In the News: Digital preservation dispute

Good and Evil in the Garden of Digitization


Google's digitization of books lead to legal investigation that may have enormous long term influence on the future of digital preservation. The concept of copyright has been discussed here before, but the Google Fair Use court case is likely to establish much more specific law regarding the digitization of books and other information, and could create real problems for those working in the information preservation field.

Case Study: Modern photographs in a disaster situation

To continue a thought from the last post, I would like to restate that the act of preserving implies that we are stewards of the information that we preserve, and as such we should be fluent in the techniques required to care for our charges. That said, I would like to take a moment to speak briefly about digital photographic prints. These types of prints are rapidly becoming the primary form of photographic print (Scoblete, 2004), yet they require radically different care than traditional photographs (Portell, 2003).

Because of the technology used to create these prints, special considerations must be made in the event of water damage. Floods, hurricanes, sprinkler malfunctions, drinks, fingers, humidity - all of these may be a source of water damage for a digitally generate photographic print. With proper care and storage, preservation of these materials is not overly different than many other graphic information items, but in the event of water damage, special steps must be taken in orde to salvage the print as much as possible (IPI, 2007).


What happens when they get wet?

Digital printers use either a dye or a pigment to create an image on paper. These materials are deposited using a liquid that immediately evaporates once the materials have been put down on the paper (Fritsch, 2006). Depending on the type of paper used, different things may happen. Two common types of papers used for digital printing are uncoated (normal copy paper), coated, which comes in two varieties, swellable and porous.

With swellable paper, the ink sits on the surface, which is highly glossy, and will run with the slightest application of moisture. Microporous papers allow the dye to sink into the paper, which prevents running, or blurring, when wet, but does result in flaking off of the ink if touched by anything when still wet (IPI, 2007).


Is there any way to repair them?

Unfortunately, no, once an inkjet print has suffered water damage there is no way to repair that damage. Dirt can be removed, but some color transfer may occur or in some cases the color can flake off the surface of the paper (IPI, 2007). In the case of digital prints, prevention of damage is the key to preservation...


works cited:

Fritsch, E. (2006). Professional Photography. Retrieved July 1, 2008 from http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/graphicarts/archive/2006/10/26/HPPost1808.aspx?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

Image Permanence Institute. (2007). A consumer guide for the recovery of water damaged traditional and digital prints.

Portell, J. D. (2003). Prior repairs: when should they be preserved?. Journal of the American Institute of Conservation, 42(10), 363-80.

Scoblete, G. (2004). Online Printing Grows As Retail Solution. Twice, 19(8), 30-30.

Disaster Preparedness

Part of being the steward of information is being able to plan ahead to prevent the loss of preserved materials in the event of a disaster. While some potential disasters may be detected in time to prepare, not all will be, and that mean having a plan for what to do when the unexpected happens.

Case in point

In March of 1985, during the removal of asbestos from the library, a fire started in the National Library of Australia. The fire department has no knowledge of the special needs of the library, they could not get in touch with most of the staff, and the situation warranted immediate action. The end result was that most of the materials received both smoke and water damage and required extensive cost and effort to repair and replace (Preiss, 1999). How could this damage have been avoided? By having a plan of action prepared in advance.

Requirements of a Disaster Preparedness plan

According to the Society for American Archivists (Pearce-Moses, 2007) in order to be effective, any disaster preparedness plan must have at least these elements, and perhaps a few more depending on any special needs the preservation institution may need for special holdings.

• Have a disaster drill to ensure people know what to do in case of an emergency and to keep that information fresh in their minds.
  


• Update and expand your contact lists for staff, volunteers, and other key organizational contacts (facilities personnel and institutional officials) as well as external services (fire, police, ambulance).


• Review your emergency procedures to check for information that has become outdated and to refresh staff's knowledge of what to do. Make sure that staff have copies – at the office, at home, in their cars, and anywhere else they may need them. The Society of American Archivists has a template for emergency procedures online, available at: www.archivists.org/mayday/MayDayEmergencyProcedures.rtf Or look at Heritage Preservation's (2006) Field Guide to Emergency Response.


