I have been reading your exchanges for a while, as an interested observer. I
am interested because the preservation of the integrity of electronic
records has been the focus of my research for several years and will
certainly remain such for the next four. I am just an observer because my
research moves in a sphere quite different from that of your conversation,
although related to it.
I am now writing because, in order to be able to follow your reasoning, I
need to ask a question that has been on the tip of my tongue for too long.
Why in the world you wish to preserve in digital form the 10,000 most
importants texts? If they are electronic texts, that is documents having a
paper analogue, why wouldn't people have them on paper? If they were
generated on paper in the first place, why would one want spend money
digitizing them and maintaining them in electronic form? If they are books
that require sequential reading, why would one want read them on a screen?
If they are so important and therefore well known and rarely accessed, why
should one feel the preassure to copy them over and over? If you are
concerned about space, what is wrong with microfilm?
It seems to me that what drives ongoing preservation, particularly when it
is active preservation (i.e, continuing reproduction), is the absolute need
to have the document in the future and the awareness that, if one does not
reproduce it, the document will be lost. The 10,000 most important texts are
not going to be lost because too many have interest in preserving them.
Moreover, what drives active preservation of documents in digital form is
the awareness that preservation in another form is not possible. Texts can
be transferred to paper or microfilm any time and then forgotten (passive
preservation is all that is needed).
Thus, I think that, if you want to experiment with continuing digital
preservation, not just from a technical point of view, but also from social,
administrative, and procedural points of view, you have to identify
electronic material that has no paper analogue (hypertext material for
example), that is unique, and that is of vital importance to some social
group. Besides, if the material in question is so important to a social
group, you would have no problem whatsoever in getting copyright permission
because you would be offering a service to such group.
On the other hand, your own (the US) National Archives' Center for
Electronic Records has been dealing with unique electronic documents
destined to permanent preservation for years and had already tried most of
the things you propose to try. They have also put together an Archival
Preservation System prototype that allows for the reading of obsolete files.
Ultimately, the real issue is not digital preservation, but how to guarantee
to future generations the reliability and authenticity of what has been
preserved, how to ensure that loss through migration, manipulation,
selection, or outright tampering has not altered the meaning of the message
they will be getting.
Six thousand years of documentary history have proved us over and over again
that such guarantee cannot be provided by the technology, but by the
trustworthiness of the custodian of the documents. A neutral third party
which has no stake whatsoever in the content of the documents and which is
invested with responsibility and accountability for their permanent
preservation by the sovereign (whether a king, a pope, or the people) is the
only possible warrantor of the genuiness and continuing accessibility of
documentary heritage, in any form. You may call this third party National
and State Archives, Library of Congress, or by the name by any other
federal, state or municipal body: they have been invested by the people with
the responsibility of protecting the people past, and what industry and
business and people like you should do is to support such mandate by making
sure that they are included in any decision making about technology and
asked about functional requirements for permanent preservation and
accessibility (the two things are by no means the same), and by lobbying the
government to provide them with more money to deal with such expensive
preservation.
Well, this was quite a tirade, and I apologise for being so long.
Luciana Duranti
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Luciana Duranti Luciana Duranti
Professor Associate Dean of Arts
Master of Archival Studies (Budget Planning and Research)
School of Library, Archival Office of the Dean of Arts
and Information Studies 1866 Main Mall
#831-1956 Main Mall Buchanan B 130
The University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, B.C Canada V6T 1Z1 Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T 1Z1
home page http://www.slais.ubc.ca/users/duranti/