Preservation efforts

The Preservation of records, cultural artifacts, laws, religious doctrines, historically significant documents, as well as simple notes, letters and diary entries are what we build on as a society to know our past, deal with our present and plan for our future. Today, our lives are flooded with information both new and old. Preservation today is a balance of caring for old documents, organizing new forms of information and keeping information accessible through preservation efforts. Rubin (2004) states that, "in an age in which there is great emphasis on new knowledge in electronic form, Preservation strategies remain critical if both important artifacts and intellectual content of items of the past are to survive." (p368) The Preservation of print materials begins with properly caring for materials while they are still new. Other measures to preserve paper documents includes buying materials on acid-free paper, maintaining proper humidity and temperature and using repair measures like re-binding and mending. Electronic sources of information have caused a series of new preservation issues and questions. One major issue facing preservation today is digitization, which is the main focus of this blog. Lester & Koehler (2007) explain that digital materials, unlike paper documents, require complex hardware and software in order to retrieve and interpret them. In many studies that have been carried out on the use of digital technology as a preservation technique, one question has been raised repeatedly, “Can we be assured that information stored digitally will be accessible in the future?” The answer currently is no. However, organizations including Stanford University, Google and The Library of Congress have projects in the works attempting to preserve digital collections. The LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) is digital preservation software created by Stanford University. “LOCKSS preserves digital content in a library-to-library network, just as multiple libraries keep copies of the same book” (Schneider, 2007) The Google Books Project is digitizing existing print materials in a digital library collection open to the public. The European Digital Library includes more than 40 European national and other libraries in a project to digitize their documents. (Lester & Koehler, 2007, p105)
Kuny, T. (1997). “A digital dark ages? Challenges in the preservation of electronic information.” 63rd IFLA Council and General Conference.
Lester, J. & Koehler, W.C. (2007). Fundamentals of Information Studies. Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.: NY.
Rubin, R. (2004). Foundations of Library and Information Science. (2nd ed). Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.: NY.
Schneider, K. (2007). “Lots of librarians can keep stuff safe.” Library Journal 132(13) p30-31