• If you have a disaster plan, review it. Flag things to update, and set a deadline to complete that task. This exercise will help keep the plan fresh in your mind, so you won't have to spend time reading the plan when disaster strikes.


• Plan to plan. While it's impossible to develop a complete disaster plan in one day, you can establish benchmarks and deadlines to do this work in a reasonable period of time. The Northeast Document Conservation Center and the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC) have created dPlan, a free online program to help write a comprehensive disaster plan (www.nedcc.org/welcome/disaster.htm).

Further Reading

Emergency Preparedness from the Library of Congress

Disaster Preparedness and Recovery from the American Library Association

Disaster Preparedness and Response from OCLC



works cited:

Pearce-Moses, R. (2007). The "MayDay" project: promoting disaster preparedness. OCLC systems & services, 23(1), 16-20.

Preiss, L. (1999). Learning from disasters: a decade of experience at the National Library of Australia. International preservation news, (20), 19-.

Theft and Vandalism: A real threat to preservation

Not all consumers of information have the same level of respect for preserved information. Some people do not feel that information that conflicts with their personal beliefs should be preserved, while others feel that preserved material collections are a gold mine waiting to be exploited. In the year 2000, more than %80 of libraries queried (including the Library of Congress) reported thefts of collection materials, and %50 reported mutilation or other malicious damage to collection materials (Revelli, 2000). Let's examine a couple of examples to gain a little more insight into this aspect of the preservation of information.



E. Forbes Smiley III

Over the course of eight years, E. Forbes Smiley III, an antique map dealer and collector visited a large number of libraries and archives that held map collections and books containing valuable maps. During these visits he clandestinely stole more than 100 maps valued at over $3 million dollars. Not all of the stolen maps were recovered even with the help of Mr. Smiley (maps, 2006).


Gilbert Bland:

Gilbert Bland was arrested as a suspect in the theft of $220,000 worth of rare maps and documents from East coast libraries and archives in 1996. It is unknown exactly what documents were stolen (Mazmanian, 1996).


Library of Congress:

After a number of books, periodicals, and other holdings in the Library of Congress were discovered to have been maliciously damaged during a period between January and May of 1993, investigations revealed that a library worked had been damaging books and other holdings intentionally. Further investigations revealed that a number of separate incidents of similar nature had likely occurred at various times in the past which had been intentionally covered up (Flaff, 1995).


Poetry book slashing

An unknown persons cut out the contents of over 40 poetry books, many of which are no longer in print, totaling over $3000 is replacement costs in multiple California libraries (McCormick, 1995).


Comedie des Champs-Elysees

1986 - Six masterpiece paintings, worth an estimated $3 million, are stolen directly from their frames on the walls, fortunately to be located and returned unharmed (Conrad, 1987).


This problem is not new though. Here are a few selected historical examples:

1824 - Lord Byron's memoirs and it's only copy, is burned in a fireplace due to it's explicit descriptions of his exploits (Conrad, 1987).

1890 - After his death, the widow of Sir Richard Burton burns his memoirs, titled 'The Scented Garden', which he considered to be his highest accomplishment in life because she felt that the contents were scandalous (Conrad, 1987).

1914 - London National Gallery. An angry suffragette storms into the museum and attacks the sculpture 'Mirror of Venus' with a hatchet. The sculpture is, fortunately unharmed (Conrad, 1987).


How can preservers of information combat this trend?

As with most things, there is no simple, direct solution that fits all needs - depending on the size of the preservation institution, this can be a simple or quite complex problem to solve (Arterburn, 1996). For example one library chose to promote awareness by turning their mutilated books into works of art (Meyer, 2005), while a number of others have instituted security cameras (G.F., 1995) and restricted access to more remote collection holding areas to key personnel (Griffith, 1978). In general, it has been suggested that limiting bags, purses, and other large containers that could be used to hold stolen collection items, or conceal tools used for vandalism or theft is the best policy, along with constant vigilance (Arterburn, 1996).

