Article: Excuse Me... Some Digital Preservation Fallacies?

In this article, Chris Rusbridge, who works for the Digital Curation Centre, argues with himself about some of the assumptions behind digital preservation thinking. Rusbridge admits that some of his thoughts might be heretical, but they are worth getting out into the open and discussion.

The fallacies are:

1. Digital preservation is very expensive [because]
2. File formats become obsolete very rapidly [which means that]
3. Interventions must occur frequently, ensuring that continuing costs remain high.
4. Digital preservation repositories should have very long timescale aspirations,
5. 'Internet-age' expectations are such that the preserved object must be easily and instantly accessible in the format de jour, and
6. the preserved object must be faithful to the original in all respects.

After explaining each, Rusbridge restates each with what he believes are true. I won't spoil it for you -- go read the article!

---

Technorati tag: Digital Preservation