There are concerns on over the cost of digital preservation. Some issues associated with digital preservation are that it is an ongoing committment and has continuous resources. There is also the need for immediate "creation to preservation" in digital objects. Therefore, the costs of digital materials start at creation of the resource. Digitization projects require that digital files must be budgeted for and considered from their creation. With costs always rising, an institutions preservation strategy should be appropriate to the percieved value of the digital object.
Two good articles on the Costs of preserving digital items are Chapman, S. (n.d.) Costs of Digital Preservation and Russell, K., & Weinberger, E. (2000). Cost Elements of Digital Preservation.
http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/viewFile/jodi-113/99
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cedars/documents/clW01r.html
Atlanta Foodie
8 years ago
2 comments:
I think most of us see the logic of preservation, but don't always make the connection to the associated costs and it is very much a complicated issue, especially when you consider the preservation of artifacts (in all their possible original forms) that are of use to humanity in general versus say a specific university or other entity.
In those cases, cost sharing seems the logical approach, but how does one share costs equitably, what criteria does one use? Furthermore, with rapid changes in technology which sometimes means that the technological marvel of today can fall out of favor and be supplanted by the next great thing, can one really assign a set cost value to preservation? Consider how betamax and 8-track are distant memories and the fact that finding this equipment in working order today is probably a treasure hunt, no assumptions can be made that the technology we are using to preserve materials today, here I am referring to digital preservation of both born digital and traditional artifacts, will be available 10 years from now let alone 100 years from now. So short of emulation, digital preservationists are constantly moving to the next technology as old technologies fall out of favor. This of course leads to degradation, loss of data, and potentially losing something of the essence of the original item one is trying to preserve. But in the big picture, perhaps that is a risk worth taking. A lackluster copy is better than no copy?
Preservation is important and if the costs go up, we still need to preserve information. My concern is how they will need to update the information formats as technology changes. When CD-Roms are outdated, they will need to spend time and money to save information on the new formats.
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