Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Access vs. Perservation (quote)

Arrows by Leo ReynoldsHere is one more thought from “Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization(page 2):
Who will ensure that digital content created through such initiatives remains accessible over time — a responsibility that is different from merely preserving it?
Let us hope that everyone 's not pointing blindly at someone else for that service.


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3 comments:

Unknown said...

Jill,

I would argue that it isn't access Vs preservation at all. They go hand-in-hand and preservation MUST include accessibility over time. The harder thing to address with access now is ensuring that all have access to the digitised information. Currently, for various reasons a lot is simply being locked away on sites that make it very hard for those who need that information to see it. This seems to be a growing trend, and maybe an information divide will develop between "free" information and restricted access information that is only available to a priveledged few. As Jeremy Keith (adactio blog) said recently, that kind of thing is damage to information.

Jill Hurst-Wahl said...

Mal, yes, both should go hand-in-hand. But the focus with some programs is on making more information accessible now and may not be on how to then ensure that access over the long haul. Perhaps I should have titled the post differently....

Unknown said...

Jill, yes maybe that is the case, but maybe not in our situation. We preserve for the long term our preservation copies of the lower resolution files that are put up on the website. Those are richer files and sometimes in different formats for preservation purposes. The website itself is also preserved (to some extent) via regular archiving on NLA's Pandora wweb archive, but I don't think it fully captures/harvests web databases just yet.