Regardless of the choices made or methods used, thorough awareness of potential problems, especially when collections include valuable or controversial materials, is essential to the preservation of information.


Further Reading:

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey (ISBN: 978-0767908269)

Works Cited:

Arterburn, T R. (1996). Librarians: caretakers or crimefighters?. American libraries, 27, 32-34.

Conrad, B. (1987). A woeful gallery of the world. Smithsonian, 18, 239-240.

Flaff, G. (1995). LC security flaws prompt federal probes. American libraries, 868-.

Griffith, J W. (1978). Library thefts: a problem that won. American libraries, 9(4).

G F. (1995). Mutilated books prompt LC security crackdown. American libraries, 26(8), 749-.

maps. (2006). Map Dealer Now Admits Library Theft. American libraries, 37(8), 18-.

Mazmanian, A. (1996). Suspected thief of rare maps caught. Library journal, 121, 14-15.

McCormick, E. (1995). Book "slicer" hits over 20 California poetry collections. American libraries, 26, 391-.

Meyer, R. (2005). Slasher Story. Art journal, 64(1), 32-41.

Revelli, C. (2000). Furti, vandalismi e cose affini. Theft, vandalism, and similar acts. Biblioteche oggi, 18(1), 58-.

Versions: new preservation challenges in the electronic information age

With the advent of electronic publishing of information come a scenario that was somewhat less of a problem when all information was in print form - that of the version. Print formats traditionally have controlled the process of versioning published information, but with the rapid increase in the numbers of self published books (Barbato, 1988) it is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve these materials due to the ability of the publisher to create unlimited versions of the same information, with no regulation on the specification or identification attached to any given edition (Carpenter, 2006).

As with any new technology there is a lag from the time of implementation to the time when standards and procedures are worked out, and some work to date has been done to establish standards for the versioning of purely electronic information such as the UK Joint Information Systems Committee VERSIONS system (Allsop, 2006) and the NISO/ALPSP Working Group (Carpenter, 200-6), but to date only a few tools for non-academic information publication have been created, such as Manila 9.5 blogging tool, from Userland Software Inc, which features version information embedding (Bernstein,2005), but this lack of tools poses a problem for those working to preserve information that does not contain version information.

Which version is more important?

When discussing versions it is important to note that not all versions carry the same attribution of value to all consumers. For example, some librarians feel that the authors version of a document is more valuable than the publishers version of the same document (Harris, 2007), so which version should be preserved, or should both be preserved? and why?

Knowing about the version of any given piece of information is important because it allows the researcher to know things like how the information has changed over time, who changed it, and therefore how it has been changed or updated from the original version. It also allows the consumer to better determine things like the influence of bias or the introduction of false information (Austim, 2005).

Part of the value of electronic formats for information is that they are readily accessible and they can be easily edited or created, but this also works against them when editing is done for malicious purposes. Adding bias to electronic forms of information or purposefully adding incorrect information or replacing correct information with incorrect information is easier to do with electronic forms of information (Waters, 2006) so keeping older versions and being able to identify previous versions is becoming increasingly important to preservers of information.

In the next entry I will take a closer look at the challenges to preservation of information presented by those who wish to alter information for their own purposes.


works cited:

Allsop, L. (2006). Versions of Eprint: user requirements study and investigation of the need for standards. ALISS Quarterly, 1(4), 30-.

Austin, M. (2005). The Wikipedia phenomenon. Information world review, (219), 38-.

Barbato, J. (1988). Small publishers are growing up. The publishers weekly, 234, 16-21.

Bernstein, J. (2005). Manila 9.5. EContent, 28(11), 18-20.

Carpenter, T. (2006). Standards column - toward a terminology of journal article versions: an update of the work of the joint NISO/ALPSP journal article version Working Group. Against the grain, 18(6), 79-.

Harris, S. (2007). Final versions carry little weight with librarians. Research information, (28), 13-.

Waters, R. (2006). Wikipedia stand-off in the search for online truth Written and edited by the people for the people, the ever- expanding online encyclopedia is loved around the globe. But does such egalitarian sharing of knowledge lead us towards truth or chaos? Richard Waters talks to the website. FT.com, , 24-.

