which will doubtless be filled with twists, turns and bumps in the road – I ask myself one question: Which hat do I wear now?

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my father brought home our first computer. It was a Mac. I can’t recall which model it was, but it was an all-in-one box with a screen the size of a small Kleenex box (I only wish I was joking!). Initially I was suspicious of this computer: having been raised on a steady diet of science fiction and comic books, I knew what computers were capable of. But my father convinced me that computers are only as smart as the person who programs them, so I gave in, turned it on, mastered the mouse and became addicted to computer gaming.

There was one game in particular that I liked. I can’t remember what it was called, but I created a group of witches, elves and trolls and we went on adventures: slayed dragons, defeated evil overlords, rescued princesses – that sort of thing. It was like a single-player, kiddie computer version of Dungeons & Dragons. I loved it, but I was also very bad at it. The computer won every time.

Then one day I had a brilliant idea: I would save my game, build up amazing gaming skills, go back to the game and beat the computer! It made perfect sense to my 12-year old mind. Pesky questions such as how I would obtain these awesome skills and how long it would take never crossed my mind. So I saved the game and did other things on the computer. Around that same time a relative gave me a book on calligraphy and I took that up, eventually becoming so consumed by it that I forgot all about my saved game on the computer.

Years passed by, Dad brought home a new computer and the computer with my saved game was relegated to the basement. Eventually I went to college, got a job and moved away. But before I did I asked Dad if I could take computer with me. He said sure (and probably though, “Yes! That useless thing is finally out of my house!”). Now it sits in my basement, with a game saved on it since 1986.

What do I do with it? How do I access it? Why should anyone care? I admit, that last one is a great question. But what if you were a researcher of late 20th century pastimes? What if you wanted to study how children spent their free time or how they experienced the first personal computers? Suddenly the box collecting dust in my basement is more interesting.

But what are the chances that the library or archive will have the technology to access, preserve and make available the computer’s data? We all know technology has changed rapidly since the mid-1980s (5-1/4 inch floppies anyone?), but there are also different standards. My first computer was a Mac. So not only must a library or archive be able to handle old data, it must be able to handle data in a variety of formats.

Nor is the issue likely to resolve itself any time soon. Although for many business applications the PC is the only option, many in the arts still use a Mac. Libraries and archives that cannot access Mac data will severely limit the research that can be conducted on late 20th and early 21st century digital art – and that’s just one example.

Yet I doubt any library or archive will “have it all.” There’s simply not enough funding to plan for all the different storage mediums and files. One option may be libraries and archives developing expertise in niche areas – for example, a library may have the technological ability to provide access to IBM AS/400 files from the 1990s but not for digital arts files from the 2000s – but this is unlikely as it is a direct contradiction to current collection development policies. Libraries and archives collect on specific subject matter or people, but most people don’t make technology decisions based on which files will be easier for archivists to preserve and make accessible in the future.

To meet these various accessibility needs, we may see the emergence of a new type of vendor: one that specializes in access and preserving old data in a variety of formats (for a fee, of course). In a way, this is already happening. Small libraries participate in union catalogs, and the host often has digitization capabilities. DALNET is a great example: the Library & Archives of the Detroit Institute of Arts had DALNET convert 45 rpm records to digital format that can now be accessed via the library’s online catalog.

In the meantime, I plan to keep my old computer in the basement. Who knows? Maybe some day I will develop amazing gaming skills.

In teaching multimedia archive,s I think about the future of our content constantly. Like a new mother, I fret for its security, growth and health. What is THE answer for our degrading media, emulsions, for our software obsolescence and our equipment falling down around our ears?

Recent discussions on the AMIA listserv brought new energy to this discussion and I wanted to put my spin on this. The subject line was “What’s Not Cool About Cold?” and it solicited some serious discussion about whether we have made a horrible mistake for a generation of archivists and content.

Jim Lindner argues that the imminent demise of tape players is more important in an archivist’s preservation decision than our focus on the imminent degradation of the media itself. The latter being our big decision to place much of our media in cool or cold storage. The group discussion mentioned the fact that many of our players are no longer supported by their manufacturers and the simple math that the lack of machines and the existing wear on their parts will not even cover the playback of the volume of archival tapes awaiting…migration? This hits a deep reality. Have we lost hundreds of thousands of hours of archival motion under our watch? Maybe even millions or billions of hours?

