Hostname: page-component-7857688df4-fwx92 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-11-12T16:21:46.370Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Information

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2019

Jeff Rothenberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The year is 2045, and my grandchildren (as yet unborn) are exploring the attic of my house (as yet unbought). They find a letter dated 1995 and a CD-ROM (compact disk). The letter claims that the disk contains a document that provides the key to obtaining my fortune (as yet unearned). My grandchildren are understandably excited, but they have never seen a CD before—except in old movies—and even if they can somehow find a suitable disk drive, how will they run the software necessary to interpret the information on the disk? How can they read my obsolete digital document?

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Legal Information , Volume 26 , Issue 1-3 , 1998 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by the International Association of Law Libraries 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Short bibliography

Archival Management of Electronic Records, Archives and Museum Informatics Technical Report no. 13, Bearman, David, ed., Archives and Museum Informatics, Pittsburgh, 1991 (ISSN 1042-1459).Google Scholar
Bolter, Jay David. “Text and Technology: Reading and Writing in the Electronic Age.” Library Resources and Technical Services, 31 (January/March 1987), pp. 12–23.Google Scholar
Hedstrom, Margaret. “Understanding Electronic Incunabula: A Framework for Research on Electronic Records,” The American Archivist, 54:3 (Summer 1991), pp. 334–54.Google Scholar
Michelson, Avra and Rothenberg, Jeff. “Scholarly Communication and Information Technology: Exploring the Impact of Changes in the Research Process on Archives,” The American Archivist, 55:2 (Spring 1992), pp. 236–315 (ISSN 0360-9081).Google Scholar
Research Issues in Electronic Records, published for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Washington, D.C., by the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn. 1991.Google Scholar
Rothenberg, Jeff. “Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents,” Scientific American, January 1995 (Vol. 272, Number 1), pp. 24–29.Google Scholar
“Metadata to Support Data Quality and Longevity,” The First IEEE Metadata Conference, April 16–18, 1996, NOAA Auditorium, NOAA Complex, Silver Spring, MD, available only online at http://www.computer.org/conferen/meta96/rothenberg_paper/ieee.data-quality.html.Google Scholar
Taking a byte out of history: the archival preservation of federal computer records. Report of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Operations, Nov. 6. 1990 (House Report 101-978).Google Scholar