Case study: Preservation of context

Photographs are real, are they not?

Many people seem to feel that a photograph, at least one made before digital cameras, is a literal record of that split second in time, but this is often not the case. As I have discussed here before, when preserving information it is important to retain as much of the context of that information as possible in order to retain the value of that information. Here's a great case in point.

This is a photograph of Soviet soldiers 'capturing' the Reichstag in Germany during World War II - it is an iconic image that many consider to be factual, but in reality was heavily manipulated to influence it's impact. In various versions elements such as the smoke in the left side of the picture were added, while in other versions tanks that were not in the original negative were added in, as well as fighter planes in the sky in another version.

Through the ability to examine different versions of this photograph, and by accessing the information that surrounds it, we are able to form a much more detailed, more accurate, and perhaps more useful understanding of this image than we would otherwise have been able to form if we were lacking these related pieces of information. By altering the negative the photographer put more emphasis on the event that the original version contained. He altered the context of the photograph by changing how it was viewed by presenting it as if it were taken at the moment the building was taken, a very important moment in Soviet, and German, history. Because we know this, we are able to gain insight into more than the event recorded: we can now better understand the sentiment intended by the photographer, we can gain some insight into the importance or the event, we have a more accurate description of the event because we know that this indeed is not exactly what the event looked like, and we can see that not all of what is presented as fact is indeed what it appears to be...


Further Reading:

Iconic WWII photo honored at Berlin exhibit



Works referenced:

Goldman, A. J. (2008). Iconic WWII photo honored at Berlin exhibit. Retrieved June 18, 2008 from http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gmASS1cuyWONZmJI3b8aXgjzBuMwD91AKB500.

How much is too much?

When considering preservation of information it is important to note the quantity of information that already exists, and how much new information is being created each day. It seems logical to expect that the larger the amount of information we have to deal with the more time it will take to index it, the more storage space it will consume, and the more cost it will incur, does it not? So, that said, consider a real world example of a preservation challenge created by a massive amount of information gathered by a single person - Paul Otlet.

To keep this in context here is a very brief introduction to who this man is (or was as it were). He if the founder of the the Universal Decimal Classification system that is still used today, an example of faceted classification (Rayward, 1994). He also used, literally, tons of index cards to develop his system, but it revolutionized the Dewey system by allowing for unlimited extensions off the existing Dewey group (Collins, 2008). He also predicted a very Internet-like future despite living at a time when computers had never been heard of. In 1913 he won the Nobel Peace prize for his work on information organization and dissemination and his ideas regarding these efforts on an international scale.

This is kind of a long video, but it shows an excellent example of what I am referring to in this post - how much information can accumulate, and what that entails when it comes to preservation efforts. While watching the video, keep in mind that this man's accomplishments...



Imagine if you will how much information that this one man accumulated, and understanding that although we all do not collect quite this much information directly, how much information must have been generated that has to be sorted, indexed, and considered for preservation up to the present date. Unimaginable quantities of information surely. Now, consider how much information is being generated each day, in this age of rapid information generation and dissemination; the number of small publishers are growing rapidly resulting in massive growth in the amount of published materials (Barbato, 1988), more and more information is being published in electronic formats so the number of versions of the same information is rapidly growing (Richardson, 2005), the number of websites grew from 17 million in the middle of 2000 to 65 million in the middle of 2005 (Zakon, 2006). Given these staggering numbers, and the scenario examined above, how can we possibly keep up with all of this information?



works cited:

Barbato, J. (1988). Small publishers are growing up. The publishers weekly, 234, 16-21.

Collins, P. (2008). When the Internet was made of paper. New Scientist, 197(2648), 46-.

Rayward, W B. (1994). Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Hypertext. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45(4), 235-.

Richardson, M. (2005). Post-print archives: parasite or symbiont?. Learned Publishing, 18(3), 221-.

Zakon, R. H. (2006). Hobbes' Internet Timeline v8.2. Retrieved June 16, 2008 from http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline.

