distributed preservation
[ Home ][ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]gary frost
Thu, 05 Mar 1998 13:22:47 -0600
(1.)The first thing we can do is to popularize application of metadata.
Here are some other things to do. (2.) Augment machine memory with
personality. This could begin with assigning status to digital works,
via metadata, that builds parallel biographical information on both
machine and human moderators. (3.) Accept /encourage transience, observe
dynamic and static stages in the production of digital works.
Disposability lends meaning to permanence and it is useful to realize
that preservation is focused on a surviving portion...not the lost or
disposed portion of the record. (4.) Popularize long term objectives.
Preservation, like geneology, has popular appeal as it provides a
background ...an authorizing agent... for individual works. (5.) Fight
machine vs. human culture wars...not in the sense of taking sides...but
by projecting values of the interaction itself. (6.) Shift focus from
conservation of content to conservation of meaning by specific methods
for conservation of (a.) media, (b.) content and (c.) consequence of
library and archival collections. [more at <www.booklab.com>] (7.)
Clarify how parent media, such as the paper book, are assuming new roles
in the context of digital delivery. This will better enable the
concurrent spread and preservation of analog works. (8.) Decouple...to
some degree...reading mode from meaning. The medium is not the whole
meaning and the highly popularized reading modes of digital works and
digital communications may be somewhat mistaken for the "object" to be
preserved. (9.) Change the future as a result of distributed, almost
invisible preservation. Exceptional examples of the past surprising the
future: (a.) sealing books in ceramic jars and hiding them in dry caves
as was done by sectarians in north and eastern Africa in the first few
centuries of the first millennium (b.) 19th century carpenters stuffing
the day's newspaper into the wall of a building, (c.) Tom Ditto's
proposal to send archives on long circuit transmissions utilizing energy
as the patrimonial medium. (10.) Popularize the concept that libraries
and archives answer UNposed questions. The digital query itself will
redefine meaning and disassemble traditional units such as the book,
letter, image or composition. Digital queries displaced in time will be
so strange that we might not know if they came from the future or the
past.
Gary Frost
Library Conservator
Reply: Stewart Brand: "Re: distributed preservation"