Luciana replied to Danny:
>It appears that you are talking about isolated items which should
>supposedly preserve culture. I am referring to large bodies of documents
>that have been maintained for many centuries in their documentary context.
>We are probably talking at cross purposes.
I don't know if you are talking at cross purposes - which would be
understandable given your different perspectives - but from my position of
nonpartisanship bred of ignorance, what you certainly seem to be doing is
talking across dimensions.
Surely custodianship and form of media are both essential ingredients in
the future of preservation. The eye opener for me in this time-and-bits
discussion has been that whereas digital media and Internetting may be
expected to affect custodianship very positively, so far they are having
just the opposite effect with respect to media continuity.
Assuming civilization moving forward needs positively directed vectors in
both dimensions, how can the media vector be turned around? Through
custodianship, or quite independently of it? Through standards, codes,
laws? Through technological ingenuity, inventive genius, all of the
above?
That's the core question for me. It's a good one.
Martin Greenberger