Case study: When preservation fails

The Oliver Wendell Holmes Stereoscopic Research Library (defunct)

In the life span of any given preservation organization there exists the possibility that there will come a time when preservation of the collection is no longer sustainable. When an organization for preservation ceases to function, what happens to the collection? How is this event handled, and why? Obviously every situation will be different, but to get an idea of what can happen, let's take a look at a research facility that was shut down, and what happened to it's collection.


Background:

Established in 1979, The Oliver Wendell Holmes Stereoscopic Research Library was operated by The National Stereoscopic Association and was a collection of stereoscopic materials including cameras, prints, stereographs, View-Master reels, and other related materials. The organization that operated the library is a non-profit organization and the library was funded exclusively by the organization. It contained over 20,000 items and was open to the public as a non-lending library (Sell, 1999).

Closure:

According the the organization the library was suffering from low attendance and therefore was more of a drain on the funding of the organization than it's leadership felt was warranted (Rulien, 2006). It closed in March, 2006 and the fate of it's holdings were a matter of great debate. Many people were concerned that the holdings would be auctioned off to the highest bidder and that they would therefore fall into private hands and no longer be available for public reference.


Solutions:

After much discussion and sending of many letters and emails to museums around the country, including the Smithsonian Institute, no one was interested in taking the collection (Rulien, 2006). In the end, a similar organization was found where much of the collection could be housed so that it indeed remained accessible to the public in the form of the 3D Center of Art and Photography in Portland, Oregon.

However, there was some issue with duplicated items either in the Library's existing collection, or that of the receiving institution. The leaders of the organization decided that these duplicated items should be sold at auction in order to raise funds needed by the parent organization, and that because they were duplicated they held little value, and so were actioned off under the name 'OWHSL' on eBay (Rulien, 2006).


Considerations:

In this particular instance, a collection that was built by enthusiasts rather than museum or library professionals was created and maintained by a non-profit organization. It existed for a time and then was disbanded, with the expected level of concern by those within the organization who disagreed with those making the decision. The collection's unique items were transferred to another institution, which duplicated items were auctioned off.

There are many, many facets to preservation, and there are few clear cut answers. Each institution must have a plan in place to deal with the contingency of closure, for what ever reason. To preserve information without such a plan in place is to take on the responsibility of custodian of these items without consideration for the information itself. Deaccession is part of being a preserver of information - decisions on what to preserve, what is more important, and what might be deaccessioned in order to get something more in keeping with the intent of the organization is common (Vogel, 1986), but it must be done with care and thought, especially when it is the entire collection that is being deaccessioned.

Consider what might have happened if the 3D Center did not exist, or if it decided that it did not have the space or funding to take on this new collection of preserved photographic items? Might the entire collection have been sold at auction? Might some of the items have been discarded if they were not able to be sold? What of the items that were donated to the collection for preservation?


Further Reading:

The original web site preserved on the Internet Wayback Machine.

Center News article on the Library and it's collection.




Works cited:

Rulien, D. E. (2006). Center Receives Bittersweet Gift from Ashes of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library. Center News 3 (2), 1.

Sell, M. (1999). Collecting 3-D Images Workshop. Retrieved June 10, 2008 from http://www.cinti.net/~vmmasell/ebayworkshop.html.

Vogel, C. (1986, August 29). Auctions: Museum's art on the block. The New York Times. pp. C25.

Preservation and Copyright

Copyright: A Brief Overview:

When someone creates original information they are entitled to protect that information from unauthorized access via a body of intellectual property laws commonly referred to as 'copyright law'. These laws cover a number of different related functions, all of which have some impact on our ability to preserve information by governing who may access what information in what way, and how information may be used, based on the copyright owners wishes (U.S. Copyright Office, 2006).