With the current demand from patrons increasing and the desire to use motion outtakes, news, etc. for historic documentation this is a disappointing state. Motion is powerful, emotional and immediate. It puts patrons in the experience in a way that to the visual human being is dramatic.

This important discussion on the listserv was a strong exchange which took place over several days. Other important points included the argument that the research on degradation and proper handling has made the tape degradation less of an issue and now the issue is playback for migration and access.

Other points included:

1) The need to get these gems a proper venue to be seen (whether due to money or rights issues)

2) The natural evolution of gathering obsolete machines from production facilities and creating some centralized site for archival institutions to use.

3) How to custom make parts so that we can maintain the machines so that we can transfer the content.

4) Wait for a miracle technological innovation to happen in the next 20-30 years so that you can migrate. (Keep them cool until then).

We come back again and again to the complexities of managing archival multimedia. The next generation of archivists will have changed their paradigm and released themselves from the desire to preserve the artifact. I am not condoning refusing to preserve all originals but our focus as far as video tape and digital files will be on content migration.

Other formats still have certain inherent value and that is a different blog posting!

Future archivists will have a much better long-term understanding of what is an artifact and what is intellectual content that needs to be migrated. They will be more adept to the rapid pace of format change and will HAVE to adapt quickly.

Not that I am faulting us. We are the transitory archival generation, the one that bridges the 100 year film format and the thumb drive.

I agree that the great research done in the field has helped us to minimize that problem, but it does seem that we took the eye off the ball a bit on migration. We cite lack of funds, lack of understanding of the urgency by the non-archival world, the frustration with equipment manufacturers, etc. It sounds like we need a development guru to raise funds, awareness and help to join all the key players for a collaboration. Many mention that the creators often do not prioritize preservation as they should. That is true, but our role as professionals is to educate.

Hand-wringing is not allowed! The energy that we have spent on that could have been put forth to an international collaboration with a real potential for migration, managing equipment, and innovation. One manufacturer can not do this alone, everyone needs to get on board and when I say “everyone” I mean:

Archivists
Creators (producers, studios, channels, directors, talent, writers, etc.)
Media
Equipment and Media Manufacturers
Technologists
Professional Associations
Funders

I think all of the above agree that the loss is imminent. The question is can we use our collective economy of scale to work together? Or maybe it is will we?

After teaching so many archival and technology classes, I began to realize the incredible depth and breadth of our loss of data. Over the last three decades billions of discs have been created and sold and presumably used. What has happened to these discs? To the data? If even 5% was worth saving for historical purposes, that is still about one and a half million discs to save and migrate. Has that been done?

We all know that the answer is “no.” So that means that we need to look at what is important and what level of effort is necessary to save it. I know that we can not save everything and I know that we would not want to. As Nik Cubrilovic mentioned in a recent Washington Post article entitled “Letting Data Die a Natural Death”: “Not only is a lot of this data not important, but do we really want to keep it? I certainly would not want a full account of everything I did in my youth sitting on a server somewhere. I am also certain that we do not want the record of our as a society time being documented and discovered by future civilizations based on Twitter messages.”

Yet, how much is lost that we have accepted and are wistful for? Some of my own graduate papers written on 5 1/4” floppies were not salvageable. That is of course, a personal loss that matters to NO ONE else but me.

What about the loss of communication histories in Presidential administrations? It took NARA six years just to process the Clinton presidential emails. (I am not sure how many people they had working on it, but that certainly sounds overwhelming!) Assuming that each succeeding administration will have geometrically more, what effort will it take to separate the diamonds from the coal? Add into that the constant evolution of tools like Instant Messaging, Texting, etc. and where will historians be able to turn to determine how national decisions were really made? Or have we EVER had that, even in a paper driven world of the past? Doesn’t everyone edit trails that reflect badly on them?

In the article “The E-Memory Revolution,” Jim Gemmell and Gordon Bell talk about the new “digital person” that has a “total recall” to their life as it is all in “e-memory.” They talk about patrons asking librarians about helping them to build new connections for them to their content. As an archivist, I ask, “In what format will their 20, 30, 40, or 50 year old history be?” How many of us can access our data from a phone that we had one year ago? These digital tools are wonderful BUT they are transitory.

