Preserving the originals

I though it would be a good idea to cover, in a little more detail, a concept that I presented in the post titled "Why preserve information (Does it go bad)?" - the value of preserving the original source of information. Once we have a digital copy of something, why do we really need to keep the original? I've heard this argument before, especially from those who do not work as some form of preservation either professional or personal and I think that it is important to discuss the value of an original in the context of preservation.

The 'original':

Going once again back to my handy dandy desk dictionary, the definition for the work original is as follows:

NOUN:

1archaic : the source or cause from which something arises; specifically : originator

2 a: that from which a copy, reproduction, or translation is made b: a work composed firsthand

(original, 2008)

What does this have to do with preservation? Well, in his article "The importance of preserving paper-based artifacts in a digital age", Robert Bee presents an interesting point of view - that the process of digitizing information, and choosing how to present it, we are making editorial decisions that fundamentally alter the information itself. He also stated that by abstracting the information itself from the form, we are removing a valuable part of that information, part of it's original context is lost, as is the assurance that no alterations have been made (Bee, 2008).


The Devil is in the Details:

As evidence of this loss, Bee presents the case of microfilm as support for his position, with the specific example of newspapers on microfilm. He pointed out that colors were lost, issues were missing in part or in total, and that these problems were only discovered after the originals were lost (Bee, 2008), therefore preventing any future access to those lost bits of information. Earlier in this blog I discussed how information does not exist in a vacuum - how it has contextually related information that enhances it's value by establishing relationships with other information. When information is preserved, should this information not also be preserved in order to fully preserve it's value? Is not preserving information in the most usable format the goal of preservation?

Changing Standards:

As technological advancements are made in the field of preservation, so too change the standards. Microfilm was the standard media for storage of printed materials such as newspapers and other periodicals in the past, but now the standard is digitization by way of scanning. Scanning expands our ability to preserve information greatly, and because of that the standards for preservation have changed to reflect the new abilities of this new format. For example, it is now part of the standard to be able to reproduce a copy from the electronic version that will faithfully reproduce the original visual quality (Wentzel, 2007), something that was no possible with previous preservation formats.

The Future:

As storage formats continue to change as new technology is created, new issues will likely be discovered as well, although not necessarily immediately as noted in the above example. Moore's law states that the number of transistors on a computer chip will double approximately every two years (Moore, 1965)*. This translates to a very rapid rate of technological development, implying that there is not much time to research every aspect of any given technology before a new technology replaces it.

* Interestingly enough, the only known original copy of this article was found recently in a personal archive of magazines - the collector felt that while most institutions were throwing out computer magazines at the time, these would one day be valuable! (BBC, 2005).

In the context of preservation, this means that as we make choices for preserving information we need to keep in mind that newer, and perhaps better, technology will arrive constantly, and with it new opportunities for preserving more of the context of information. Just as microfilm could not preserve colors while modern digital format can, it seems completely believable that a some point in the near future a new technology will come around that will further expand our ability to better preserve every aspect of any given piece of information, not just what we deem worthy of saving. And, given that, is it not prudent to try preserve the originals when we can for just such an occasion?

Suggested Further Reading:

Preserving the Illustrated Text

Findings and Recommendations of the Council on Library and Information Resources

Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials

works cited:

BBC. (2005). Moore's Law original issue found. Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4472000/4472549.stm.

Bee, R. (2008). The importance of preserving paper-based artifacts in a digital age. The library quarterly, 78(2), 179-.

Moore, G. (1965). Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics, (38)8.

original. (2008). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved June 2, 2008, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/original.

Wentzel, L. (2007). Scanning for digitization projects. Computers in libraries, 27(3), 6-.

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