When it comes to preserving information, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether copyright restrictions are in effect, or if they apply to any given institution. When a work is created it is automatically protected under these laws for a period of 70 years after the death of it's originator, or 95 years from the data of publication, or 120 years from date of creation, whichever is shorter. Recent changes in these laws has now caused the inclusion of materials created before January 1, 1978 to be protected for a period of 70 after the authors death, with the inclusion of the 95/120 year stipulation as above. and in no case would the protection expire prior to December 31, 2002 (U.S. Copyright, 2004).

Further complicating the situation of copyright is the fact that protection may be extended, sometimes automatically for the 95 year limit (U.S. Copyright Office, 2004), and the 1989 Berne Convention Implementation Act, which made the use of obvious copyright restrictions notification by use of some symbols or statement unnecessary for protection, which further complicated the process of verifying copyright status (U.S. Copyright Office, 2008).

Finding copyright related information may at first seem simple, but given that may
works are abandon when the author dies without passing on relevant information to their survivors, or in the case of private enterprise, when the company dissolves the records may be difficult or impossible to access, making verification of copyright status very difficult (U.S. Copyright Office, 2006). Without proper documentation, how are information preservers to determine if it is safe to preserve information?


Orphaned Works:

When a work becomes orphaned - it becomes difficult or impossible to location the copyright holder due to death, loss of verifiable records, dissolution of an organization, or similar circumstances, a piece of information becomes 'orphaned' in regards to it's copyright status (U.S. Copyright Office, 2006). One of the problems with this situation is that Currently, there is new legislation working it's way through the Senate that would allow for a greater level of access to orphaned works which are now more tightly governed and can be problematic to those attempting to preserve them (Lehey-Hatch, 2008). This effort is supported by organizations that work to preserve information that is often orphaned, such as the Internet Archive, who feel that libraries and museums should be able to preserve information "without fear of libility subject to a 'Request for Removal' procedure that would respect the rights of copyright owners who come forward." (Internet Archive, 2008).


What does this really mean in the context of preservation?

When we preserve the original, copyright is basically a non-issue - we have what was originally created and therefore we're in good standing as far as copyright goes. But when we want to copy that original, say for digitization or to have a back up copy in the event of loss or damage to the original, we move into the area of copyright violation. There have been clear trends toward the digitization of information recently, and this has caused some problems in regard to copyright standing because we are now creating a copy of the original, the very act that copyright legislation deals with.

While this issue may seem simple, there are some hidden complications that need to be examined. For example, data storage of electronic information. As previously discussed, data formats change over time and in order to retain the ability to access this information in the future we must continually update the format in which information is stored, resulting in copyright questions. The same issue applies to the preservation of non-electronic information. If we wish to digitize information for preservation or disemination we must copy it, and to do so is to stray once again into the realm of copyright legislation.

When the decision is made to preserve information, consideration must be made as to all of the factors that will be involved in the process, and doing the research needed to verify copyright status and obtain, if possible, permission to preserve information is part of that process. A part that cannot be overlooked if we are to be able to legally preserve information for the long term.


Suggested Further Reading:

Understanding Copyright


Works Cited:

Internet Archive. (2008). Orphaned works reply comments of the Internet Archive. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/reply/OWR0129-InternetArchive.pdf.

Leahy-Hatch, P. (2008). Judiciary Committee Reports
Leahy-Hatch Orphan Works Bill. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200805/051508d.html.

U.S. Copyright Office. (2004). Duration of copyright: provisions of the law dealing with the length of copyright protection. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.html.

U.S. Copyright Office. (2004). Extension of copyright terms. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15t.html.

U.S. Copyright Office. (2006). Report on orphan works. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report-full.pdf.

U.S. Copyright Office. (2006). Copyright office basics. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html.

U.S. Copyright Office. (2006). Renewal of copyright. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15.pdf

U.S. Copyright Office. (2008). Copyright notice. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.pdf.

The Internet! Is that thing still around?

I borrowed the title for this post from Homer Simpson in an old episode of "The Simpsons" (Groening, 2006), but there is a kernel of truth here that I think needs a little more scrutiny. How many times have you gone back a bookmark or shortcut only to find that the page you were looking for was gone? Internet-only information is ephemeral, sometimes to an astonishing degree. How can this information be preserved, and how much of it should be preserved?