They are primarily to transmit current records. Whether an email joke to all your friends or a tweet to meet someone at a concert. The problem is that we also have history making decisions ONLY in email form and new marketing ideas only documented on Twitter. So for future researchers, how will they take your 1000 new weekly emails and get the funding to sort through them?

Is it the same way that the 4 billion floppies manufactured by 2003 (according to one site which I can no longer find, how ironic!) and the 200 million Zip discs manufactured in 1999 alone (according to that same site) were handled? My 15 years of experience tells me that only a fraction of a percent might have been migrated. Is that a loss? Maybe we will never know? Because without the data we don’t know what we don’t know. Is everyone comfortable with that?

Digital preservation is a wonderful thing…as long as I do not have to do it. As I work in an archive/library at my university, digitizing a collection for online use, I have lots of time to think about digital preservation, its benefits and disadvantages, how the nature of libraries and archives is changing and what it means for us all.

As a newly graduated student, I dream of processing unique materials, rummaging through boxes and loosely organized files to find the rhythm of a collection. Documents and artifacts that tell someone’s story, that make me chuckle or make me sad, that surprise me and some that bore me. These materials get my hands dirty, make me feel gritty, make my skin break out, but make me feel real. But the scanner? It makes me feel definitely like something other than an archivist or a librarian. I must work quickly and without thinking – I am there to scan only, not to make judgment calls, or to find order in chaos, nor to find that collection rhythm.

At the scanner, my job is to scan everything. Everything? Aren’t all these clippings accessible somewhere else? And in the process of scanning I feel like I am doing some damage, folding and refolding to make the materials fit and to scan so the image appears appropriately on the screen. Saving everything seems redundant. Many of the materials are certainly not unique but the goal is to get it all digitized as quickly as possible. Someone will go back later to pick and choose what is relevant for online access – but will they do that or will they decide it is just as easy to put everything online since it has already been digitized? Will a glut of repetitive and non-unique information soon be preserved digitally and available to scroll through? And is taking all this time to provide access without the clear intent of preservation a wasteful endeavor? A few more, pricey moments now at a higher resolution for a better quality image capture could save time and money down the road.

There is no escaping digital preservation. It is here to stay; and how cool is it to go to a site like the Online Archive of California and browse the holdings at over 150 institutions while sitting on my couch in Michigan? That is a big savings in airfare and a whole lot of eye candy and information that I would not normally be exposed to. And these extraordinary documents and photographs will become more numerous and available to me in Michigan as time goes on if institutions continue to be able to afford to digitize them. While I cannot feel the materials online, they appear very lifelike – the crinkled edges, the soft yellowing, the texture is visible, almost real. And I can zoom in for closer inspection. There is always a little nagging question in my mind though – I assume they have not been enhanced in any way, that they all presented in their real form. Can I trust this authenticity? I will have to unless I really know my p’s and q’s about every subject and holding out there. The reputation of the institution that owns and has digitized these materials and then the reputation of the company that is maintaining the web site, will all have to come into play. Will everyone viewing the site intuitively question authenticity and thus automatically build in a system of checks and balances? Hope so.

There are other aspects about digital preservation that must be considered and many must be admired. If the materials live through the physical scanning process, handling of them in the future by patrons and researchers in archives will certainly be cut down. This will reduce damage to the materials as well as theft; they will live longer. If the materials are stolen or if they are destroyed by disaster, the content will have been preserved and at least some idea of the artifactual structure and texture.

At the Conservation Lab in the Buhr Facility at the University of Michigan, one can tour the facility and admire the work of conservators who are restoring ancient papyri and hand engraved and colored maps with passionate patience and artistic skill but it is really in the digital lab where things are happening. Here technicians sit in front of computer screens and very large, expensive scanners all day and endure the tediousness of digitizing the artifacts that Google cannot digitize safely for University of Michigan through the Google Books Program. Here content and visuals are being digitized for access and preservation, where even the complete papyrii library will be digitally preserved and made accessible for the whole world to see.

The act of preservation digitization is certainly not as stimulating as holding or viewing the real thing but it will certainly affect the most people and all over the world at that. It has changed the nature of libraries and archives and it is here to stay. I just don’t want to be the one doing it!