According to some people, we should preserve anything that someone else is not already preserving because no one can accurately say now what will be of value at a later point in time (Feldman, 1997). Obviously this will not work for everyone who preserves information because preservation is not free; storage costs, access methods, copyright fees, and personnel all cost money, and the last time I checked not too many people had endless supplies of cash on hand for the preservation of information.

What then is to be saved and what should be lost to the mists of time so to speak? As an individual, my first inclination is to say that nothing should be lost, but in reality, this is a much bigger issue that first meets the eye. Because of the aforementioned monetary issues, many organizations have established guidelines for what will be saved and what will be left for others to preserve. A good example of this is the Internet Archive, who's F.A.Q. states the following:

"we collect only publicly accessible Web pages. We do not archive pages that require a password to access, pages tagged for "robot exclusion" by their owners, pages that are only accessible when a person types into and sends a form, or pages on secure servers. If a site owner properly requests removal of a Web site through http://www.archive.org/about/exclude.php, we will exclude that site from the Wayback Machine."

Because not all information on the Internet is necessarily saved by every organization, things like Internet forums or personal online journals are not recorded, and therefore some other source must preserve this information if it is to be preserved at all. While some groups who create these kinds of information do preserve their content (for example the alternative process listserv archives) not all do, and that is an inherent preservation problem with the Internet (Beagrie, 2005).

In order to better understand this issue, the British Library conducted a study called "the Digital Lives research project" which found that there are a number of issues that will need to be dealt with in order to find a workable and sustainable solution to the preservation of this sort of information. One of the more significant problems they study found was that there was no common format for this information, which complicates efforts to preserve it. The study also found that there was no clear consensus regarding what was worth preserving and what was not (Pencock, 2006).

Until these issues are resolved, and they may never be fully resolved, the preservation of information that originated in an electronic form will be a complicated matter that those involved in the preservation of information will have to deal with.

Suggested Further Reading:

Report of the Task Force on Preserving Digital Information (OCLC)

How to Preserve Authentic Electronic Records


works cited:

Beagrie, N. (2005). "Plenty of Room at the Bottom? Personal Digital Libraries and Collections". D-Lib Magazine 11(6).

Feldman, S E. (1997). "It was here a minute ago!" Archiving the Net. Searcher, 5, 52-64.

Groening, M. & Brooks, J. L. (Producer). (2006). The Simpsons [Television series]. U.S.A.:Fox.

Pennock, M. (2006). Digital Preservation Coalition Forum on Web Archiving. Ariadne, (48), 1-.

Why preserve information? (Does it go bad?)

Information is preserved for a number or reasons - historical value, future reference, public and/or personal interest, and economic value to mention but a few. In order to better understand the nature of why people preserve information I will take a brief look at some of these reasons in a little more detail.

Historical value and future reference:

History is important to the future, and to the present, but in order to understand history we need to be able to examine it in some detail, the process of which is called historiography. Historiography is defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica as follows:

" The writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particulars from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those particulars into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods."

A very important clause in that definition is "Critical examination of sources". How can we examine historical sources if none now survive? How can we determine which sources are authentic if we cannot examine them? Only though the preservation of the information of the past can we examine it critically, and only through proper interpretation can we make and informed opinion of it's lessons. As John Arnold describes in his book "History: a very short introduction" history has been interpreted differently throughout the ages, sometimes in an attempt to more 'accurate' and sometimes in an attempt to conform to popular views, disregarding fact for a more 'appropriate' interpretation.

By it's nature, once the original source of any given piece of information is lost it can never be re-created. Interpretations of the original may be used to try to recreate what was lost, but how can anyone be certain that what they have extrapolated from these interpretations has anything to do with the actual original information? Thus it is important to preserve original forms of information if we wish to be able to rely on it in the future for critical analysis.

Public or Personal interest:

How many times have you found some useful tidbit of information while doing research only to never be able to find it again in the future? I know that I have, on a number of occasions, found some very interesting bits of information, either in print or electronic form, only to search in vain the next time I attempted to find it again. Some forms of information, especially information that is non-academic, sometimes appears to be so ephemeral as to have a lifespan of but a single access! This seems to be especially so when it involves Internet-based information.

Blogs, personal web pages, non-academic online articles, and even conversations in public forums all tend to be very short lived because with few exceptions they are not designed with preservation in mind. Some resources do exist to preserve these more ephemeral forms of information, like the "Internet Way Back Machine" and the Internet archives at the New Library of Alexandria, Egypt. These sites specifically state in their F.A.Q. pages that anyone not wishing to have their information recorded may exclude it from these archives, and coupled with the incalculably enormous volume of content currently in existence on the Internet, these utilities cannot be totally comprehensive.

In 2007 there were over 100 million web sites in existence on the Internet worldwide, up from 18,000 sites in 1995 (Foster, 2007). As the expansive growth of electronic information continues it is becoming more and more important to find ways to preserve this information for the future.


Works cited:

Arnold, J. (2000). History: A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.

Foster, A. (2007). Information Navigation 101. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 53 (27). A38-40.

Historiography. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 16, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9108622

What does it really mean to preserve information?

According to my handy 1997 Merriam-Webster desktop edition dictionary, the word 'preserve' is defined as follows:

Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): pre·served; pre·ser·ving
1 : to keep or save from injury, loss, or ruin : PROTECT
2 : MAINTAIN 1, continue

So, to preserve information would mean to save it, to prevent it from becoming inaccessible, or from being damaged or altered by maintaining at least its' original content, if not its' original form. But, how would this be accomplished, given information's multitudinous forms and formats?

In order to examine this question, perhaps it would be a good idea to look a little closer at the various formats in which information may be found these days. Information may be found in print format (books, periodicals, etc.), on film (or even glass plates!), and even in various completely electronic formats such as this blog (assuming that you did not print this out) to name but a few. Each of these formats comes with it's own set of special considerations when it comes to preservation, given our working definition above, and as such, each must be handled somewhat differently if we are to achieve our goal.

Lets take a cursory look at some of the pros and cons of each of these different formats, just to get an idea of what sorts of problems each of them might present to those who wish to preserve them.


Physical printed information:

Pros:

1. It requires no special equipment to access.
2. It's format never becomes inaccessible due to changes in technology.
   

Cons:

1. Printed information, being physical, takes up physical space.
2. It can generally only be accessed by one person at a time.
3. It often requires special storage considerations, which can add to the cost of it's preservation.
4. Physical deterioration will eventually cause it's destruction.
   

Physical visual information:

Pros:

1. It may or may not require special equipment to access.
2. Some forms will not become inaccessible due to changes in technology.

Cons:

1. Takes up physical space.
2. It can often only be accessed by one person at a time.
3. It often requires special storage considerations, which can add to the cost of it's preservation.
4. Some forms will become inaccessible due to changes in technology.
5. Physical deterioration will eventually cause it's destruction.

Electronic information:

Pros:

1. May be access by multiple people at once.
2. May be accessed from multiple remote locations.

Cons:

1. It requires special equipment to access.
2. All formats will become obsolete over time.
3. Storage costs include the maintenance of expensive equipment that requires specially train technical staff.
4. Failures of storage media may result in total loss of data, requiring duplication of storage (and thus storage costs).

Suggested Further Reading:

Library of Congress Preservation

The Image Permanence Institutes's The Archival Advisor


Works Referenced:

Chapman, S. Counting the Costs of Digital Preservation:
Is Repository Storage Affordable?. Retrieved May 14, 2008 from http://jodi.tamu.edu/Articles/v04/i02/Chapman/chapman-final.pdf.

Hanna, J. & Burge, D. Saving Digital Storage Media. Retrieved May 14, 2008 from http://www.archivaladvisor.org/shtml/art_savdigmedia.shtml.

Kingma, B. (1999). The Economics of Digital Access:
The Early Canadiana Online Project. Retrieved May 14, 2008 from http://www.si.umich.edu/PEAK-2000/kingma.pdf.